by Diana Tyler
Hector sped down the giant’s left side, using his lifeless hands as stepping stones. He grabbed the sword and backed away as Briareous collapsed, falling with the force of an imploding building. Even his two brothers were nearly knocked off their feet and had to grasp each other’s arms for stability. They let out a terrible cry as thick tears streamed down their faces.
“Kill them!”
Hector turned to see Athena standing a safe distance away. Eione was hiding behind her.
The two Hecatonchires fell to their knees and their hands lifted swiftly in surrender. The hands nearest their abdomens were clasped together, pleading with him to show mercy.
“They’re surrendering,” Hector called to Athena. “I’ve already defeated them. There’s no need to—”
“You fool.” Athena marched forward, ripped the sword from his hand and pointed it at his throat. She was more like Ares than he’d thought. “This lie is older than Cronus himself. They know how weak you mortals are. They know how easily you can be manipulated.”
Hector looked at the giants. They were trembling, in fear of their lives.
“Trust me, Hector,” said Athena. “You’ll die here if you show them pity. Even if we do escape unharmed, who’s to say Zeus won’t unleash the Hecatonchires to terrorize the upper realm?”
Hector’s gaze fell to the sword, its tip stained red with Briareous’s blood. His mind flashed back to Ares, standing in his living room over his father’s dead body and wiping the blood off his spear.
“This is war, Hector,” Athena said. “Take no prisoners. Show no mercy.” She nodded to him and handed over the sword.
“After war is peace, right?”
Athena smiled, a sad, pensive curve of her mouth, as though she were envisioning all the battles she’d fought and armies she’d seen crumble. “It depends which side wins.”
“All right.”
Ridding his mind of pity, Hector raised his sword and charged the monsters.
Eione screamed for him to stop. She had never seen death before but, despite the mystical power of the Lethe, she knew it was horrifying, and that killing, no matter the context or the cause, was the most heinous of all its forms.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
MOONBOW
I’m very sorry for your loss.” The councilman reached over his desk and turned down the classical piano music playing through the wireless speaker. “A loss to all of us, really.”
Chloe had been in this office plenty of times. At least, that’s what she’d been told. She could only remember visiting a month ago, right after she returned from the old timeline. Right after she, Damian and Ethan had realized that Mania’s son Hermogenes was now the venerated councilman, a man they’d reviled in their former timeline. Looking at him even now, Chloe had to resist the impulse to run or call for help.
Minus the fact that he’d swapped his stuffy chasuble for a tailored business suit, he looked exactly the same—feeble and pale, with broad shoulders and a cleft chin just like his father’s. Chloe could see the orangey foundation line below his crêpey jawline, probably applied by one of his assistants in an effort to enliven his looks a bit. It only took one glance at his veiny, arthritic hands to know the man was quite literally ancient. He was the oldest mortal living, and he definitely looked it.
“Ethan is a hero,” he said, watching Lydia reach for a tissue. He plucked one from the box and handed it to her. “He will be honored at every festival this year, and at many more to come.”
“With all due respect…” Chloe began, pausing to ensure that it was acceptable to challenge him. He smiled softly and sat down in his high-back burgundy chair. “If we don’t stop the rebel spirits,” she continued, “Ethan’s death was in vain.” She looked down at her chewed-off nails, preparing to say aloud what had been on her mind since the funeral. “If this plan doesn’t work, I’m going to go back and stop his death, with or without Damian’s help.”
Lydia sucked back a sob and blew it out into the tissue. “Chloe, you can’t.” She put a hand on Chloe’s knee.
“This plan,” the councilman said, stroking his wispy white goatee, “who thought of it?”
Chloe could see in his eyes he already knew the answer. “Carya. Well, Duna, technically.”
“And you fear a plan from the infallible creator might somehow be fallible?”
Chloe sat up straighter, feeling her defense mechanisms kicking in. “No, and I hope you’ll forgive me if I implied that. I just mean I might fail. I’m the fallible one.”
The councilman gave a knowing smile. Chloe assumed he’d lived long enough to know something of grief, self-doubt, and feelings of inadequacy. She knew the All-Powerful was on her side. She knew he’d never failed her before. And somewhere deep inside, she knew that even Ethan’s death would prove part of the All-Powerful’s greater plan.
Despite those reassurances, she felt irredeemably defeated, like she was standing at the foot of a mountain that made Olympus look like an anthill. She needed another of Athena’s less-than-winsome pep talks to yank her out of this slump.
“The Ashers don’t stand a chance with such faithless leaders as this,” Chloe said. “That’s what Athena told me. Did your father tell you she paid us a visit?”
