by Diana Tyler
Chloe stopped fiddling and started pressing down her cuticles instead.
“Hermes?” Ethan asked.
Iris nodded.
Chloe’s eyes darted to Ethan. “I thought Hermes was on our side.”
“In the future he’s on our side,” said Ethan, “but until yesterday he was still as evil as they come.”
The Centaur grunted as he picked at his teeth with a twig. “Everyone becomes sensible in the future, eh?”
Artemis trotted down the lane and stood slobbering beside Chloe. “Everyone but the people in charge,” Chloe said, scratching the dog’s chin.
“Who’s in charge?” Charis asked. “The Alphas?”
Ethan knew only a little about the Alphas. His mom had told him that according to the scrolls she’d found, the Alphas comprised one of two religious groups. They worshipped the mythical gods and goddesses, while the other group, the Eusebians, bowed only to Duna. His mother never could find out what had happened to them.
In modern Petros, religion didn’t exist at all. The Fantásmata only paid homage to what they referred to as “the unknown god,” and that was just once a year during the Lycaea Festival. Ethan couldn’t help but wonder what was really behind that festival anyway. Now that he knew the truth about coronations, he had no reason to believe Lycaea was the lighthearted holiday everyone thought it was.
“The Fantásmata,” Chloe answered. “Phantoms.” She looked up at Ethan as the Petrodian translation unfolded in their ears, thanks to Carya’s spell. “Makes perfect sense. We never see them and know nothing about them, other than that they’re sadistic liars who love control and despise Ashers.”
Iris ran her fingers along her new auburn braid and closed her eyes, as if trying to retrieve something from her memory. “Do the Fantásmata ever speak of Apollo?” Tycho laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “Diokles, the wicked leader I once followed…” Her voice trailed off as her thoughts traveled back in time. “He secretly served Apollo. With his dying breath, he told me it wasn’t over.”
“That’s all he said?” Ethan asked, as a cloud settled over the sun.
Iris nodded. “He was gone after that. I waited for years, expecting another Apollonian leader to rise and take his place, but to this day no one has. On the contrary, we’ve enjoyed decades of peace for the first time in ages. Until Mania.”
“I suppose when you have eternity to work with, it’s easy to bide your time,” said Chloe.
“And then I was given this.” Iris turned to a small, linen-wrapped bundle beside her and picked it up. She only had to unfold a corner of it for Ethan to recognize what it was.
“An amber scroll?” He felt the strangest sense of déjà vu as he remembered standing in the lower gallery at the museum, staring at another of Iris’s ancient scrolls. Now he was here, in her presence, about to be shown not just any scroll but an amber tablet, a sacred oracle.
“You know of the oracles?” Tycho asked, setting his spear aside.
“My mother was an archaeologist.” When Ethan saw Charis tilt her head sideways in confusion, he repeated, “Archaeologist. It’s someone who digs up old artifacts from the past to learn about history.”
Charis gave a bashful nod. “I see. Has she found very many?”
“She’s found two. The Fantásmata confiscated one, and shortly after that they stopped all excavations.”
“And the second one?” Chloe asked.
“She kept it. She showed it to Damian, Katsaros and me. It was burnt to a crisp on the outside. It’s a miracle it was still intact.”
The Centaur pointed to himself with the twig. “Katsaros…you mean me? The civilized, congenial, future me?”
“Yes,” replied Ethan. “You translated it for us. It was a poem about the Moonbow.”
Iris gazed up at the last patch of blue in the overcast sky. “It truly was a miracle. Those scrolls are housed in the temple in Eirene. If Chloe really did glimpse the future, and I believe she did, Mania plans to destroy every last relic and oracle.” She unwrapped the amber scroll and hugged it to her chest. “Thank Duna she will not succeed.”
“But she did succeed,” said Chloe, so abruptly that Artemis jumped and scampered over to Ethan, her hind end bumping into a stationary wagon filled with bushels of barley. “No one, except for me, my brother and Ethan even knows about the Alphas and Eusebians, let alone Duna and the reality of heaven and Hades. If that’s not success, I don’t know what is.”
