by Diana Tyler
Chloe stuffed her hand under her thigh. “Do not.” Her train of thought, loaded with memories of her and Ethan together over the past month, came to a screeching halt. He was right. Somehow the nailbiting did help her think.
Ethan laughed. “I know you better than you think.”
Suddenly Chloe felt see-through, as though her every thought and emotion was scrawled across her skin for him to read. Regret, guilt, embarrassment, desire… Even now, one look at him made her want to rush onto his lap and kiss him until her lips hurt. If circumstances had been different, she would probably go back in time and stop herself from being such an idiot at Lake Thyra.
Athena had been right. Chloe couldn’t just give up on love the second it hit a little turbulence. But it was too little too late, and there was still a part of her that wondered if Ethan had ever really loved her at all.
“Fine,” she said, for no other reason than to stop the dizzying monologue carrying on in her head. “I’m wondering why you’re still here and not back at school.”
Ethan pressed his hands into his knees then stood up and walked toward the door, raking a frustrated hand through his hair.
“Where are you going?” Chloe asked. “What did I say?”
Ethan turned to her, his eyes heavy with a mixture of anger and pain that pierced her heart like a knifepoint. “Nothing. That’s just it. You didn’t say anything.”
She knew he wanted her to read between the lines. “What is there to say, Ethan?” I made a mistake. I love you. Forget what happened in the past we can’t remember. There was plenty to say, but she was too proud, and too scared, to say it.
“I found something in my truck today,” Ethan said, after an excruciating silence. He looked up at the ceiling as if his next sentence were written there. “Maybe it’ll prove something to you.” He pulled a small black box out of his pocket and set it firmly on her desk. “I’ll be praying for you and your brother. Be safe.”
Then he left. In the stark emptiness of the room, the spicy scent of his cologne inflicted a wound unfamiliar to Chloe. She’d known the pain of grief, the sting of abandonment, the bite of betrayal, but this feeling was far worse. Except for her heart, it paralyzed every part of her, forbidding any movement, save that of sitting still and feeling its presence. It sucked her down to an oceanic depth, the pressure of which was suffocating and inescapable. It felt like a giant hole had been drilled into her chest and her life was slowly leaking out of it.
This was heartbreak. Ethan was gone, and there was no one to blame for that but herself and her own dumb fear and insecurity. Ironic, she thought, that by trying to avoid a broken heart, she had given herself one.
She stared at the velvet box a moment, knowing good and well she didn’t have the willpower to just let it sit there. She snatched it from the table just as she heard his truck pull out of the driveway.
“What’s that?”
Chloe set the box down again and looked at Damian, who was leaning against the doorframe. “Nothing.” She flicked the side of the box before pushing it aside.
“It looks like a ring box.” Damian stepped into the room, wearing a nosy smile that made him look ten again. “Did Ethan give you that?”
Chloe took a sip of the ironwort tea Hermes had made for her. She still didn’t care for the taste, but it made her think of Iris. What she wouldn’t give to see Iris now, to hear her advice, to listen to another of her stories, and to draw from her strength.
“Did he propose to you?” Damian plucked the box off the desk and popped it open.
“Damian!” Chloe jumped up and yanked the box from his hand. She hadn’t wanted to see what was inside, but she couldn’t help it now. The simple golden band drew her eyes like a magnet. She couldn’t look away.
Damian sat on the edge of her bed. “What did you say?”
Her legs weak beneath her, Chloe dropped onto her chair. She pulled out the gold band and turned it around and around. “Nothing. He just gave me the box and left. He said—”
“Maybe it’ll prove something to you.”
So Damian had been listening. “He loved me,” she said. He’d meant that the ring was proof that he had tried to make things right between them, somewhere in the past; a place and time they couldn’t remember. At least he had been planning to before the whole multi-timeline thing had turned everything upside down.
She returned the ring to the box and snapped it shut. “I have to go.”
Maybe it was the ironwort tea. Maybe it was Iris sending her strength from heaven. Or maybe she had finally come to her senses. Whatever it was, it sent her bolting out of her bedroom door and rushing through the house in search of car keys.
