Chapter 84
Third Time’s The Charm
LYRA
I guess I fell asleep on Cronos’ shoulder, because a yelp surprises me awake.
Me and Cronos. “Did you hear that?” I ask.
“I did.” He nods. “It came from in there.”
In a blink, we’re both on our feet, and he’s reaching for the door handle when it’s jerked open and Persephone is standing there.
Persephone…only…
“What the fuck—”
She grabs my hand, drags me into the room, and points at a crack of time hovering, almost threateningly, directly over Boone. “Do something about that,” she commands, the finger she’s pointing shaking hard.
“Persephone…”
“Don’t argue.” She twitches away. “Fix it before it takes him.”
“Persephone—” I grab her arm and turn her roughly toward me. “Who got to you?”
Her perfect brows, already pulled together in concern, snap down over her eyes. “New lies, Lyra?”
“I’m not lying. I see it.”
“What are you talking about?” Cronos demands.
“I’m talking about glamours.” My power is still on from before. “I’m talking about how she—”
I’m spun around and shoved hard in the chest. Hard enough to send me stumbling backward. Right into the fractured piece of time, which closes around me as Persephone says, “It’s better without you around anyway.”
And I’m just in time to see…well…me.
I’m on the mountain in Olympus by Hera’s observatory again.
For the third time.
And the me I’m looking at is not the Lyra fighting in the Crucible who came up here after Athena’s Labor. She’s already been taken away by the Daemones. This is the Tartarus version of me who time traveled here once already. The me who asked Hades why he’d been so cruel.
And as soon as my mind absorbs all these things and centers me on where and when I am, that past version of me disappears, too.
I know where she went—sucked back into broken time to return to Tartarus. But it’s very different to see it from out here. No crack. No crystalline flashes. It’s almost as if she turns into mist and floats away—fairy dust on the wind—turning into nothing as she goes.
So that’s what that looks like.
As soon as she’s gone, Hades pitches forward, hands to his head like he’s trying to hold his skull together, and the mountain beneath my feet shakes.
Hard.
I’m across the space between us and on my knees in front of him faster than a Titan can run. Hades doesn’t seem to notice, eyes shut tight as he breathes. I put my hands over his, bracketing his face. “I’m here. I’m—”
I don’t know if what sets him off is me touching him or my voice, but Hades explodes away from me.
“You.” Rage descends over his features. “Damn it, Lyra. Why do you keep doing that?”
I glare right back. “I’ve told you, I’m not controlling it. I have as much choice in the matter as you do.”
He’s not listening. I can tell because his eyes narrow to glittering, silvery slits. Again, the mountain underneath me shifts with the force of his emotions, and a trickle of fear creeps down my spine. “Hades?”
“You blame me for hurting you when you told me to after a different you just told me that somebody can glamour the gods. That someone could have made me do things to you that I am—”
I cut him off. “I was wrong.”
Maybe wrong isn’t the best word choice. There is somebody who can manipulate the gods in that way. But after what I’ve experienced now, I know they weren’t responsible for what Hades did to me. That has been me all along. “I know more now than I did when I visited you a…second ago.”
Okay. That sounded as ridiculous out loud as it did in my head.
There’s no give in him. “How do I know this is the real you now and not a glamour?”
An impossible thing to prove. “What does your gut say? You know that was me, and this is, too.”
Another tremble of the mountain. “Fuck,” he snarls as he throws his hands down and turns his back on me.
What I desperately want to do is wrap my arms around him and tell him to believe me, tell him that everything will be all right, but I don’t know that for sure.
Either of those things. Besides, I’m pretty certain if I move at all from my current position kneeling on the ground that Hades might smite me before I even gain my feet.
“Ask me something only Lyra would know,” I offer.
“That doesn’t help,” he snaps back. “Because I don’t know which versions of Lyra I’ve seen throughout my life are really her or not.”
Right. “Good point,” I mutter.
There’s got to be a way to prove I’m me. But honestly, I’m so tired of fighting and thinking and scheming that my head feels like it might explode from all the things.
I’ve got nothing.
He runs a hand through his hair in an agitated gesture, then pauses and slowly lowers it to his side.
Though his back is still to me, I can practically see the transition from raw emotion to cold calculation simply in the way his shoulders change their angle.
“Let’s pretend for a second I believe this is you,” he tosses over his shoulder at me. “Tell me what you need me to do, then.”
“Who says I need to tell you to do anything?”
“Lyra…” He’s at the edge of snapping. It’s in his voice.
I sigh. Apparently, I get to tell it to his back.
I stay where I am, still kneeling on the hard ground.
“I know I’ve been confusing you these past two visits.
” Past two for him, at least. I think. “And I’m sorry.
So I’m here now to tell you to stay the course.
