Chapter Twelve
“You don’t have the right to be mad,” Alex returned. “You shouldn’t have been snooping in my room.”
I blinked, spinning around. I did it? I went back?
“It’s a good thing I was snooping, or I wouldn’t have found all the little notes this whore sent you.” Sirena—whole and well—screamed in my Alex’s face. “Who is she!”
“Uh-oh.” Sebastian appeared at my side, making me jump. “I better stay close in case you need my protection, partner.”
Spinning on him, me face-to-face with Daciana, Ionna, Nitsa, and smiling, happy Theron. Not a scratch on them as they closed in to watch the show.
“Guys!” I shot past Sebastian, throwing myself in Theron’s arms.
“Whoa.” He laughed. “What brought this on?”
“You guys look great.” I went down the line, hugging the stuffing out of each of my bemused friends. “You’re wonderful. You’re perfect.”
Chuckling, Tycho wiggled away from my kisses. “Hey now. I hate to turn down kisses from a beautiful woman, but need I remind you, I only have eyes for Calix.”
I grasped his cheeks, shooting his brows up. “You don’t need to remind me, but I need to tell you, Calix is damn fucking lucky to have a person who loves him as much as you do. That kind of love...” I drifted to Alex. “It’s everything.
“You deserve no less than someone who gives that back to you. Even if it’s not Calix Lambros.”
“Um, thanks? I think.”
“What’s going on over there, partner?” Sebastian called. “You’re missing the show.”
I was off Tycho and in Sebastian’s face before his smirk stretched his lips. “If we’re partners, you need to listen, not ask questions, and do exactly what I say. Last night, someone bought hundreds of hellstones and gallons of Lethe water, and handed it out to every pissed-off Sisyphean with a grudge.”
His grin wiped away. “Hundreds? Are you messing with me? That many hellstones will—”
“Cause a riot,” I rushed. “I know. That’s exactly what they want. For the Hell Boys to be responsible for another Sisyphean/Titan battle, so you’ll be expelled and executed.”
“Who? How do you know—?”
“I told you to listen and not ask questions.” I clapped his shoulders, shaking him. “You guys have hidden powers, and don’t deny it. Can Castor get all the hellstones back in the next two minutes? Can he, like, zap them back where they belong?”
“Zap them back? What the fuck are you talking about, woman? Of course he can’t. And that’s not me bullshitting you,” he said to my glare. “He doesn’t have the power to recall them from their new owners—secret power or otherwise. Hellstones want to be used. They want to inflict pain on their new, unsuspecting victims. They won’t return until they have.”
Chill pimpled my skin at the way he spoke of them. Like they were alive.
“You’re telling me you don’t have anything going on with anyone here, even though that stupid Sisyphean said you’re in love with someone?” I heard Sirena say.
We were running out of time.
“Fine, if we can’t stop this fight before it happens, we need to cut it short,” I said. “You and the Hell Boys won’t be able to, so we need someone who can. One of the instructors. Anyone.”
He jerked a nod. “Castor, Dimitri, with me. Jason, stay with Vanda. Do whatever she says.”
“Oh, I will,” Jason promised as they ran off, sidling up to me. “I’ll do it twice.”
I hated that even with everything going on, my face heated up. “Stop that. All of that. This is serious. You and I need to find someone—”
“Listen up, bitch!” Sirena sounded off. “I don’t know what he told you, but you’re nothing but a collection of warm holes. Xander and I have been together since before we could walk. We belong together. The marriage contract is already written, and your name isn’t and never will be on it.”
Kosma moved out of the corner of my eye, pushing through the crowd.
“We need to find them now.”
I told Jason who to look for and we took off in different directions, searching the faces glued to the sight.
“Pbtfffff.”
Raucous laughter broke out among the Sisypheans. Sirena spun, face reddening deep and fast.
“Pbtfffff.” Kosma went off again. “Once again, nothing but bullshit falls out of your mouth. Stop dragging us all into your relationship problems.”