“You said it yourself,” said Charis. “When you have eternity to work with, it’s easy to bide your time. Maybe Duna has been biding his. He knew the oracle of the Vessels would come to pass.”
“She’s right,” Tycho said, placing a hand on his daughter’s arm. “But I know what you’re thinking. Why did Duna allow Mania to conquer Petros in the first place?”
“It’s a reasonable question,” Chloe said, as if defending herself before an Enochos jury.
Ethan couldn’t help but smile. Chloe had more of Damian’s fire in her than he’d thought.
“I agree,” said Tycho. “And it’s a question all of us ask at one time or another. But we must realize that while Duna could stop evil before its roots take hold, he doesn’t.”
Ethan felt a fire of his own igniting deep within him. “Why doesn’t he, if he has total power? The coronations would never have happened.” He looked at Chloe, his heart breaking for her again as he considered, just for an instant, all she’d been through. “Chloe would never have been deceived by some dead poet and led to hell.”
“Our parents would never have died.” Letting her hair fall in front of her face, Chloe leaned forward onto her elbows and traced lines in the ground with her finger.
“If Duna intervened in the ways you wish him to, he’d be no better than the phantoms that control Petros in your time,” said Iris. “He would have followers who fear him but do not love him. Millions of Petrodians aligned beneath his aegis because of force and not volition. That sort of loyalty is artificial. You two should know that better than anyone.”
Ethan and Chloe sat silently.
Ethan couldn’t argue with Iris’s logic, but neither could he shake the anger still hooking its claws into his mind, infecting his thoughts with an animosity he knew perfectly well was anything but constructive. But in his opinion, his feelings were defensible, and every part of him was busy justifying his embitterment while the future of his world still languished in uncertainty. He needed rationality to return. He needed to numb his emotions, but he didn’t know how. In his time, doctors had drugs for emotional imbalance. Here, he was on his own, helpless and paralyzed, like he was pinned to the bottom of a rushing river but unable to fully drown.
This is grief, he thought. This is what it feels like to lose everything.
Chloe stood up and started back toward the tent.
“Where are you going?” Ethan asked.
She took an elastic from her wrist and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “To change out of this stupid robe.”
“I hope you’re not thinking of going after your brother,” called the Centaur.
Iris held up a shushing hand. “It’s as it should be.” She looked down at the amber tablet and cleared her throat. “Listen.”
Ethan caught himself leaning forward, desperate to hear something—anything—that would divert his mind from its self-pity. He saw Chloe’s feet beside him and chuckled at the hot-pink toenails poking out of her sandals. She had been to hell and back, and back to the ancient past, all with neon polish on her toes.
“‘This oracle was delivered to me by Carya, apostle of Duna, on the twelfth day of Thargelion in the four thousandth year since the War of Heaven,’” Iris read. “‘I received the oracle on the day Alexa was killed…’”—she paused, her voice cracking with emotion—“‘during the festival of Therismos by a woman who introduced herself as Alexa’s niece. The woman demanded that Alexa escort her to our home, but when Alexa refused, the murderess called forth lightning. A perfume m
erchant in a nearby booth watched Alexa fall.’”
“Mania,” said Chloe.
Iris nodded and looked up from the tablet. “Carya had warned us of Diokles’ daughter Leto months before. She informed us that she was a powerful Asher whose mind had been polluted with lies from the Underworld. All of us,” she said, indicating her family and the Centaur, “swore to one another we would be wary of any maiden we suspected might be her.”
“Alexa was the bravest among us,” said the Centaur, his own gravelly voice broken by grief.
Ethan remembered his mother giving him what scant information she knew of Alexa from the scroll fragments she’d been allowed to keep. Iris had met the young girl outside a tanner’s house while the latter was running from the Centaur after stealing his sword. Alexa’s brother, Diokles, had led the rebel Eusebian army, employing terror and fear to try and overthrow their Alpha oppressors. Iris had nearly been corrupted by him, as had her aunt Corinna, an Asher whose doma could change her into a gryphon. Yet another myth that was all too terribly true.