“Here.” Damian was jingling his keys in his hands. He tossed them to her.
“Thanks,” she said, then grabbed her coat and took off, praying the world wouldn’t implode before she got to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AMBUSH
Chloe had hit every red light, and now she was stuck behind a garbage truck on the one-lane road leading to Ethan’s house. It seemed strange to her that, in light of the recent prison break from hell, sanitation was still important to people. But then, most Petrodians didn’t have a clue that Aetna’s eruption was connected to anything nefarious. Why wouldn’t they keep taking out their trash?
If anything was truly strange, it was Chloe being advised to travel back thousands of years to stop the war to end all wars and yet was delaying the trip because she had to tell a boy she loved she was sorry. Love was nuts.
Her patience run dry, Chloe accelerated and wove around the garbage truck. Up ahead she saw Ethan, jogging toward her along the side of the road wearing an old high-school track sweatshirt and joggers.
She rolled down the window as her heart jumped into her throat. “Ethan!” She tried to project his name, but the wind caught and stifled it. He looked up anyway, and when he saw Chloe behind the wheel he smiled and slowed to a walk.
“Does Damian know you took his car?” he said, his breath shooting plumes into the air.
“He gave me the keys, believe it or not.” She pulled off into the grass and killed the ignition. She’d never wanted to kiss him so badly. I should’ve brought lip balm or something, she thought as he walked toward her, throwing his hood over his head.
In the rear-view mirror, Chloe glimpsed the garbage truck. It sped by, honking repeatedly as a blue truck whizzed around it.
Ethan’s truck.
The truck screeched to a stop beside her car. Ethan was in the driver’s seat. Did he have an identical twin she wasn’t aware of? He jumped out of the truck and ran toward her car.
“Roll up your window and lock the doors,” Ethan said. He was wearing the same pair of jeans and blue shirt he’d had on at her house. If this was really Ethan, then who was the lookalike in front of her?
“You were supposed to have a flat tire,” the lookalike said to Ethan.
“Yeah, well, I guess your buddy’s aim was a little off today.” Ethan flung open Chloe’s car door. Without a word, she scooted over to the passenger side.
The lookalike stormed toward the car. Ethan locked the doors, then pressed the gas and turned the steering wheel, but the car didn’t move.
“Do you know who this guy is?” Chloe asked.
“The same one who was in my head earlier.” Ethan revved the engine again, to no avail. “He’s in it again, telling me to unlock the door if I want to live.”
“It’s Hector,” Chloe said, “and the dýnami’s giving him these powers.”
Hector grabbed her door and began to pull, rocking the vehicle harder and harder. He was going to flip them. “Let her go,” he roared. “You have five seconds. Five, four…”
Chloe closed her eyes and took Ethan’s hand. She only knew one way to get them out of this.
“Three…”
She took a deep breath, and whispered Orpheus’s name.
Chloe wasn’t sure if it was a good sign that she hadn’t hear
d Hector yell out “two” and “one.” It could mean one of three things: she was unconscious, she was dead, or she was alive somewhere in the past. Then she felt Ethan’s hand squeezing hers and she opened her eyes to the familiar gray of the wormhole that wrapped around them like an oversized, silky cocoon.
“Do you know where we are?” he whispered, releasing her hand.
Chloe froze when the jubilant sound of lyre music grew closer, accompanied by the chirping of birds and the pitter-patter of feet. “Orpheus,” she said, and then stepped out of the shadowy tunnel into the brightness of day.
They were in the middle of a meadow grown tall with larkspurs, daffodils and daisies, and surrounded by mountains. Interspersed throughout the wild countryside were pomegranate trees, their large red fruit glowing like lanterns against the dark green foliage. Chloe was thankful that Orpheus was playing a lively tune. Otherwise she and Ethan would be rendered unconscious before they could explain themselves.
