by Diana Tyler
“I think I get it. Our emotions can take their toll on us if we hold onto them too long.”
“Exactly. It’s as though my anger toward him was bleeding into the rest of me. Like poison.”
Ethan leaned forward, laughing quietly to himself.
Chloe felt her cheeks flushing. Had she said something wrong? Was there food in her teeth? Had the ironwort stained them brown? “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing. It’s dumb.” He pressed two fingers to his lips, as if to stop himself from saying whatever it was he was obviously thinking.
“Please tell me,” Chloe said, trying her best not to sound whiny. “Don’t make me use the card.”
“What card?”
“The card that says this could be the last time we talk, and therefore you’d better tell me.” She laughed, but he didn’t seem to find it so funny. “Sorry. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“No, you’re right.” Ethan took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “I do need to say something.”
“Can I say something first?”
He hesitated. “Sure.”
“It’s my turn to ask for forgiveness. What I said about you just sitting here on the sidelines, that wasn’t true. And it was a terrible thing to say.”
“But that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?” Ethan indicated the log beneath them. “I’m not like the rest of you. I’m not an Asher, and I don’t belong here.” His gaze drifted to the sheets of rain falling on the horizon. “I don’t belong anywhere.”
“You do belong here,” Chloe insisted. “You just don’t know it yet. Duna has you here for a reason.” She squeezed his hand. “I know it.”
Ethan’s whole body relaxed as he nodded his head slowly and turned his knees toward hers. “You know, you’re good at giving pep talks.”
Chloe smiled and let go of his hand to point out a faint double rainbow peeking through the rain. “I never get sick of seeing those.” She could feel Ethan staring at her. Now what was it? Was there a smudge on her face?
“Can I say my something now?”
There was an unfamiliar tone in his voice that made Chloe’s palms get clammy. She could feel her upper lip starting to sweat. Her throat was suddenly swollen, and all she could do was nod.
“Do you remember what I said when I saw you in the stairwell back at the Religious Council building?”
Chloe tried to think back, but all she remembered was Ethan holding a gun to her face. “You asked me who I was.”
Ethan laughed. “After that. After you told me it was good to see me.”
“Oh. I don’t really remember. You probably said the same thing back to me.”
“I said it was good to see you, too,” Ethan said, “but it was a gigantic lie.”
Chloe’s eyes skimmed the hillside for a dark hole she could crawl into. Finding none, she sat there, dumbstruck, waiting for the strength to walk away with some semblance of self-respect.
“Chloe, there’s not a word strong enough to describe how I felt when I saw you again. It was the best feeling in the world.”
Chloe closed her eyes, letting his words echo and sing in her ears. When she opened her eyes again, the rainbow seemed a thousand times brighter. She knew exactly the feeling he was talking about.
“You’re not saying anything,” Ethan said.
Chloe held up her forefinger, silently shushing him as a smile filled her face. She wanted to savor this. “What does my smile say?”
Ethan took her hand in his, and with his other hand he touched her face, pulling her closer as a wormhole of a different sort enveloped her. His kiss was a doma all its own, and she was powerless against it.
CHAPTER FORTY
KRATÍRAS
Kratíras was perhaps a more cursed place than Mount Othrys, for it was here that the Titans and Olympians first made contact with Petros after their banishment from heaven. Three hundred and sixty rebels had been sent spiraling through the cosmos, each of them secured to a meteorite by shackles they could not shake. Not until they collided with the coarse sands of this foreign world did the chains fall away and their trek to Othrys begin.
The crater that had resulted from the impact was over a mile wide and over three hundred feet deep, forming a perfect circle in the middle of the desert.
It had been Hermes’ job, along with the others gifted with flight, to escort the rebels out of the pit. How different things would have been, he mused, if he’d refused to assist them, if he’d left them there to bake in the sun for all eternity. How much less suffering would the incipient race of humans have had to endure?
