Chapter 102
A Bad Plan Is Better Than No Plan
LYRA
I make sure that when I return to Rhea exactly when I left her, it’s with my back to her. I have to, so I have a second to compose myself. To wipe the pain of saying goodbye to Cronos again from my features. I refuse to make her see that.
“Well?” she asks from behind me.
I turn to face her. “It worked.”
Her eyes darken with sadness, and yet I see warmth there at the same time. “Cronos must be so proud.”
She has no idea. Or maybe she does.
“Do you know what to do?”
I know what to try. Even after teaching me everything he could, making me practice over and over, Cronos couldn’t hide his doubt. What I’m doing is dangerous and extremely tricky.
“We need everyone who was in Tartarus with us,” I say. “And Hades. Fast.”
She shakes her head. “We don’t have time to explain to him—”
“I’m not doing something this huge without him knowing first.” Period. Not after what I’ve put him through. If it goes sideways…
Rhea must see the strength of my conviction, because she nods. They have to send Boone and Persephone to get Hades. I can’t risk anyone remembering seeing the Titans.
While they get him, we figure out the plan.
If this is going to work, we can’t be seen, especially by the Underworld gods who were in here before.
But we also need the four pillar Titans to keep the water off of us at the beginning.
Luckily, they are spaced in a way that the rest of us can stand between, forming a circle of linked hands.
They all need to be physically connected to me to do this.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing?” Hades thunders, the sound preceding him into the cavern.
In an instant, he has me by the wrist, trying to drag me away.
And I freeze time.
A blink of my will, and everything goes silent and motionless, the column of water weirdly suspended mid-deluge. Except for him and me.
Hades’ eyes go wide as he looks around. I know the instant he figures out what’s happening because his jaw goes steel hard as he cranks a blazing gaze down to my face. “You’re—”
“The goddess of time,” I say. He already knows. He’s seen me freeze time before, but then he was trapped in the shell of his own rage. This time, he’s entirely here with me.
He shakes his head once. Twice. “It’s not possible.”
“I’ll tell you everything, all of it, but first we have to save the world.”
His shoulders go rigid. “You mean you have to save the world, don’t you?”
“Yes—”
“I won’t allow it.” His hand snaps out—ready to teleport me away, no doubt.
I freeze that hand and give him a patient look. “I’m doing this,” I tell him. “You saved me during Zeus’ Labor in the Crucible. Now it’s my turn.”
Smoke lashes out at me from his body, but I freeze that, too. I can see in the blaze that turns blue in his eyes that he wants to unleash everything he has to stop me.
So I step into him, lift my hands to his face, and press a kiss to his lips. “You know I have to do this,” I whisper.
The sound he makes is between a rage-filled grunt and a terror-filled whimper. A sound I never thought I’d hear from my imposing, all-powerful god. “I can’t,” he says in a tortured voice. “I can’t lose you again.”
I take a deep breath. “I can’t promise that you won’t, but your father has taught me well.”
His eyes flare with more fire, but they’re a normal, silvery color this time, not quite so hot. “What did you do, Lyra?”
“I’m ready,” is all I tell him. “But I couldn’t do this without you knowing. I put you through millennia of hell with my secrets. I won’t do it again. Not unless you force me to. I can start back before I sent them for you. You’ll never know.”
A tiny crack, like glass starting to slowly shatter, appears across his arm. He’s fighting me? Fighting the hold my frozen time has on his body.
“Hades,” I whisper, smoothing my thumbs over his features, memorizing every detail of his face. “Please. I need you on my side if I have any chance of succeeding.”
I can feel the tensing of his finer muscles under my palms a heartbeat before his head drops forward…and I know he’s going to allow this. He’s not going to stop me.
His gaze holds a thousand emotions in a roiling flame. “I’m here,” he says. “Do it.”
I release him and position us where I need us with the others, explaining what’s about to happen as fast as I can.
Hades hates everything about this plan.
I can see it in the way he’s so tense that he moves like a robot, his hand clamped down painfully around mine.
“I’m ready,” I say.
Hades’ gaze flares with blue fire yet again but then, at my pleading look to not make this harder for me, softens, and he leans forward, putting his forehead to mine. “I should be here to help you. Protect you. Do…fucking…something.”
“You’ve already done enough, nephew,” Iapetus pipes up from his corner, where he’s still working to funnel the water.
“Shut up,” we both snap at him along with all the others.
Hades’ arms tighten around me, and I feel him inhale silently.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Iapetus mutters.
“I never liked you, uncle,” Hades tosses at him.
But he also lets go of me. Only instead of stepping back, he kisses me. Not fast. Not soft. It’s long and hard and desperate all over again.
Then he lifts his head, and the public mask of my arrogant god of death is fully in place. “Fuck this up, and I’ll find you somehow.”
“Rude.” I step away and take Rhea’s hand. “If I fuck this up, I’m the one who’ll have to come find you.”