“Where are you?” I shot in front of one confused dude, apologized, and kept moving. “Come on. Where are you?”
“We couldn’t give a shit that your fiancé is fucking around on you,” Kosma said, signaling my time was up. “Instead of yelling at us, why don’t you try hearing him and accepting that he doesn’t want you? Get the fuck over it al—”
I twisted around as Sirena blurred. A silver streak shot over our heads, grabbed Kosma, and lifted her into the sky. A strange, dragon-like creature held a screaming Kosma in her claws.
Shouts rang out. Kazran sprang into action. I dropped my head when Kosma hit the ground again, unable to see it a second time.
“It’s not too late.” I picked up my feet, moving faster to find him. “There’s still time to save them. Where are you? Where are you!”
“Don’t you dare,” Sirena ordered. “No one helps that worthless, disrespectful trash. You Sisypheans have been getting above yourself, but that ends today.”
I frantically scanned faces, freaking out the few people who took their eyes off Sirena to look my way. None of those looking back at me were Alexis Andino.
“From now on, if one of you disrespects your betters, all of you pay.”
Sirena’s scream echoed through the arena.
Sisypheans surged on her, knocking me aside to get to her. The hellstones were about to be thrown, unleashing a tsunami of snakes that would trigger Theron and force Calix to unleash an army of love slaves.
“It’s too late,” I rasped. “I’m already too late.
“Fates,” I called. “Help me again, please. Let me go back farther.”
I closed my eyes and opened them. Closed and opened. Closed and opened again.
“Agh! Please,” I cried.
Alexander, Ajax, and Calix ran to help Sirena like they did the first time. The Sisypheans spun around—armed and ready to let their hellstones fly.
The arena plunged into darkness.
“Yes!”
Jason did it. He found the son of Erebus. I loved that pussy-hound so much in that moment I could’ve kissed him.
Screams and confusion went up all around, but they weren’t the terrified, soul-ripping screams of people undergoing hellish torment. There was still time to stop this war before it happened.
“Everyone? Everyone,” I bellowed. “Listen to me. If you have hellstones, drop them on the ground now! They’re infecting your mind. Changing you. Making you angry and hateful.”
“They’re getting us revenge,” a bodiless voice shouted back. “Too long Titans have tortured and looked down on us. Let’s see how they like it!”
“Yeah!”
“Yes, a lot of them suck,” I said, blunt as a truck, “but this isn’t the way. We’ll all lose if we go after each other like this. Our enemies are the monsters, not each other. Please, just put down the hell—”
“Guys,” someone shouted. “I found Andino!”
“Hey, what are you—? Get off! Don’t—”
The sun winked back on, flooding the arena with light again. The Sisypheans didn’t waste a second. Hellstones flew through the air, claiming victims everywhere they fell.
“No, don’t!”
I watched helplessly. Just like before, the Titans, now writhing and screaming on the ground, rushed to face the threat. And just like before, the second wave gathered behind them—readying their Lethe water and hellstones to strike from behind.
“Don’t do this!” Visions of fire, burning flesh, and Theron wailing flashed before my eyes. “Please!”
“RISE!”
The ground rumbled beneath my feet.
“What is this?” I backed up. “What’s happening? What— Ahh!” Limestone exploded, showering me in rocks and rubble that split seams on my skin. I hacked, waving the dust and dirt from my face.
The haze cleared, and our eyes met.
Hunks of flesh still clung to his bones, stubbornly hanging on along with its swinging jaw. Round, shrunken eyes rattled in sockets that did not shrink with it. It bent its head, and those eyes popped right out.
I screamed.
The skeletal army seized, tackled, and pinned demigods all over the stadium—taking Lethe water to the face and hellstones to the head without slowing. Stephanie Papamichael, a proficient fire wielder, incinerated two that came her way. A dozen more poured out of the earth, swarming and burying a screaming Stephanie under bones and decay.
Hades.
We’d been dropped into the pits of hell itself.
