It made sense now why Hailey hadn’t run into them on her way out: Aaron and the others had run off the path when the birds had bombarded them.
‘I can’t believe Stymphalian birds attacked you.’ Alec plopped down in front of Aaron. ‘How did they attack? In pairs? Or as a group? Did you save any of the daggers?’
Aaron chucked a handful of sand at Alec’s stomach. ‘Not now, Alec. I’m too tired to answer your questions. And I want to hear what happened to them.’ He looked pointedly at Hailey, Demi, and Jayden.
‘Our story totally trumps yours,’ Demi said with a boastful smile. She launched into the details about their sleepover in the forest, telling him and Alec about their encounter with the dryads, naiads, and knoxen before jumping to their battle with the griffin.
Alec’s eyes were wide again. ‘Dryads and naiads. I can’t believe I missed all of that. Although I’m glad I wasn’t there for the knoxen. Did you know they kill by lying on their victims and crushing them—and that’s after they’ve given them a few good gashes with their claws.’
‘I wish you hadn’t told me that.’ Hailey shuddered at the thought of her bones shattering under the weight of the terrifying monster she’d barely survived last night.
‘I know how to get us home,’ Kendra announced.
‘How?’ Jayden asked.
‘The sea-horses know how to find the palace.’
‘What’s everyone waiting for?’ Demi said incredulously. ‘Let’s get the horses.’
Hailey and her friends mounted the horses, eager to get the Tartarus off the island before something else tried to kill them. She didn’t bother looking back as the horses trotted into the sea. She never wanted to see this place again—or any other island, for that matter.
‘They’re about to dive,’ Kendra warned.
Hailey tensed. She hadn’t thought about the obvious fact that the horses would have to go under the water to get to the palace. She remembered Madam Grayson telling them the horses had the power to feed their riders oxygen underwater. But instinct told her that was impossible, which is why she took a great big gulping breath of air when her horse dove.
Hailey squinted when she went under, expecting the water to sting her eyes, but they felt fine. She opened them and was amazed to find she could see perfectly.
The first thing she noticed was that her horse had grown gills. The next thing was that she was dry. Hailey frowned down at her hands; the surrounding water was being repelled from her skin, like there was a magnetic field around her pushing the water back.
Her lungs burned, reminding her she was running out of air. Tentatively, she took a tiny breath. When no water rushed into her mouth, she took a bigger one, inhaling the salty air, which dispelled the burning in her chest. She took a few more cautious breaths before accepting she now had the ability to breathe underwater—at least while she was on the sea-horse—and took notice of her surroundings.
The sea was empty, more or less. There were no kaleidoscopic reefs, and only a few fish swam about, but they were the average kind that people preferred to eat rather than look at. The lack of sea-life made Hailey feel as though the sea-creatures had abandoned this area.
Instinctively, she glanced down, where an impenetrable blackness lurked a hundred feet beneath her. She shivered and clung more tightly to her horse’s scaly neck as she imagined the sea-monster from her nightmares bursting from the darkness to eat her. After everything she’d been through, the last thing she wanted to do was take on another monster, especially in the sea where she could easily drown if it dragged her from her horse’s back.
‘Look!’
Demi’s voice was perfectly audible under the water, and it broke Hailey from her sudden rush of fear. She loosened her grip on the horse’s neck and straightened. A smile broke over her face when the palace came into view. As soon as they made it to the grounds, Hailey knew they’d be safe.
Of course she also knew expulsion waited for her when she got back. It was doubtful no one had noticed them, or the sea-horses, missing, considering how long they’d been gone. Her mum would be so angry with her when she got sent back home. She wouldn’t be surprised if she decided to home-school her as punishment for messing up so badly.
As they neared the palace, Hailey expected to see a ring of teachers—and maybe the seniors—circling the grounds, waiting for them to return so they wouldn’t have to send out a search party.
But the grounds were deserted.
They’re probably waiting for us in the stable, Hailey thought.
But the stable was empty too.