He had so much to atone for. He’d wronged Iris countless times, and the record of his own offenses against the All-Powerful could fill this crater a thousand fold. Duna would be a fool to forgive him as Iris had.
The sun overhead burned Hermes’ uncovered head and scorched his skin. It was as hot as Tartarus here. If he were Duna he would chain him here, in this very spot, never to move again for the rest of time. That was what he deserved, after all: a judgment no milder than the one Apollo had sentenced for the Olympians and Titans before them.
“Why are you here, Hermes?”
Hermes’ heart beat wildly as fear, greater than he’d ever felt, even before Apollo’s sword, swept through him. He knew that voice. It was the one that had called all life into existence, and the one that had decreed his exile.
“Duna?” he said, laboring to control his anxious breaths as he stretched himself along the basalt ground. He heard footsteps approaching, but dared not look for fear his eyeballs would melt in their sockets at the sight of Duna’s glory. Not even Cronus’s magnificence came close to rivaling the aura of holiness that clothed the All-Powerful.
“Do not be afraid.” Duna’s voice was as peaceful as rain and yet as fearsome as thunder. “Since you were created, I have heard everything you’ve ever said or thought, desiring one day to discern contrition in your words.”
The shadow cast by Duna’s form felt like the shade of an oak against Hermes’ back. Duna’s presence never failed to bring relief.
“You have never been far from my thoughts, Hermes. You may have broken my heart, but you never left it.”
“I am unworthy of such love, my creator,” said Hermes, his whole being trembling with awe. How foolish he’d been to have once deemed himself divine, and to have viewed Hades and Apollo as such. Comparing themselves to Duna was like parasites posing as lions. That Duna was not mocking him now was astonishing.
“Are you truly repentant?” From the nearness of his voice, Hermes knew Duna was kneeling beside him.
“My heart aches with shame, my lord.” Hermes lifted his chin so that he might project more clearly. “I have spent centuries trying to outrun my guilt, but it pulls me down like an anchor.”
Duna placed a hand on the crown of Hermes’ head. “Be thankful for that anchor, my son. So many of your brothers and sisters were lost in the sea of their hubris long ago; now nothing draws them back to me.”
“Please, tell me what I must do to earn my way back through heaven’s gates.”
Restlessness festered in the marrow of Hermes’ bones. He could almost smell the stench of his sins. The weight of them crushed his soul from all sides. He had to do something to purge himself, even if it meant repeating all twelve labors of Hercules, or staying here to bake in the sun until the skin peeled off his flesh.
“You only need to trust me. Turn from the unrighteousness of your past and never think on it again. I will make all things new, my son. Your future is in my hands.”
Duna’s voice fell like dew upon Hermes’ ears, a mere whisper of life-giving wind. He couldn’t help himself; he began to weep, the mercy radiating from the All-Powerful almost more than his inferior frame could take. When he could cry no more, he started to laugh, for the stench was fading and the weight was falling away.
“I trust you, Duna. I want to be made new.”
Duna held his palm against Hermes’ foreh
ead. His warm touch sent a surge of heat through Hermes’ body, starting in his right foot, traveling all the way up to his head, and rushing like lightning down his side. Then it stopped as his toes continued tingling.
“You are clean. Think no more of making restitution. Grace is a gift I freely and joyfully give.”
Hermes wanted to turn and kiss his creator’s feet, but he knew the light that covered Duna was sacrosanct. One touch of that light would still his heartbeat, an effect that would be irreversible, despite his immortality.
“Your mercy is more vast than the heavens, deeper than the Great Sea. Your righteousness more mighty than Olympus.” Hermes felt his adulation bubbling up from within him, unrestrained and overflowing. He would have continued had Duna not laughed and touched his shoulder.
“Your words bless me, Hermes. Such poetry rivals that of Orpheus. But time is short, and there is something I must show you.” He removed his hand from Hermes’ brow and stepped away. “Stand, and keep your back to me as you send your gaze out over Kratíras.”