Ajax dropped wave after wave on the skeletons. Alex wielded his fists where his power failed. Where one was brought down, a dozen more took its place. They poured out of the holes in the ground—overwhelming the novices in minutes.
Just like that, the second battle of the Sisypheans versus Titans was over.
Through the dust, fear, and gloom, two figures stood on the platform. Kazran and a man I only needed to see once to remember.
“Well, well.” Drakos’s rich tenor flowed soft and slow like the river along a stone bed. “What a sorry sight this is. Comrades fighting comrades. Novices disgracing themselves and shaming the soldiers who came before them.”
Drakos raised his head and a band of silver-and-black locks fell over his brow. That silver sprinkled heavily through his hair, beard, and mustache, but it did not age him. No, it somehow only served to add distinction to a young man’s handsome face—telling the world as his other features couldn’t that he was a man of experience and authority.
I never felt the weight of someone looking down their nose at me so strongly. Guilt settled in my soul even though I hadn’t done a thing wrong.
“I’m told this embarrassment is nothing more than a clever subterfuge to get your fellow son of Hades expelled?”
Dimitri, Castor, and Sebastian stood to the side of the platform—chests heaving from running.
Drakos’s voice was calm. Pleasant, even. “Who is responsible?”
No one answered him. It wasn’t that the arena was silent. There was plenty of screaming, pleading, and demands for Drakos to get his army of the dead off them. But no one answered his question.
“No matter,” he continued. “Some time in the reflection room ought to help the culprit or culprits remember their part in this, along with the nerve to face their actions like a soldier—instead of cowering like an asnesma.”
“The reflection room?” Tycho stepped forward—a distinct lack of skeletons hanging off him.
The ones who came for him all stood in a frozen ring around him and a blinking Calix. Son of Persephone. An army of the dead was nothing to him.
“Who has to go?” Tycho asked. “The Sisypheans or Titans?”
“All of you, naturally.”
“But, sir!”
The uproar was immediate.
“The Titans didn’t do anything!”
“It was them!”
“It’s not fair. They’re always bullying us.”
“We were just defending ourselves.”
Drakos turned right around and walked out—ignoring every word out of their mouths. “Follow.”
The skeletons snapped to attention. Bony hands clamped on their struggling, thrashing captives—including me.
“No, wait,” I cried as two dead and rotting men grabbed me. I gagged on the smell. “I didn’t do anything. I stopped the fight. I stopped it!”
They dragged me past the Hell Boys, who were fighting just as hard against the skeletons holding them.
Sebastian cursed. “Drakos isn’t discounting this could be a double buff and we are responsible. The suspicious bastard.” He looked at me past crushing, shoving bodies—dead and alive. “Don’t worry, Vanda. I’ll get you out. You won’t spend more than a second in the reflection room. I always repay my—”
Something flashed out of the corner of my eye.
Water soared in an arch over Castor’s head and splashed Sebastian in the face.
“No!” Dimitri and Castor bellowed.
Sebastian blinked, screwing up his face as the Lethe water ran down. “What’s... going on? Where am I? What— What are you!” He bellowed, throwing himself back and kicking at the dead. “What is this place! Help me. Help!”
Selene laughed heartily. “I thank you for correcting my ally’s mistake. She underestimated the hellstones’ effectiveness at causing a distraction. This result is much more appropriate and achieves the same end.
“The son of Hades is a threat to us no more.”
I whipped my head around—searching for the thrower and Selene’s ally.
I saw nothing but dozens upon dozens of moving faces. I screamed my frustration as the dead carried me away.
“WHAT IS THIS? WHEREare we going?”
My dead captors held tight to my arms, dragging me behind Remis and Vasili.
They and our other instructors were waiting in the atrium when our protesting novice class was brought in. Seemed news of what happened spread quickly.
One after another, they were taken away to a room that made them fight and shout to get away—their cries echoing down the palace’s cavernous halls.
When my turn came, my friends were already gone. The tips of my toes skimmed the empty, silent corridor.