‘I thought someone would’ve been waiting for us in here,’ Hailey said, sliding from her horse. She peered in the stalls, thinking maybe whoever was supposed to be waiting for them to return to the crime scene had fallen asleep.
‘Me too,’ Jayden said, frowning.
‘I guess we got away with it,’ Demi chimed, hugging the gold chest she’d stolen under her arm.
‘I better heal everyone’s injuries before we leave the stable,’ Kora suggested. ‘I think bleeding stomach wounds and claw-marked skin might be a little hard to explain to Madam Mendem.’
‘You don’t have to worry about healing me,’ Kendra said. ‘I have to admit to going to the island.’
Demi looked at her as if she’d just said she was going for a swim with sea-serpents. ‘Why?’
Kendra inclined her head to Rain, who nibbled on a piece of seaweed at her feet. ‘Because I think the sudden appearance of a pegacorn living in Poseidon’s stable might strike someone as suspicious.’ She saw the anxious look everyone gave her. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t mention you guys.’
‘You don’t have to go alone,’ Hailey told her, scratching her horse between the ears as it nudged her with its head. ‘I can come with you. I was the one who decided to go after you.’ Hailey didn’t want to get expelled, if she could avoid it, but she couldn’t let Kendra take all the blame. It had been her idea to recruit her friends for a deadly mission rather than tell a teacher, after all.
‘No, Hailey. You’re not getting in trouble for what I did. If I’d listened to you when you’d told me not to go, you wouldn’t have had to come after me. This was all my fault. Just promise me you’ll take care of Rain when I’m gone.’
The obstinate look on Kendra’s face told Hailey continuing to argue was pointless—and she really, really, didn’t want to get expelled. ‘Of course I’ll take care of her.’
Kora got to work on healing Jayden, Aaron, and Tahlia—and she even convinced Kendra to let her heal her stomach and head wound. Meanwhile, Hailey, Demi, and Alec put away the horses. It still seemed too fortunate to Hailey that they and the horses hadn’t been missed, but what other explanation was there for why no search party had come after them? Or why no one had been waiting to bombard them when they’d returned?
Blue skies, Hailey thought, just as someone said, ‘I thought I heard voices.’
19
The Chest
Every hope Hailey had had of not getting expelled vanished.
Amathia loomed in the doorway, surveying each of them. Hailey tensed when her eyes shifted to her, expecting to find anger and reproach in them, but they shone with her usual warmness. She’s probably waiting to get angry after she makes sure none of us are bleeding to death, Hailey thought.
‘I see we have a new addition to the palace,’ Amathia remarked, reaching down to pet Rain before focusing her attention back on the eight of them. ‘I’m interested to hear where you’ve been.’ She glanced at Kora, who was covered in dried and oozing blood from the various wounds she’d absorbed. ‘It was noble of you to heal your friends, Kora, but I think you have expended your powers enough for one day. Please go to the healing wing and let Madam Mendem take the injuries from you. Tahlia and Jayden, would you please assist her there. Everyone else, come with me.’
Amathia gracefully pivoted and left the stable.
Hailey shared an apprehensive glance with her friends before stalk
ing after her. She sighed as they trudged down the hallway. This would be the last time she walked through the palace. After telling her she was expelled, Amathia would probably send her to her dorm to pack her things before giving her a travelling necklace and telling her to get out.
Amathia steered them into her classroom, where she settled behind her desk as the five of them slumped into chairs in front of her. Amathia leaned forward. ‘I must admit, I was unaware of your absence until the early hours of this morning. I pride myself on knowing the happenings within the palace—especially the ones students don’t want me knowing about—but I had an urgent matter to address yesterday, which distracted me from noticing your disappearance. For that I apologise. You should not have had to endure a night away from the palace. A rescue team should have been sent for you.’
Hailey’s jaw dropped. Did Amathia just apologise?
‘I know you are all fatigued, but it’s important you tell me about where you have been for the past day. Who wishes to begin?’
‘It all started with me,’ Kendra said, giving Amathia a detailed explanation of everything that had happened, with Hailey and her friends telling their side of things once Kendra was finished.
