“I don’t know,” Max admits. “But anywhere nearby is a very bad thing.”
Very bad indeed.
Cronus was King of the Titans. He overthrew his own father, ruler of the universe, Uranus. And later when he learned he too was to be overthrown by his own son, he devoured each of his children as soon as they were born.
It was Rhea, Zeus’s mother, who was able to trick Cronus into devouring a stone instead of Zeus when he was born.
And it was Zeus who later overthrew Cronus and imprisoned him in Tartarus.
If Cronus has escaped the Underworld, there’s no telling what his plan will be, but it can’t be good. He’s been in Tartarus for over a millennium. That’s a long time to plot revenge.
But I can’t think about that right now. And if I lose this trial, I won’t have to think about it at all.
“Thanks for the warning, Max,” I say. “I can’t wait to see you when this trial is over. We’ll celebrate with something divine, like mortal popcorn or—”
“No, a mortal chocolate shake!”
“It’s a date,” I lie.
When I say goodbye to Max in the hallway, I give him an extra tight, extra-long hug knowing it’ll be the last time I see him when he’ll remember my name.
Chapter 31
From Hades Hall, the last of us descendants are broken off into two carriages and carted far away from the house. I get put in a carriage with Hollom and Gregor and I’m both grateful for it and annoyed by it. Hollom and Gregor spend the majority of the ride theorizing what the second trial will be and if Haven has a chance of losing.
“He’s too fucking arrogant,” Hollom says. “That’ll be his downfall.”
Gregor nods at this sage wisdom. “All the Knightfalls are. And now that we have these new powers, we might just be able to stop him.”
I turn away from the carriage window. “Have either of you been on the receiving end of one of his illusions?” Neither of them answers. “Because his power is all-consuming. It’s nearly impossible to break out of it and no one illusion is the same. I watched Ely fall to his knees and sob like a baby for his mother when Haven turned his power on him in the first trial. You are both idiots if you think you can best him.”
They both gape at me like I just sprouted a tail.
“Since when do you defend him?” Hollom says. “I thought you two hated each other.”
“I’m not defending him. I’m merely stating facts.”
The carriage pulls to a stop and the conversation is immediately dropped.
When the footman opens the door, a swirl of mist blows in to meet us. It smells like evergreens and cloves.
I’m the first out of the carriage. We’re standing at a hedge row twice as tall as I am and when I see a break in the wall, I know immediately where we are.
The Minotaur’s Labyrinth.
Theseus might have slain the minotaur thousands of years ago, but there are now mazes dotted all over Olympus in homage to the minotaur and the warrior. Often the gods use the mazes as training grounds, inhabiting it with any matter of creatures.
My stomach drops.
In all of my life, I’ve never encountered any of the fabled Olympian monsters and I had hoped to keep it that way.
As if sensing my growing fear, something inside the maze lets out a deafening roar that echoes across the land.
All of us go still.
At least I’m not the only one feeling out of my depth.
A third carriage comes careening over the next ridge and then comes to an abrupt halt beside us. Hades and Monstrat step out.
The monster roars again.
“Your second trial begins now,” Hades says when he stands between us and the maze entrance. He looks imposing and fierce in full battle gear complete with a blackened metal breastplate and matching vambraces. Golden flourishes have been painted on the plate armor at his shoulders.
But the shining piece is the Helm of Darkness that’s clutched beneath his arm.
It was created for him by the Cyclops and renders him invisible when he wears it. It seems an odd thing to be carrying around right now for something as simple and nonconfrontational as a descendant trial.
“Your objective,” Hades says, his voice booming, “is to find your way through the maze. That’s it. A simple task with a great reward.” He and Monstrat step aside. “Good luck.”
We all stare at the maze entrance. It might seem a simple task, stumbling your way through a maze, but this is the second trial of Hades’s House—nothing will be simple about it.
And then there’s the roaring monster somewhere inside likely waiting to ambush us.
Hades doesn’t mention anything about the monster.
Haven is the first one to step through the maze’s entrance and disappear behind a row. Then Pearce follows, then Kal and Hollom.
Not wanting to be the last, I surge ahead of Gregor and instead of going left like the rest of them, I go right. Gregor follows me and when I give him a look he shrugs. “If it comes down to a showdown and you plan to lose, orphan, then I guess that makes me the automatic winner, does it not?” He smiles good-naturedly like we’re talking about a game of chess and not a life-or-death mission through the Minotaur Maze.
“I guess it does,” I reply, but if it comes to a showdown with the monster, Gregor is the first one I’m pushing.
We come to our first turn and Gregor lets me make it ahead of him. I go slowly and poke my head around the corner. A torch is inset into the hedge wall casting a wide swath of flickering orange light. No monster to be seen.
We make a few more turns going deeper and deeper into the maze. The torches aren’t consistent and sometimes all we have to go on is the faint light of the moon. The walls are too tall and the maze too deep for the moon to penetrate all the hedges’ shadows.