Slowly, his body as weak as if he’d been sleeping for days, Hermes rose and turned to face the crater. What he saw took his breath away. The basin, once nothing but an enormous layer of thick sediment, was now a smooth mirror through which he could view perfectly the vault of cloudless sky.
“Tell me who you see,” said Duna.
The edges of the crater darkened as a pale oval face materialized in its center, followed by a smattering of freckles, and lastly a percipient pair of copper eyes with red hair spilling over them. It looked like Hermes, and yet the man was far too young.
“Hermogenes,” Hermes said, his eyes flickering in the sunlight. “But…but he’s just a boy.” He indicated the mirror. “This shows him nearly fully grown.”
“It’s difficult, even for immortals’ minds, to fathom the nature of my infinitude,” Duna said. “I created time. I am not limited by it.”
“You know the end from the beginning, and the beginning from the end,” Hermes sang softly, recalling a heavenly chorus he thought he’d long forgotten.
“Keep watching.”
The image of Hermogenes’ face faded as his mother’s profile took its place. Leto was older, with tiny lines framing her eyes and mouth, and more silver in her hair; even so, she took Hermes’ breath away. As she parted her lips to speak, Hermogenes appeared before her, clothed in white robes, his head shaven.
“You always wanted to be an Asher,” she said tenderly to her son, “and now that your eighteenth year has come and gone, I know you are grieved. It breaks my heart to see my boy so crestfallen.”
“I only desired a doma in order that I might serve you more completely and become a son you could be proud of.” The lad hung his head. “Now, for the rest of my life I will be known only as Leto’s bastard.”
Leto rushed to him and threw her arms around his neck. “Mark my words, Hermo. This day shall bring an end to your sorrows. I will give you a gift far better than any doma stored away in Duna’s coffer.”
Hermogenes lifted his head. “What gift?”
“A long life with which to rule and reign beside me,” she said, her gray eyes flashing as they did whenever she lied.
“The boy is half immortal,” Hermes protested to Duna. “Surely he must know that his days are destined to be long.”
No response from Duna. He didn’t need to give one; Hermes knew what Leto was plotting.
“Mama, you are not making any sense. It’s impossible for me to become—”
Leto gripped her son’s shoulders and gave him a shake. “You know better than to tell me what is impossible.”
Hermogenes closed his eyes, waiting patiently for the chastisement to end.
“I’m so sorry, my love.” Leto kissed his forehead and dropped her hands onto his. “There is a way. A way that will please the lords of Hades as well as serve to advance us one step closer in our quest to subvert their sovereignty.”
Hermogenes brought her hands to his lips and kissed them. “Tell me what I must do, Mama. I know that all things must bend to the will of Mania.”
Leto smiled as she drew a dagger from the hidden sheath on her thigh. “You must be sacrificed upon Olympus. And then shall Hades mingle your blood with the ichor of the gods.”
The surface of the mirror began to move like waves on the sea, obscuring the two faces until they had receded into the walls of the opposite rim. In less than the blink of an eye, the crater floor had returned to bedrock.
Terrible despair gripped Hermes’ heart. It had pained him enough to prepare, however briefly, a libation offering of his son’s pure blood. But to see Apollo’s plan brought to fruition was almost more than he could bear.
“Why have you shown me this?” he asked, inclining his head toward Duna.
“This is what the future could become should the Ashers succeed only in preventing Leto from obtaining immortality. Her legacy would continue within a man whom not even death can conquer, not for centuries.”
“So it’s not already decided.”
Hermes’ head spun as he tried to separate the future from the present while at the same time making peace with his past. He’d always thought time was as steady as the Styx, moving immutably in one direction only. That had all changed the day Chloe tore through Iris’s fire tunnel. Were it not for that, he would be with Leto this second, plotting the immolation of Eirene.
“The refugees behind the wall have been praying ceaselessly since the night Chloe and Damian joined their number.”
A silver bowl of water appeared in the air before Hermes’ chest. He nodded his thanks and drank as Duna continued.