Amathia didn’t interrupt; she merely nodded thoughtfully as they spoke. She straightened in her chair when they finished. ‘It appears you have all partaken in an epic adventure worthy of Homer. With that said, you should consider yourselves extremely fortunate to have survived the island.’ Amathia paused, which served to increase the building tension in the room as she prepared to pass her verdict on them. ‘I ask you never to do anything so foolish again while you’re under my care here.’
Hailey gaped. Amathia wasn’t kicking them out?
‘You’re not expelling us?’ Demi dared to ask.
‘How could I expel you for nobly risking your lives to save a friend? Yes, it was unwise to pursue Kendra instead of informing me or another teacher, but your intentions were good. And as for you, Kendra, I can understand why you felt the need to leave. I will make sure my sisters and I ride the hippocampi more so they don’t feel trapped. Although it does concern me why you didn’t think to speak with me about your concerns prior to endangering your life.’
‘Because I didn’t think you would let me go.’
‘If you’d explained your feelings to me, I would have accompanied you—along with Madam Grayson.’
Kendra’s features tightened with guilt, and she dropped her head. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again.’
Hailey couldn’t believe they were actually getting away with what they’d done. She thought it was safe enough to ask the question that had been bugging her since that morning. ‘Amathia, why did the palace go underwater a day before it was supposed to?’
A flicker of anger crossed Amathia’s face. ‘That was the incident that distracted me from your disappearance. My sisters are displeased with the arrangement of the palace rising once a week, so they took it upon themselves to descend it.’
‘Oh,’ Hailey replied, not knowing what else to say. Truthfully, she shouldn’t have been surprised, considering how spiteful the nereids were, but them being responsible for marooning Hailey and her friends on the island had never crossed her mind.
‘I assure you it will not happen again. And I hope you leaving the palace’s grounds without permission will never happen again either.’
‘I promise,’ Hailey said, and so did everyone else.
Amathia rewarded them with one of her warm smiles. ‘I’m pleased to hear that. Unfortunately, you must report to your overseer now, and I warn you, Madam Grayson is most displeased.’
* * *
Hailey was blissfully sleeping when someone shook her. She dragged her eyes open, finding Aaron staring down at her. ‘Time to get up.’
She grudgingly sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘I’ve only been asleep for a minute.’
He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Actually, it’s the late afternoon.’
Hailey glanced at the clock; it was 5.10. She’d been asleep for nine hours! ‘I didn’t real—hey, what are you doing in here? Madam Grayson is angry enough with us. She’ll kill you if she finds you in the girls’ dorms.’
Madam Grayson had been as angry as a ravenous hydra when they’d reported to her in the common room. She’d given them a huge lecture about how irresponsible they’d been, and how they were lucky to be alive. They’d gotten detention for a week, and neutralising bracelets to wear for an entire month.
‘We wanted to open the chest with you.’ Aaron held up the gold chest Demi had pilfered from the griffin’s nest. Thankfully, Demi had put it down when she’d been leading the sea-horses back to their stalls, so Amathia hadn’t seen it. ‘But if you’re not interested…’
‘No, we’re interested,’ the words came from Demi, who’d been fighting off Jayden’s attempts to drag her out of bed.
Aaron smirked and set the chest on the empty floor between Hailey and Demi’s desks; everyone gathered around it.
‘So whose idea was the reconnaissance mission?’ Hailey asked. She was surprised the boys had risked getting caught to go back for it.
‘Believe it or not, it was Alec’s,’ Aaron said.
‘Alec?’ Hailey and Demi said at the same time. He was the last person Hailey would have guessed. If anything, she would have expected him to tell Madam Grayson about it to avoid getting into any more trouble.
‘Of course I wanted to go back for it.’ Alec’s voracious eyes locked on to the chest as he spoke. ‘This chest was important enough to put in a griffin’s nest, which means there’s something very valuable inside, and I want to know what it is.’ He reached for the antique key sitting in the lock, a tiny click sounding as he twisted it.