Still unable to see Orpheus, she spun around and watched the idyllic scene become even more surreal. There were animals, dozens of them, each moving in its own way to the poet’s enchanted melody. Shaggy-haired goats and floppy-eared rabbits hopped across Chloe’s path as she made her way farther into the menagerie. Turtles inched along at her feet, their wrinkled faces smiling. She saw a group of wolves playing a few yards away, and the tails of two lynxes swinging from an olive tree.
“Chloe, wait up,” Ethan called from behind her.
“I hope there aren’t any centaurs out here,” she said, turning to him.
He laughed. “Getting shot with an arrow by a centaur is like getting hit by lightning,” he said. “It doesn’t happen twice.”
“No, you mean lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice. It’s completely possible for you to be shot again in a different location.”
Ethan frowned. The humor was over. She’d taken it too far, but it was the truth, wasn’t it? She stopped walking as all the questions she’d hadn’t had time to ask in the car came rushing back.
“How did you know about Hector?” she asked. “How’d you know he was masquerading as you?”
Ethan tilted his chin to the sky and took a quick breath of the crisp spring air. “I stopped to get gas on my way home, and when I saw you drive by I got this awful…” He placed a hand on his stomach. “It was a gut feeling, I guess. I knew someone was—is—after you.”
Chloe wanted to ask next about the guy who’d apparently tried to blow out his tire, but his own question was too quick.
“May I ask—”
Chloe filled in the rest of the question. “Why I was going to your house?”
A woman’s laughter filled the air, followed by a series of high-pitched mellifluous trills from the lyre.
“Is that…” Ethan pointed to the nearby slope, on which the woman was twirling in circles as the unseen musician continued to play.
Chloe’s breath caught as she tried to speak Eurydice’s name. This was the love of Orpheus’s life. The one he’d traveled to Hades to try and rescue after her tragic, untimely death. The one he’d spent centuries longing for in the miserable Vale of Mourning. The one he’d taken on mortal flesh and a devious heart for to win back from Apollo; the one whose beauty Chloe could see pulsating like a star even from where she stood.
“Eurydice,” Ethan called, as a snow-white raven soared over them toward the slope. A look of recognition washed over Ethan’s face as he watched it fly.
In an instant, Chloe remembered a memory that had been lost to her until now. “The white raven is the sacred bird of Apollo,” she said. “How do I know that?”
“I know it, too. I guess we learned it at school or university.”
Chloe scratched her temple, as if doing so would magically import more information to her brain. What did it mean? Good omen or bad?
Eurydice, also noticing the bird, waved down the hill, presumably to Orpheus. “Look, my love.” She pointed at the raven as the melody slowed down, and the animals’ activity with it.
The goats’ bleating ceased. The hares stopped their hopping. The foxes slunk into the shade of the pomegranate trees and lay down. The wolves sat on their haunches and howled at the noonday sun.
“Did you understand her?” Ethan asked.
Chloe nodded. “I guess Carya’s little interpretation spell still works.”
“Or maybe we learned Próta in school in the new timeline.” He paused before adding, with a smile, “Thes na pas ya kafé?”
The words gave Chloe the strongest sense of déjà vu she’d ever felt. A cold classroom; a cramping hand; the incessant ticking of the red second hand marching around the massive clock face above her. And a tall, green-eyed boy passing her a note he later got in trouble for.
He had written:“Thes na pas ya kafé?” He hadn’t gotten in trouble because he’d written it in Próta. He was asking if she’d like to go out for a coffee. It had been their very first date in the new timeline.
Chloe smiled back at him. “Pu íne i tualéta?”
“’Where’s the toilet?’” Ethan covered his mouth with his hand, laughing.
Chloe shrugged. “My Próta’s a little rustier than yours, apparently.”
She wanted nothing more than to relive that first date, or even that moment in class when she’d opened Ethan’s note and felt her body tingling from head to toe. If her entire planet didn’t need saving, not to mention her own life, right now she wouldn’t think twice about traveling back to a simpler, more innocent time.