“How could Alexa be Leto’s aunt?” Ethan asked. “Diokles didn’t have a wife, did he?”
Iris’s eyes returned to the tablet and continued reading. “‘After obsequies were conducted and Alexa’s body interred, Carya appeared to me in the cemetery. Everyone had retired for the evening, except for me. She handed me this parchment, along with a reed, and told me to record these words:
Knowing well that his reign would not last, Diokles made Corinna his wife,
In secret they wed and in secret conceived the object of your future strife.
The infant lay hidden in the dark desert caves and was nursed by her mother at night,
Swords were her toys in her formative years, and swiftly she learned how to fight.
Power she thirsts for, dominion she craves, and every Asher to her is a threat.
She will succeed in subduing every inch of the world, and truth all the world will forget.
Her fury will erupt from her fists like thunder—behind a wall built by prayer you’ll dwell,
Meanwhile, unbelievers shall be deceived by this malevolent coup of hell.
Your devout generation will fade, die away, leaving only the oracles behind,
But these too shall perish, in time or in fire, and every soul will walk through life blind.
Iris, don’t cry; though all hope seems lost, Duna’s faithfulness will always remain.
A Vessel will rise when the Moonbow returns, then you shall revisit these divine words again.’”
“Well, that’s heavy,” said Chloe with a flippant laugh. “So what makes you so sure I’m the Vessel? And what does ‘Vessel’ even mean?”
“You and your brother are the Vessel,” Iris said.
“Pardon me, Miss Chloe,” said the Centaur. “You and Damian dropped out of the sky with your friend here while the rest of us were running for our lives. Turns out you’re both Ashers who have suffered a great deal and want to see your world set right.” He stopped chewing on the twig and flicked it onto the ground. “On top of that, you’ve arrived at a time when we could use your help the most. If that’s not an act of God, please, call me a nitwit and tell me what is.”
Chloe’s mouth puckered and twisted as she ruminated on this.
“He’s right, Chloe,” Ethan said. “You’re a Vessel because you carry the possibility of hope for Petros. This Petros, and ours.”
Ethan felt his mind becoming his own again as the claws inside it loosened. Even though he had neither a superpower to offer nor a shred of esoteric knowledge to share, he refused to turn to mush and let his emotions fester. There was a reason he’d narrowly escaped death at the Religious Council building. There was a reason he’d been allowed to follow Chloe through the portal. And there was a reason he’d been the one to learn of Chloe’s gifted family in the first place. He could only trust he’d find out eventually what that reason was.
“I can’t do anything without Damian,” said Chloe. “He’s our only way of getting close to Mania undetected.”
Ethan looked down at his watch, but it was dead; the trip through time had apparently done it in. “How long has he been gone, by the way? Doesn’t his doma wear off after three hours?”
Chloe spun on her heel and stomped toward her tent. “I’m changing clothes and going after my brother,” she yelled at the Centaur over her shoulder. “Do I have your permission?”
The Centaur nodded. “Aye. And my sincerest prayers.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CAVE ONE
Chloe, we have to be strategic about this,” said Ethan from the doorway of her tent.
She sighed as she laced up her tennis shoes and rolled her mud-caked jeans up to her ankles. “I knew it was a just matter of time before you said something like that.”
“Why did you think that?”
Chloe stood up and reached for the food-filled hidesack Iris had placed on the settle, then slung it across her body. “I might not know you that well, but I had a lot of time to think while I was in hell.”
“And?” Ethan ran his hand along the strap of his baldric and fingered the haft of the short sword Tycho had given him.
There was something about a man with a sword that made him fifty times more handsome—at least in Chloe’s opinion. She wondered if the robe she’d been wearing made her any prettier. Too late for her to change back into it now: Artemis had found it in a heap on the floor and was currently using it as a dog bed.