After another left turn, we come to a dead-end.
“Looks like we need to turn around,” I say. But when we make the next turn—the only turn—we come to another dead-end.
“Fuck,” Gregor says. “It’s a shifting maze. Fucking hell.”
“We’re boxed in?” I run my hand along the hedge wall looking for a trap door or a hidden opening. I find nothing. “This can’t be right. How are we supposed to get out?”
A roar echoes through the maze. The hedges tremble as if they too fear it.
“Well, look at the bright side,” Gregor says, “at least in a hedge box, we’re safe from whatever that is.”
Someone screams.
Shouting follows.
Haven.
My heart starts thumping wildly in my chest.
“Looks like I picked right by you, orphan.” Gregor folds his arms over his chest and manages to look pleased with himself while our fellow descendants are maimed somewhere beyond this wall.
“You’re disgusting,” I say and continue poking at the walls.
“It’s about time the Knightfall dynasty fell.”
Another scream echoes through the maze and panic washes through me. I feel an all-consuming need to go. To fight my way through the maze and find Haven and—
My hands tremble at my sides. Heat builds in my gut and flows through my arms and down to my fingers.
“What’s going on with your hands?” Gregor asks.
When I bring them up in front of my face, I realize they’re glowing again.
And that’s when it clicks.
Part of Hades’s second gift was meant to be used in the shifting maze.
Gods, could I be any more dense?
Now I just have to hold on to the power long enough to get myself through the maze.
I put my hands to the hedge row and the leaves curl in on themselves, but this time, instead of burning to a crisp like the floor in my room, the leaves shrink to buds and then disappear entirely. The branches pull back like...like they’re ungrowing themselves.
“Whoa,” Gregor says.
When there’s a hole taller than me, I step through to the other side.
<
br /> Behind me, footsteps pound at the earth. I turn just in time to see a minotaur come crashing through the other row. It captures Gregor in the wide span of its bristly, muscular arms and then bites into Gregor’s shoulder with its sharp incisors.
Blood spurts from the wound and splatters across Gregor’s face. He screams and thrashes.
Unthinking, I move to chase after him, but the hedge grows in on itself and no matter how much I lash at the branches, I can’t penetrate them.
“Gregor!” I shout.
I hear the unfamiliar but unmistakable sound of bones snapping beneath the maw of sharp teeth.
Oh gods.
My stomach sours. I clamp my hand over my mouth to silence my breathing and to keep the contents of my stomach from coming up.
The hedge trembles as the hoof beats grow closer. The minotaur snuffles and the branches crack as the minotaur’s massive hands reach through.
I think it can smell me. If I stand here frozen any longer it’ll soon see me too.
What a tasty meal I would make.
I turn and run.
Chapter 32
I follow every turn of the path, wending back and forth as the minotaur crashes through the rows behind me like they’re made of paper.
Panic flutters in my throat. I can’t seem to catch my breath.
I don’t want to lose this trial.
I don’t want to be eaten!
I stumble into a wide opening and look around.
There’s a fountain in the center. A shield with medusa’s head on it is erected in the middle. Her snake hair stands off the shield’s perimeter and water sprays from their open mouths. Stones are set in the ground in a cross-hatch pattern and there’s a torch at four other hedge openings.
I must be in the center of the maze.
I have only enough time to take in that fact—that I’ve made it halfway—when the minotaur crashes through the other corner.
I bite back a shriek and turn—
And slam right into Haven.
There’s blood running down the side of his face. His eye is black and swollen, his lip split and bleeding.
He clamps his hand over my mouth and yanks me into the fountain. His other arm wraps around my waist and he draws me tight into him.
“Shhhh,” he says at my ear, his warning nothing more than a whisper of breath.
The minotaur stalks around the maze center, snuffling at the air.
Water sprays around us and my hair sticks to my neck.
The minotaur comes around the fountain and stops two feet from us. It’s yellow eyes flash in the firelight as it tests the air for our scent again.
What’s happening? How does it not see us?
For a stupid minute, I think it must be blind to water and then I realize—
Haven is casting an illusion and shielding us from the minotaur’s vision.
I didn’t know he could do that.
I didn’t even know it was a possibility. I thought his power created an illusion of fear.
But suddenly I’m grateful for it as my heart pounds in my ears and my breath flutters uselessly in my throat.
The minotaur turns to us. Haven tightens his hold on me.
I hold my breath, eyes wide as the minotaur looks right at me down the long, curved angle of his snout. It’s mouth parts, its teeth gleaming in the moonlight. There’s still blood on his incisors and painted on his whiskers.
Don’t breathe.
Don’t move.
Don’t do anything.
The water trickles down my back and down my spine.
I can hear nothing over the rapid beat of my own heart.
The minotaur turns and stalks away.
When it’s gone back into the maze, Haven lets me go and I double over to suck in a breath. I’m soaking wet and shaking all over.