“Madame Remis,” I burst out. “What’s the reflection room?”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like.” Her calm reply floated over her shoulder. “A place where you can think without distractions.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll see.”
Madame Remis led us out away from the main hall, then through a pair of doors I’d yet to cross. This corridor was much like the dorm hall. It narrowed to push us closer together.
“This way.”
We came to a stop in front of a small, wooden door wholly out of place among all the stone, marble, and white. Madame Remis gestured for me to go ahead of her. “Careful on the steps.”
Her warning was understood with a single look down, down, down. A spiral staircase twisted through the bowels of the school, leading to what—I couldn’t see.
“What’s down there?” I asked, backing away.
She smiled at me. “The reflection room, Aella. As we said. No one is trying to trick or scare you.” Remis gently pressed on my back, moving me on. “After you.”
I thought about arguing, but in the end, I picked up my feet and continued down. A place to sit and think didn’t sound so bad right now. It’d give me time to think of an explanation for Drakos when he asked who was behind the hospitalization of half the Titan class.
The culprit is right on my wrist.
Another small wooden door awaited us at the bottom of the stairs. I was the one who opened it, setting foot inside a dim, windowless room—
—with nothing inside.
Well, not nothing exactly. There was a lone chair pushed against the wall beside a three-legged table. On it sat a covered plate and a goblet of water. Turning in place, I landed on the metal statue leaning on the opposite wall and kept going. There was nothing else to see.
“This is the reflection room?” My voice echoed strangely. “I’m meant to stay down here. For how long?”
Madame Remis’s smile held. “Aella, please sit.”
I did so, feeling more and more disturbed in the prison-cell space. Was this a trick?
Commander Vasili enclosed us in, heightening my anxiety. What was this? Why was he so quiet and Remis so pleasant?
“Here. You must be hungry.” Remis removed the top off the plate.
“No, thank you,” I said as my stomach growled, betraying me instantly. A plate of seeded rolls taunted me—appearing as warm and fresh as if they were made and placed there minutes ago.
“If you won’t have one, I will.” Remis and Vasili claimed a roll. They ate them more happily than I was, sitting there with my vocal stomach. Hesitantly, I claimed one for myself.
“Now then,” Remis began. “You know why you’re here. Someone purchased and distributed a large number of hellstones with the purpose bringing tensions between the classes to a boiling pot. Due to this, over fifty students are now in the infirmary—seventeen of which seriously injured. An incident of this scale requires notifying the imperial council.”
My head snapped up.
“The Twelve will demand answers, Headmaster Drakos expects to have those answers, or no one leaves the reflection room. Is this understood?”
“Understood.”
“You will speak not a word, girl. You will not break. You will not give in.”
Selene was making me feel worse. Why was she talking like I was about to be tortured?
“Do you like it?” Remis asked, gesturing to the roll. “It’s Tantalean bread. It arrests your body’s normal functions and makes it so you don’t need to eat or drink for a certain period of time.”
My jaw froze.
“It also stops the need to expel waste.”
“Excuse me?” I spat it on the ground. “Why would you give this to me!”
“Because,” she said—still smiling, still pleasant. “You’ll be down here for a while. Leaving you in need of food, water, and a bathroom is cruelty the likes of which only a monster would inflict. The bread allows you to reflect without endangering your well-being.”
The bread spoiled on my tongue. “So it’s true. You are trapping me in this room. Why call it a reflection room when there’s already a name for it: prison cell.”
“We are not trapping you in this room, girl,” the commander said. He moved to the iron statue and flipped a latch I hadn’t noticed before. The calm, immortal woman split from her body. “We’re putting you in here. This is the reflection room.”
Cold leached into my bones.
“It’s nothing like a prison cell.”
Because it was even worse. Lethal sharp spikes lined her dark, hopeless insides.
The reflection room was an iron maiden.
“N-no,” I whispered. “No! You can’t put me in there. I won’t go!”
I raced to the door, hand closing on—
“Sleep.”
Black crowded my vision. The world went dark.