His eyes narrow, and I smile. Forced. Because I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. But I don’t want him to see that.
“You always find me,” he says.
My heart cracks and sings at the same time. “Always.”
Then his gaze moves to his mother’s face, and behind her, to Persephone. They haven’t had time for anything more than the briefest reunion. And what I’m about to try…
Please the cosmos, let this work.
“You understand,” Rhea says to him, “that while mortals may forget anything they witnessed, the gods will not. The few times Cronos did anything like this, immortals could remember. They still won’t be happy with you.”
Hades gives a curt nod.
I also nod. Cronos already told me that much. It’s not like the way broken time resetting could only be remembered by those of us stuck in Tartarus. He and I came up with a plan, a web of stories to weave. I’ve already told the others.
Cronos also told me something else. A plan to protect Rhea. Her heart is visibly breaking even as she stands beside me with the others. His request is a kind of protection I understand very well now.
“We may lose any allies among the gods of death,” Iapetus warns.
We’ve already been over this, but I say it again. “If they remember the glamour being removed, then they’ll come asking. And I have many more people to remove that glamour from anyway.”
He makes a disgruntled face. “You three had better have your story straight, then.”
I exchange a look with Boone and Persephone, who gaze back with less confidence than I think any of us would like. But Cronos and I thought through this, too.
Power over time does have its advantages.
I have bigger problems to tackle first. “Let’s just see if I can even do this,” I say. “Is everybody ready?”
We all stand in a line, hands clasped. Theia is holding Tethys’ hand as the Titaness’s corpse lies on the ground beside her at the end.
Hades is separate. The only people connected to me are the ones who were in Tartarus with me all this time.
He’s not one.
I look at him, and he looks at me. And then…he smiles. No dimples. No teasing. Just…this is what trust looks like.
It’s taken us a lot to get here. “If I don’t manage to protect the things I need to protect, I already know I can pull you out of it again.” I mean if I don’t manage to hold Tartarus open and end up locked down there again and he loses control and goes all burn down the world.
“If that happens again, I’ll know it, too. I’ll have faith in you. Always.”
I nod, then drag my gaze from him to the remains of Tartarus, which is quickly drowning. “Let this work.” I don’t know who I’m praying to at this point. All of us, maybe.
I call Cronos’ power forward. It’s so easy now. Like an eager puppy that just wants to play fetch.
Don’t kill me, I silently tell it. Hades can’t handle that.
I didn’t warn him about that little risk. About the part where the magnitude of what I’m about to do could drain me dry, first of my immortal powers, and then my immortality, and then my mortality, leaving only a dry husk of a corpse.
Hopefully that doesn’t happen.
The trick is to keep it as simple as possible.
I can’t Superman this shit and fly around the world, reversing time.
Because that would reverse everything that’s been done.
Those kids in the bus would fall off that bridge if he’s saving Lois on the second time around.
There are things that I need to stay as they are now, and separate things that need to change.
Even Rhea agreed, though I think another small piece of her died with Cronos to say it.
But Cronos is who helped me decide what was the most important and what had to be let go or redone.
I start with…us.
I close my eyes and envision a protective dome of light over all of us. Like a bubble. And inside that bubble, I keep time where it is now.
“It’s working,” Hades says.
I open my eyes, and sure enough, power is flowing out of my chest—the same incandescent light that splintered to create the red cracks in time, then came back together inside me.
It flows directly from my heart outward, creating a glassy, protective layer between me and Hades.
It spreads and grows from there, moving to surround all of us.
With Hades on the outside.
With my other hand, I reach out and flatten my fingers against the thin, soft film made of power. Hades flattens his hand, palm to palm with mine. I can’t feel him, though. Only the effervescence of Cronos’ power.
“I love you,” he says.
I’m so damn tempted to say, “I know.” But I have no idea if he’s seen that movie, and in this moment, I won’t deny him the words. “I love you.”
Then I watch him smile one more time.
I don’t want to look away. “The water will hit you until I can push it back. Be ready.”
Because the moment the bubble I’m making seals the four pillar Titans inside, they won’t be able to hold back the deluge anymore.
Hades nods.
I glance to my right, where the sides of the bubble are about to meet. Three. Two. One.
Bang.
The water explodes into the cavern, and I almost expect Hades to be violently slammed out of sight, but fire and smoke flare up around him, protecting him, and he stands before me. He’s going to stay with me as long as he can. I can see that much in his eyes.
So I go to work.
I picture two things happening, and this is where it gets hard. First, I freeze current time inside our protected bubble.
Immediately, Hades frowns and drops his hand, looking around. “Lyra?” I see him call.
He can’t see us now. It’s working.
Next, outside of us, where he is and in the rest of the world, including Tartarus, I start reversing time.
“Would you fucking look at that?” Iapetus demands.
No one tells him to shut up.