19. Reveal yourself
REVEAL YOURSELF
AIDEN
I’m here for Persephone.
I know this story.
After eighty years with Hades in my head, I know every story involving his wife. Every myth. Every song. Every legend.
This one belongs to Theseus, Pirithous, and the two chairs Hades used when the fools came into the Underworld intending to steal Persephone away from her husband because Pirithous wanted her as his bride.
Pirithous never was able to escape. Theseus did. And Hades… he’s regretted that mercy ever since.
Only the man standing in the megaron isn’t Theseus, though he appears as though he is.
Somewhere in the Underworld, I sense the hero’s shade, so I know that he really is dead.
That he’s slated to become one of the Unmentionables tells me that he had an untimely death; suicide, I sense.
But there is still a living version of the hero standing there, watching my blossom with those eyes…
But Cassandra warned me. The former princess risked my wrath—Hades’s wrath—by walking into my realm and admitting that she plotted against all of us. I was willing to hold her until passing her off to Zeus for immortal judgment… and then she told me her truth.
She knew. She saw. She was witness to everything Aiden Murphy did mirrorside, but that’s not all, either.
Do you remember the black shades?
I do now. At first, I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. Most oracles speak in riddles, and Cassandra was no different. But while Hades disregarded what she said, Aiden… he listened. I listened.
And I knew exactly what she meant.
Back when I worked for him, Teddy Thanos always wore aviators. Inside. Outside. At night. In rooms so dark, I could see my reflection in the mirrored shades while I sat across from him, waiting for another name on my hit list.
I never asked why. Back then, I didn’t ask Teddy much of anything. He pointed me toward men he said deserved to die, and I believed him because I needed to. Because the alternative meant admitting I was nothing more than a murderer with good intentions.
Now Theseus stands across from me with black eyes fractured by thin lines of white. The same sort of eyes that Hades instinctively recognizes as those that belong to his missing prisoner…
The god rises up inside of me, cold and furious, but neither of us moves. Not yet, at least. Not when Kronos made the first mistake.
The bastard chose Theseus’s story.
Fine with me. We’re more than happy to finish it.
Willow’s hand catches the back of my suit jacket.
She isn’t hiding. My blossom doesn’t hide nearly as often as she should. She’s only staying close enough for me to protect her while still leaning around my shoulder to see what’s happening.
I shift in front of her. She shifts with me.
I move again, eager to keep her safe. So does she because she has no idea that’s at stake at the moment.
Any other time, I might appreciate the stubborn little dance between Willow and me.
Right now, a man with Kronos’s eyes just announced he came for my wife, and I finally understand why the reborn Apollo seems so sure that Hephaetus would rather blow the top on Olympus than let Ares try to take his wife away from him.
I’d do the same if that’s what it took. But I’m not the god of the forge. I’m the god of the Underworld, and I have my own tricks up my sleeve.
Careful to keep Willow behind me, I call out the hero’s name. “What exactly are you doing in my realm?”
Take the bait. Say it again. Let the magic know what sort of legend you’re trying to repeat…
He can’t resist.
“I told you.” His gaze slides past me, a cruel smile on his lips. “I’m here for Persephone.”
The shadows under my throne stir, ready to be summoned at will.
It’s simple. The Other recognizes the story just as I do.
That’s one of the stranger things about this place.
The magic likes myths. Give it the right pieces—a hero, a god, the queen he came to steal—and it starts filling in the rest. It takes effort to change the story, and even then there are some elements…
like, oh, a pomegranate… that can’t be defeated.
In this case, it’s another chair.
The air cools notably though I feel like I’m burning up from the inside out with rage. Darkness stretches across the floor toward Theseus as I call on my shadows.
He looks down as the first tendril winds around his sandal-covered foot. He doesn’t react. Doesn’t try to escape the shadows welling up around his feet. Doesn’t even stop smiling.
And that tells me everything I need to know.
Theseus might have been arrogant enough to challenge Hades once, but he learned what happens when a man tries to steal the queen of the Underworld. He wouldn’t stand calmly while the same trap closes around him twice.
You know what? Kronos would. Chaos wouldn’t want to avoid the story. He’d try to see how badly he could twist it.
Okay, then.
“Last time you came into my realm,” I say, “you believed you could take my wife.”
The shadows climb Theseus’s legs. Behind him, darkness gathers into the shape of a chair. High-backed. Wide-armed. Not stone or wood, but created out of the shadows of the Underworld.