“And,” she said, regathering her thoughts, “I couldn’t help but think that the reason you invited me to the museum on my birthday was because you knew something was about to happen to me. Or was it just a coincidence that Carya appeared in the backseat of my car as I was leaving?”
Ethan laughed. “She did?”
“Oh, yeah. She gave me an enchanted walnut. Did you know her name means ‘walnut’? I ate it later and it took me back to the past for the first time. Well, technically the first time was earlier that day, but I thought I was just dreaming.”
Chloe stopped herself. She was talking too fast again and slurring her words. Suddenly she felt the urge to reach into the hidesack and devour the first thing she grabbed. She wanted to binge. Why was Ethan making her so nervous? There wasn’t time to stress-eat over a boy!
Ethan gripped the sword and exhaled a long breath through his nose as he gazed out through the tent flaps. Arrayed in a tunic, cloak, girdle and funny boots, Chloe thought he looked like a proper warrior. He may not have known how to use his sword, but at least he looked the part.
“I wanted to say something,” he said at last. “At the museum…in the cafeteria…I was just too scared, plain and simple.” He turned back to her, his jade eyes sorry and sincere. “When you invited me to Astrolux for coffee, I made up my mind then that I would tell you everything I knew.”
“Orpheus said you left when you saw the crowd outside the café.”
Ethan shook his head slowly. “No…I left when I saw you with him.”
“What? Why?”
Ethan shrugged and toed the dirt floor with his boot. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to interrupt your date.”
“You know it was far from a date.”
“I know that now.”
“Well, like I told you earlier about Damian, the past is in the past. Whatever you could’ve, should’ve or would’ve done is irrelevant now, right?” Ethan had just lost his parents. She knew the last thing he needed was to be guilt-tripped about his failure to come clean when he’d had the chance.
“I’m not so sure.” Ethan scratched his neck and then lightly rubbed his forearm. “You see this?” He pointed to a faint ring of scars just below his elbow.
A line of chills, like icy ants, raced down Chloe’s back. “They almost look like teeth marks,” she said. It didn’t make sense, though. All the dogs the Petrodians were allowed to keep as pets were tiny. If an animal had done this to Ethan, it couldn’t have been a small one.
&nb
sp; “It was a wolf. Happened when I was ten.”
Ethan didn’t have to continue. Chloe shuddered. Ten was how old she’d been when her parents died, when they were murdered by the councilman because her father was an Asher. But how were the incidents connected?
“What in Zeus’ name was a wolf doing loose in Eirene?” It was a preposterous notion; all carnivorous animals were contained in preserves and zoos.
“I’ve been trying to figure that out for the last eight years.” He paused and turned toward the doorway, as if pondering whether to leave. “I think…” He sat down on the settle and stared at the opposite wall where Artemis, curled into an unidentifiable ball of fur, lay napping.
“Spit it out, Ethan. What do you think?”
Ethan leaned forward, pressing the heels of his hands into his forehead. “I think the wolf was sent by the councilman to kill your father,” he said, looking up at Chloe as though waiting for her to reprove him.
But Chloe was silent, eager to hear more. Could Ethan really think she’d find anything unbelievable after all she’d seen over the last few days? “Go on,” she whispered, steeling herself for whatever he might say next.
“It was vocation day at school and I was at the coast with my mom. I got bored and took a nap, and when I woke up I saw your dad walking the beach. I shouted at him, but it was too windy for him to hear me. Then this enormous wolf charged me and latched onto my arm. I know it would’ve killed me if your dad hadn’t wrestled it off.”
“Why was it coming for you and not him?” Feeling her legs grow weak, Chloe sat down beside him.
“It attacked him next. I thought he was dead, but then—”
“But then he healed himself,” said Chloe, a bittersweet smile on her lips and in her heart as she remembered her father’s cold hands on her temples after she’d been forced to drink from the River Lethe. His doma had healed her brain and brought back all of her memories. She could see the wheels spinning in Ethan’s head.
“How could you know that?” he asked.
“Because he healed me, too. In Hades.”