The councilman nodded.
The air in the room suddenly got colder. The councilman went to the windows overlooking downtown Eirene. “Strange. Normally when my father visits, he knocks here, on the glass.”
“It isn’t Hermes,” came a woman’s voice: Athena.
Chloe jumped to her feet.
A cloud appeared before the bookshelf, stretching from floor to ceiling. Several voices whispered from within it as eager hands broke apart the vaporous walls to see where they’d arrived.
“Hector?” Chloe said, recognizing his voice among the rest.
The room grew quiet as all eyes watched the young man exit the cloud. Hector’s skin was coated in a thick tar-like slime and his tunic was tattered and filthy.
“Yes, it’s me,” he said to Chloe. “I’m so sorry for—”
Chloe raised a hand. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s okay if Ares coerced you into attempting murder but have escaped somehow and want to make amends. It’s not okay if you’re here for round two.”
Hector laughed a little and picked at the black stuff peeling off his skin. “I’m not.” Before he could say more, a woman’s hand reached out and grabbed his arm to steady herself.
Chloe blinked twice to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. The woman had long, dark glossy hair that appeared to be kissed from roots to ends with shimmering drops of water. “Eione? Who else do you have in there? Jason? Herakles? The entire Argonaut crew?”
The sea nymph, her white skin luminous beside Hector’s begrimed body, looked at Chloe and frowned. “You must be mortal, too.”
“Of course I’m mortal. I’m Chloe. You know, one of the ones you took the dýnami from.” She felt her cheeks get hot and her upper lip start sweating. “The other one is dead.”
Chloe had only felt this level of hatred a few times before. In the old timeline, when she’d found out Orpheus had lured her to Circe’s island and then to the River Styx. When Hermes had dropped her off in Asphodel to rot. And when the councilman—the evil version of him—had confessed to murdering her parents.
It was a feeling like no other, more like an all-consuming illness than an emotion. It tightened her stomach into a tangled, nauseated ball, and made her itch and burn with fever from the inside out. Her mouth was thick with saliva, and her temples throbbed, as if either side of her head was being used as a punching bag. Her vision blurred and, afraid of fainting, she fell back into her chair.
This had happened before, but the symptoms had never come on so quickly or been so acute. Like any headache or bout of nausea, in the past she had simply let them pass. Or rather, she’d allowed herself to forget them as she became distracted with other things, like surviving Hades, defeating Mania, and falling head ove
r heels in love. But there was only so much a person could take.
She willed her vision to clear and refocused on Eione’s face. “You killed him. Don’t you even care?” She lunged forward, her heart ready to explode, her fist ready to make a blow. “I was going to marry him.”
“Eione doesn’t remember you.” The coolness of Athena’s voice seemed to frighten the mist, which settled over the carpet like a dense, low-lying fog. “She drank from the Lethe. I’ll explain later.”
Chloe’s glance shot to Hector.
“It’s true,” he said. “Eione has no idea what’s going on.”
“You’re accusing the wrong person of killing,” Eione said, crossing her willowy arms. She jerked a thumb toward Hector. “I just watched a mortal slay the Hecatonchires.”
“Too bad her self-righteous attitude didn’t get erased,” Chloe muttered.
Eione just glared at her.
The councilman cleared his throat, bracing himself on the edge of his desk as he stood. “I know who the three of you are, but tell me, who is he?” He pointed to yet another of Athena’s passengers still half-covered with ash.
Chloe had been too preoccupied with Hector and Eione to notice the young man, but now Athena raised her hand and wiped away the smudges of ash, revealing a young man’s face, which was crisscrossed with thin, white web-like scars.
“He was the only Asher in Tartarus,” Athena said.
“I am Straton,” he said. He had been in Tartarus, and hadn’t had a drink for many days.
Lydia jolted and sprang from her chair. She pulled a water bottle from the mini refrigerator in the corner and delivered it to Straton.
“Thank you,” he said. “I emptied the amphoras Athena gave me and still my thirst has not been slaked.”
“I’m a little thirsty, too,” said Hector. He went to the fridge and pulled out a soda. He offered one to Eione, but she only curled her lips in indignation.
Lydia did not so much as glance at Hector, but it took little imagination for Chloe to figure out why. He was Lydia’s Eione, the one responsible for taking away her only son.
The councilman scratched his speckled scalp and listened, seemingly without a worry in the world, to the crescendo of the piano music. He smiled when he saw Straton’s eyes close, pleased that the young man seemed to be listening, too. “My lips will shout with sounds of jubilation,” the councilman sang along to the piano, “when I sing praise to you, I whom you have rescued.”