Get me through Zeus’ Labor by keeping my curse intact.
After that, why you had to do any of this will become clearer. And will be…”
I bite off the words worth it.
I know he catches the hesitation. But I won’t finish it, leaving the hole of silence empty.
I can’t tell him it’s all going to end happily, and I can’t tell him it will be worth it.
I still have hope to hold on to that Phoebe’s vision will eventually come true and we’ll get out of Tartarus.
After all, the Titans have had their own hope wrapped around that truth for ages.
But I can’t tell him any of that.
I stare at his back, waiting for any sign that he believes even a smidge of what I’m saying.
Although now that time reset to after all of the Crucible Games, maybe it doesn’t matter?
But somehow, I feel like how we get there is just as important as getting there.
Gods, my head hurts from trying to wrap itself around these riddles.
I have to move forward the way we’ve planned.
I’ll act as Hades’ source and make sure I end up where I am now.
Boone, too. No choice about him after the reset.
“When are you from?” Hades asks abruptly.
When I don’t answer immediately, he finally turns slowly to look at me with eyes still narrowed, the silver so pale they look like glittering, freezing ice chips.
I sigh. “I can’t tell you that.”
“But you will be my queen?”
He needs reassurance when I’ve told him so before? Relief at being able to finally answer one question is sharp in my chest. “Yes. I will be your queen.” But the tremulous smile that starts on my lips freezes at his next question.
“Forever?”
Damn his sharp mind. “I don’t…” I almost tell him that I don’t see the future, only the past, but that’s too much information, too. “I haven’t seen that far out yet.”
“Then we still have nothing.”
I know. That’s what hurts the most, the ache of it always there. Right where my heart should be. Because if we can’t trust in each other, we have…nothing. And if I never return to him, we have nothing.
Maybe Hades and I had nothing all along.
But part of me refuses to believe that, and I take a deep breath.
“There is a being out there who can glamour the gods the way that I told you. That’s still true.
But now that I’ve seen more, I am convinced that whoever that is doesn’t know what I…
can do.” Not yet, at least. And regardless of who is sending me through time, I still have to be the one to set the gears and cogs in motion when I get where they send me.
“They don’t know that they need to pretend to be me to get to you. ”
Hades glances away, the emotional walls he’s erected between us still skyscraper-high and solid steel.
I swallow. “I know trust doesn’t come easily to you, after what you’ve seen humans do over the eons that you have guarded their eternal souls.
Or, for that matter, what you’ve seen your own family do, corrupted by power, jealousy, or worse.
” I lean forward, appealing to him with every part of me.
“And I’m not telling you to trust me blindly.
You should check that it’s me every time.
The problem is, I don’t know how to make that easy for you. ”
There’s got to be something about me that is so essential that only he would know it. But I don’t know what it is. Nothing that couldn’t be mimicked if witnessed.
I drop my gaze to the ground as I scour my mind for something, anything that could help both of us. And I don’t know if he’s just a damned silent predator or if he teleports closer, but suddenly Hades is crouched before me, a finger under my chin to tilt my gaze to his.
“What is the first thing you said to me that night when I stopped you from throwing a rock at Zeus’ temple? Not before you realized it was me. The first thing right after.”
I blink at him, running through that night, and then can’t help the way my lips twitch. “‘I’m afraid one of us shouldn’t be here.’” I roll my eyes. “As true today as it was that night.”
If there’s even a hint of give in him, I’m not seeing it.
I let loose another sigh. “But you saw me there watching you—future me, I mean, not…”
“I get it.”
“What if someone else was there that night, too, and overheard?” I ask. “That doesn’t seem like a very good test—”
With speed only an immortal could demonstrate, Hades closes the distance between us and presses his lips to mine in a demanding, harsh kiss.
Immediately, we go up in metaphorical fire.
That fire might as well be real, the way this feels, and I gasp and whimper at the same time against him even as I kiss him back.
Heavens of Olympus, he tastes of him—that delicious scent of bitter, dark chocolate winds around me as our tongues tangle and more whimpers pour from me. I’m practically crawling to get closer to him.
A groan escapes Hades, coming from deep in his throat, and he’s gathering me against him, lifting me off my knees and into his lap.
Hazily, I realize that’s almost impossible, given the way he was crouching, but I don’t care.
My entire world, my entire existence, is centered on his lips, his tongue, and every shattering touch.
Although I do have the vague impression that we’ve moved locations, sitting on the side of a bed somewhere. I don’t care.
I only care that I can add one more memory like this to the ones I have of him. Of us.
How did I ever—ever—doubt him? No way could he fake this just to continue using me.
Hades breaks the kiss to bury his face in my neck, breathing hard and harsh and erratic. “Lyra,” he groans into my skin. “It is you.”