Chloe looked up at the raven, which was cawing loudly as it circled over the slope. It was clear by its immunity to Orpheus’s music that it indeed belonged to Apollo. But what was it doing here? She jumped as a nearby family of deer started and ran for the olive grove. The rabbits and goats also scattered, followed by the wolves and lynxes, which fled the trees fast, as if escaping a fire. But there was no sign of danger that Chloe could see.
And then she remembered.
“Come on.” She took Ethan by the hand and ran as fast as she could through the tall grass, calling Eurydice’s name.
Orpheus stopped playing as he turned to the intruders, a confused smile on his face. Chloe had never seen him looking so content. She felt like an alarm clock waking him up from a fantastic dream. Before she could warn them, she watched in horror as the raven spiraled down, a fat black viper wriggling in its beak.
Orpheus dropped the lyre and grabbed his bride as the hellish bird eyed them both, its wings whooshing as they beat the air. With a grating screech, it released the snake as another appeared immediately in its place. This one also fell to the grass, and the pair of snakes slithered toward the couple, their jaws unhinged, their long white fangs ready to strike.
Orpheus stripped off his mantle and threw it over the vipers. Ethan did likewise with his jacket as two more snakes materialized, this time suspended in the raven’s sharp, silvery talons.
“Enough!” Chloe shouted at the bird. Then she laid one hand on Orpheus’s shoulder and another on Eurydice’s. “Trust me,” she said softly. Although she’d spoken in Petrodian, she had a feeling they understood.
Ethan threw a rock at the raven, knocking it off kilter, and then wrapped his arm tightly around Chloe’s waist. “Get us out of here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
NEREUS
To Eione, the sea caves felt haunted, like a forgotten shipwreck whose souls still drifted through it, hoping for its restoration, waiting for their own. The sea nymph had her palace, her ages-old dream brought to life. But here, in these abandoned caverns among the wreckage of her once blissful past, was where she spent her days, waiting, like a ghost, for a heaven that wouldn’t come.
Eione sat on the sandy floor as the water emptied out with the tide. Above her, the algae-covered ceiling glowed various shades of purple and green in the morning light. It was a magical place, one the humans hadn’t yet discovered and therefore had not desecrated. To the Nereids, this was not a recreation
al place. It was their hallowed home, given to them by their father Nereus to keep them far from Apollo’s reach.
Where was her father now? He was free, as were her sisters. They had a shining castle that rivaled anything Hephaestus had ever made. Poseidon had sworn to let them be, so why did Nereus keep his distance? What had she done to disgrace herself in his righteous eyes?
Eione pondered this as she lay back, counting the stalactites that hung like giants’ teeth from the cave roof above her. Clinging to one of these was a barnacle-like creature that was moving restlessly, as if trying to break free. Lifting herself onto her elbows, Eione squinted at the thing as it shifted and squirmed until it became a different animal altogether. It became an orange starfish, too conspicuous to be natural.
“Father?” she whispered. She held out her hands and cupped them together as she stood.
The starfish peeled its spongy body off the stalactite and fell into Eione’s palms.
“Is it you?” Eione felt ridiculous speaking to an invertebrate, but when the starfish began to bend and expand, she knew her suspicion was correct.
She set the creature gently on the sand and watched as its bloated central disc distended so far she thought it might burst. Four of its spiky arms converged as they turned into long, human limbs. The fifth, uppermost arm swelled and shaped itself into a human head, thickly bearded, and with sea-green eyes that glowered beneath heavy brows. With a snap of his fingers, the god clothed himself with an indigo mantle and shod his feet with doeskin boots.
Eione wanted to embrace her father, but with his right arm held decorously across his chest and his jaw set tight beneath his hoary beard, she knew he did not wish it.
“You’re angry with me,” she said, her heart beating as much with joy at the sight of him as with fear of his thoughts toward her.
Nereus sighed and lowered his arm to his side. “Come here, child.” He opened his arms to her, and like a breaker crashing against a rock, she ran swiftly into his chest. “I have been angry, but I knew it was foolish of me to be so.” He stroked her hair tenderly as she took in the smell of salty spume and nectar ingrained in his skin. “In your understanding, your courageous act was a righteous one.”