“The Vessel has bolstered their faith, as it has restored yours. I honor my people’s prayers by giving you this warning.” He waited until Hermes’ thirst was slaked before saying his final words. “Your son must be spared.”
As Duna walked away, Hermes piped up with a single request. “Please, if you wouldn’t mind indulging me before you go. Why did the oracle prophesy one Vessel, and yet the Ashers are two?”
Duna neared him again and placed a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “You’re not the only skilled strategist in the cosmos, Hermes. Apollo has been expecting one individual, has he not?”
Hermes smiled. “Of course. And by that strategy the Vessel was able to escape the future snare set by my brothers.”
“The theory you posed to Apollo was correct,” said Duna, the warmth of his glory like a hot spring gushing around Hermes. “The Moonbow was the signpost, as it has always been.”
“So you could even hear the conferences held in Hades.”
“As I told you before, my son,” Duna whispered, “I have heard your every word. I have waited for you to call upon me as a father watches by moonlight for his son who has wandered astray.”
Hermes felt Duna’s glory slowly departing as the relentless sun began to beat down on him once more. All at once he knew the kind of father Hermogenes needed, and with not one ounce of guilt, nor stiver or shame left to stop him, he made up his mind: that’s what he would become.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
MISSION
Thank Duna!” Chloe exclaimed.
Beside her on the ground, Charis jumped from her sleep. Only Chloe and Ethan had stayed awake, waiting for Hermes to come back from whatever errand he’d suddenly felt compelled to run.
“You haven’t done anything yet, have you?” Hermes kept his voice low over the crackling fire.
“If we had,” replied Chloe, “either Damian would be here or I’d be…well, dead, probably.”
“Chloe…” Ethan murmured as he squeezed her hand. He’d been holding it so long she could hardly feel it.
“It was just a joke.”
“It’s no laughing matter, Chloe,” said Hermes.
Chloe thought Hermes looked different, changed somehow. “Where have you been?”
“To the place where war and tyranny began.” Hermes’ visage brightened as he looked up at the twinkli
ng stars, as if he and they shared a secret. “Ironically, it’s there that I was cleansed of all the blood I’ve shed and all the lies I’ve told.”
Charis sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “You’ve been with Duna, haven’t you?”
Hermes nodded and held a hand to his chest. “Aye, and I have each of you, as well as those absent, to thank for helping rescue my wayward soul.”
He looked at Chloe, his moist eyes smiling at her. “Your obedience has sent ripples out through the waves of eternity. And by Duna’s grace, one of them touched me.”
“They’ve touched all of us,” Chloe said. “It pains me to say it, but without your help, we wouldn’t have Orpheus.”
“And we wouldn’t have the pýli,” added Ethan. “It’s not every day you get to see a visual record of the first time Duna ever spoke to mankind.”
“Ah, but you forget that without me you wouldn’t be in this predicament to begin with,” Hermes countered.
“Don’t give yourself too much credit, Hermes,” said Chloe. “If you hadn’t agreed to join Apollo and Hades’ little mission to rule the world, I’m sure they would’ve found some other flying, wand-wielding madman to fill the role.”
Hermes chuckled, then gestured to the wand sheathed at her side. “Now who’s the madman? Or madwoman, I should say.”
Chloe removed the wand then pointed it at him playfully. “Touché.”
“Congratulations, Hermes,” said Ethan. “It’s good to see you happy.”
Hermes’ smile faded as the notes of a lyre came floating through the trees, followed by the sound of footsteps.
“Orpheus!” Chloe shouted. “Stop playing or you’ll put us to sleep.”
The music stopped and Orpheus stepped into the firelight. “My apologies. I’m a bit rusty. I must be at my best if I’m to sedate this villainess. When, exactly, do we march out?”
Chloe looked at Hermes. “I just remembered. The plan you laid out for us earlier didn’t include Orpheus.”
“It does indeed,” answered Hermes. “We need him for another purpose, one of no slight importance.”