With slightly shaking hands, he opened the lid, everyone leaning forward to see what wonders lay inside.
Hailey expected to see a pile of gold coins and maybe a few pearl necklaces—treasure, basically, considering they’d found the chest in a trove of riches. But what looked like a scroll was tucked inside. A treasure map perhaps?
Alec delicately picked up the scroll and untied the string binding it with the precision of someone deactivating a bomb. As the string came loose, something slipped from inside the parchment.
Something that made everyone gasp.
‘Is that a… a…’ Aaron began, but he couldn’t finish his sentence.
Hailey understood how he felt. She could have been given a hundred guesses about what was inside the chest, and she never would have come up with what was lying on the floor.
It looked a bit like a stick, being long and slender, but was made of black onyx. Its slightly pointed tip gleamed with the milky white and blue colours of a moonstone. Hailey picked it up, tracing her fingers over the gold symbols engraved on the polished stone. The symbols were all the same: a circle surrounding a labyrinth-like pattern that had a six-pointed spiral in its centre. Hailey recognised it as the strophalos—Hecate’s wheel—which confirmed her guess about what the object was.
‘It’s a wand.’
No one said anything to contradict Hailey. Everyone just stared at the object like its existence was impossible. And, in a way, it was. Wands were rarer than rare. Hecate was the only god who could make them. It was said she’d only created three: one for herself, one for Hermes, and one for humankind.
As Hecate and Hermes would have died with their wands at Olympus, this wand had to be the latter. No one knew what had happened to the one Hecate had made for humankind. Legends had whispered about how certain people, such as Perseus and Alexander the Great, had gotten their hands on it and used it for their own means. But they were only legends. In truth, no one had ever seen the wand.
Until now.
‘What’s on the paper?’ Demi broke the silence.
Alec looked surprised to find the scroll in his hand, but he quickly recovered and unfurled it. ‘It says… be the peril past, the spell be uncast. Slumber no more, your powers I restore… Whoa!’ Alec dropped the
scroll. ‘The words just changed to Goldarin.’
A woman’s voice echoed around the dorm chanting, ‘Nat kiat zatokav znaek, kiat ezatvv nat utrsnaek. Evutwnato rda wdaoat, mdauto zdauatoe ka oatekdaoat.’
A pulse shot through the wand, and Hailey dropped it in surprise. The strophalos symbols and moonstone glowed, and the wand shuddered, firing tremors through the floor.
The vibrations suddenly stopped, and the glowing symbols vanished. As they disappeared, one formed on the wand’s moonstone tip.
‘What in Tartarus was that?!’ Aaron exclaimed.
Alec gulped. ‘I think I just read a spell.’
20
The Wand
‘A spell!’ Aaron practically shouted. ‘What kind of spell? And where did that voice come from?’
Alec hesitated. ‘It sounded like an awakening spell. I’m not sure about the voice.’
‘Who was it supposed to awaken?’ Demi’s eyes darted around the room. ‘Please don’t tell me it was the gods.’
‘The gods are dead,’ Jayden said indubitably.
‘But the prophecy says they’ll return,’ Demi countered. ‘What if we’re the ones who reawaken them?’
Hailey’s head spun, and her throat turned dry. No, they couldn’t have woken up the gods. They’re dead, like Jayden said. But what if they can come back? What if they left behind the spell and wand as a way to resurrect themselves?
Alec set the scroll on the ground, beside the wand. ‘I didn’t wake up the gods, Demi,’ he said in a slow even tone. ‘Not even a wand can bring them back from death.’
‘Then who was it for?’ Hailey demanded, desperate to hear they hadn’t just condemned the world to some unthinkable evil that everyone would look to her—the Zeus—to destroy.
Alec considered the question, glancing from the spell to the wand. His whole body relaxed as he realised something. ‘The wand must’ve been put to sleep or something, that’s why it was covered in Hecate’s symbol. The spell was written to awaken its power, which is why the symbols glowed and disappeared. And the voice was probably pre-programmed into it for when someone read the spell, because the wand must only respond to Goldarin.’
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