“Thank you,” I croak.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He climbs over the fountain’s ledge and shakes the water from his hair. When he’s satisfied, he slicks it back with a rake of his fingers. Some of the blood has washed from his face, but a cut just above his colorless eye is still weeping red. “Where’s Gregor?”
I must pale at the mention of his name, because Haven just nods and looks away.
“What about the others?” I ask.
“Same Fate,” he says. “You and I are all that remain.”
How can that be?
How can I be the last one standing with Haven Knightfall?
Hestia’s words come to mind: I suspect your future will be worthy of an epic ballad and I look forward to the day that I’ll hear it sung.
But I don’t know how to be that person she thinks I’m destined to be. I don’t know how to be epic or heroic or strong or any of the other adjectives that describe an elite member of Hades’s House.
And Hades has yet to admit I’m his daughter. That the mortal woman he impregnated was so unenthused about bearing his child that she dumped the baby in a garden.
The minotaur howls with frustration several rows away.
“We need to keep moving,” Haven says. “I came from the north. You came from the east, yeah?”
“I think so.”
“Then let’s go west.” He nods at the entrance just beyond the Medusa fountain. “We’ve made it halfway. We can make it the rest if we stick together.”
I look at him in the firelight trying to decipher what’s going through his head. One minute he seems to detest me and the next he seems willing to do anything to save me.
“Why are you helping me?” I ask. “You hate me.”
“You want to have this conversation now?”
The minotaur roars, but the sound is much farther away.
Haven sighs and looks to the west to the full moon hanging heavy in the sky. “I don’t hate you, Ana,” he says. “I hate what you are.”
I snort. “And what’s that? A girl? An orphan? A nobody?”
He shakes his head. “You’re free. Free to choose your own fate.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m literally standing here right now because the Fates chose me.”
“And yet who governs the decisions you make? If you choose to strike, there is no one to tell you otherwise. If you choose to sacrifice yourself, there will be no one to get on your case for making that decision. You are your own person, your destiny is totally up to you.”
He takes a step toward me. The torch snaps as the wind shifts.
The dancing light finds his good eye and turns it golden.
“And beyond that,” he adds, “you are irreproachable.”
Faultless. Free from defect.
Never in my wild, wandering daydreams did I ever think Haven Knightfall would be standing here in a Minotaur Labyrinth telling me that he envies me.
I don’t think he’s admitting that I’m better in all ways, just this one. The one that matters. Because I’d rather be good than powerful.
And maybe that’s what he means.
He comes from darkness. He was raised on cruelty and ambition and war and death.
I come from the light, even if not by blood.
And he’s right—there’s no one to tell me what to do.
And there’s a glorious freedom in that.
It’s as if the chains snap then.
Chains I now realize I’d locked on myself.
I had thought I was stuck at Hestia’s house, an abandoned descendant with a mother and father that never wanted her. But instead they cleared the path for me and gave me a choice.
I could be whoever I wanted to be.
I could find my own place in the world. A place to belong.
And for some crazy, insane reason, the only place I want to be right now is by Haven’s side.
I want to fight through this maze with him and emerge on the other side victorious.
That won’t be the end of our story. Or the end of our rivalry. There’s still one more trial to get through. But for now I’ll take that, for however much longer I can have it.
Haven seems to think this the same time I do because he catches me in his grip and presses a kiss to my mouth. He tastes like the fountain water, like crisp, deep, dark earth.
“This is no time for kissing,” I say when I pull back. But I know there’s a blush on my face.
I want him to keep kissing me. I want to tear his clothes off and drink in the sight of him.
But I can’t have that until I finish this trial. Until we finish it.
“There’s always time for kissing,” he says at my mouth and then steals another from my lips.
“Go.” I shove him toward the west entrance.
He stumbles forward, smiling.
And that’s when we realize we aren’t alone in the maze center.
Two dark figures stand at the hedge wall with a pack of snarling dogs at their feet.
Chapter 33
The figures make no move to attack.
The dogs—six of them in all—are hunched, teeth bared at us.
At first I think they’re no different than the strays that wander in the city or the house pets that protect the farmers’ livestock. They’re the size and shape of regular dogs, but when I take a closer look, I realize they aren’t entirely solid.
There’s a mist that trails off of them like they’re made of smoke and when they shift, their bodies are a blur that takes another second to re-congeal.
But their fangs...those look very, very real.
“Divide,” Haven says to me.
“What?” I ask too late.
He’s already halfway across the maze center on the other side of the fountain.
Three of the dogs lock onto him and their eyes glow red.
The figure closest to Haven steps forward into the firelight.
And I realize it too has no shape.
It’s a ghost made of charred smoke with hollow holes where its eyes and mouth should be.
I don’t know what these creatures are, but something tells me if they attack, it’ll be a very, very bad thing.
I slowly skirt the fountain unsure of what Haven expects of me now that I’m following his battle plan. I get what he’s trying to do—divide and conquer—but I have no weapon and even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to use it.
Hades Descendants (The Games of the Gods Book 1) Page 15