Hades remembers the chair. The Other remembers the myth.
Theseus glances over his shoulder, and in a voice so familiar, it sends shivers down my spine, he says, “Really?”
“I was merciful once. I allowed Theseus to leave the Underworld alive. And, yet, you chose to return in another lifetime. As though I would ever let you lay your hands on my blossom.”
At my side, I fist my fingers, tightening my hand. The second I do, the chair strikes the backs of his knees. Whether he does it on purpose or not, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He drops right onto it.
The shadows tighten immediately, lashing around his ankles and thighs. More coil across his waist and chest. They drag his wrists onto the armrests and bind them there.
His shoulders jerk once, and still he smiles as though he’s enjoying himself.
Tapping into Hades’s power, I strengthen the trap as much as I can. I can’t risk letting him escape, not yet, and because the magic currently thinks he’s Theseus, I manage to trap him if only until chaos sheds his disguise because it’s aiding both me and Hades.
I wait until every binding is in place, courtesy of the magic, and he’s stuck to the chair exactly like Theseus was in that story. Only then do I step closer, moving so that I’m directly in front of him.
“Enough,” I snap, glowering at the smirking would-be hero. “I have you trapped now. Do us all a favor and reveal your true self.”
Behind me, Willow gasps. I know, Blossom. I wasn’t able to share with her that, while he might present as Theseus, that ain’t Theseus. Nah. That’s—
His fractured eyes sparkle. “Already? Aren’t you enjoying playing this little game with me?”
“No,” is my flat response. “There’s no use in pretending any longer. Cassandra reminded me of the glasses,” I say. “The aviators you never took off because you didn’t want anyone to see what was underneath.”
This time, Willow breathes in sharply behind me.
The sound is a pang in my heart. Taking my eyes off of Kronos is stupid, even for half a second, but I have to look at her. I have to make sure she’s okay.
She is. One glimpse and I notice that Willow is staring past me with that little line between her eyebrows. Though she should be, she’s not afraid. No… she’s thinking.
Just in case, I take a few steps in her direction, reaching behind me. Willow moves up to my back. I hook an arm around her waist, pulling her flush against me.
I face Kronos again, not surprised at all that he’s still wearing Theseus’s face. Why wouldn’t he? All I’ve done by making pronouncements is feed the confusion and echoes of chaos in the palace. That’s what he wants.
Which means I must strip him of that power.
“No more stories. Show me who you really are, Kronos.”
It was the eyes. From the moment I saw them, I knew he couldn’t be the real Theseus.
Of course, that doesn’t mean he isn’t just Kronos, either, and while I knew that, I don’t think I really understand just how Cassandra’s warning would affect me when proven true until the man in front of me offers one last not-quite-heroic grin.
“Why?” he asks. “When you know this form so much better?”
The body changes. It’s as simple as that. One moment, Theseus is trapped in the chair.
The next, Teddy Thanos sits there.
The curls are gone, replaced by silvering black hair slicked away from his face. The hero’s clothing becomes a charcoal suit. A gold watch circles one wrist beneath the shadows holding him down.
Then the aviators appear. For a couple of heartbeats, black lenses hide his ruined eyes like they once did eighty years ago, but then they vanish as though he wants me to see them.
It’s the same face. Same goddamned expression that used to make me straighten my shoulders and wait for orders.
“Hello, Aiden.”
Goddamn it, it’s the same voice, too. The voice that belonged to a man who turned me into a monster without me knowing it, but if he really is Kronos… he knew.
He knew all along, didn’t he?
“Teddy” leans back as much as the bindings allow. “You look good, kid.”
“Shut up.”
“There he is.” His grin widens. “I wondered whether the Brooklyn in you survived all those years with Hades. Glad to see it did. When the mortal soul fights back against the immortal… let’s just say, there’s nothing like the amount of chaos it gives off.
“Except,” he adds, gaze reaching so that it lands on the woman at my back, “for a kind soul who just wants to be good, but doesn’t quite understand what’s going on. Is that so, Persephone?”
“Willow,” I growl. “Her name is Willow.”
Teddy—Kronos laughs. “Come here, Willow.”
“No.”
He ignores me. “Come, goddess. Stay behind your man. Believe he can save you… it’ll only add to the chaos when you realize that none of you will survive what I have planned. But, for now… tell him. Tell him why you were coming to the megaron in the first place.”
I cock my head just enough that I can keep one eye on Kronos and the other on my blossom.