“Old man, stop mumbling and listen to me.” Athena pointed at the stereo and made a pounding motion in the air, as if striking a gavel. The music stopped. “Hector told me he coerced that woman into handing over the sacred jars.”
Lydia brought a hand to her mouth, but did not move.
“You don’t need me to tell you what will happen if and when Zeus destroys them,” Athena said.
“What will happen?” Chloe and Lydia asked in unison.
Athena’s eyes stayed on the councilman. “Go ahead.”
The councilman sighed and looked at Chloe with tired, red-rimmed eyes. “The Ashers will lose their domas,” he said. “Forever.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
WRATH
That doesn’t make any sense,” Hector said, setting the empty water bottle on a shelf. “The jars were given to Iris way after the Ashers were even a thing.”
“It’s not the jars themselves that are so sacred,” said the councilman, “it’s what they represent: that ancient symbol that was hung in the night sky when Asher, the very first of our kind, watched the hand of Duna put it there.”
“The Moonbow,” Chloe whispered, remembering the day she’d seen that event projected like a movie on the cold cave wall. She’d never forget it. She didn’t think anything else, not even the creation of the sun, could be as spectacular.
The councilman stared at the wall as if he was also watching a scene of the past play out. “When I was old enough, Iris entrusted the artifacts to me. Even the Centaur gave up his blue sword.”
Chloe laughed to herself as she pictured the Centaur pitching a fit over having to part with his magic weapon.
“She told me it was the Ashers’ responsibility to protect the artifacts lest they fall into the hands of evil.” His eyes fluttered a few times, then focused again on Chloe’s face. “For two thousand years, they’ve been safe.”
Chloe stared at Eione. “Until her.”
“The desire to isolate a problem and reduce its source to a single person, a single action, is a natural human reaction,” said the councilman, “but it’s a fallacy.”
“Fallacy?” Chloe’s voice was shrill with exasperation. “Fallacy how? Eione is the person. Taking the dýnami and releasing the rebel spirits was the action. Those are the facts.”
A spear of sunlight glinted off Athena’s breastplate as she stepped into the center of the office. “How, may I ask, did the dýnami come into Eione’s possession?”
Chloe pressed her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth as she considered how to answer. “I threw it into the ocean.” She couldn’t upset Lydia by telling her it was in fact Ethan who had thrown it. “We thought the best thing to do was destroy it. If the wrong people found it—”
“Foolish child, the dýnami cannot be destroyed.” Athena’s words grated from her throat and hung on the air for long, punishing seconds. “You should have flown it to the moon if you wanted to be rid of it. I’m not aware of any enterprising sea nymphs dwelling there.”
“I’m a sea nymph,” exclaimed Eione. And then her excitement faded to confusion. “What is a sea nymph? What is the moon?”
Lydia went to Eione and extended her hand. “My name is Lydia. You have gorgeous hair. Want to go for a walk with me outside? It’s a beautiful day.”
Eione smiled and gave an exuberant nod before following her out the door.
“That poor girl,” Chloe said to Athena, forgetting that moments ago she’d wanted to slap Eione. “She’s like a young child trapped in a woman’s body, and all because of you. She’s worse than a child, actually. At least children know who their parents are and where they live, and probably what the moon is.”
“You see, this is the difference between us and you.” Athena’s mouth was a gash of red, and her every word like poison dripping out. “You mortals are tethered inextricably to your emotions. You don’t have the foresight or fortitude to do what’s necessary. I wonder if it’s because your lives are so pathetically short that you act with such rashness, convinced perhaps that there’s no time to be wasted on deliberation.” She stepped forward, lifting her chin proudly, ready to release more venom. “But I think it’s because you’re just plain stupid.”
“That’s enough.” The councilman’s shout was weak, but the accompanying smack of a binder against his desk got the room’s attention. “We’re not here to belittle and cast aspersions. If there’s one thing we can agree on, it’s that bickering will not hinder the rebels.” He paused a moment to wait for any rebuttals. There were none. “Although she might not have said it in the most tactful manner, Athena was right about something.”
Chloe rolled her eyes.
Athena smiled.
“It was wrong to cast the dýnami into the Great Sea for Eione to find,” the councilman said.
“How were Chloe and Ethan supposed to know?” Hector said, stealing the words from Chloe’s mouth as her cheeks flushed with anger.
“It would’ve been impossible for them to know,” the councilman agreed. “The secrets of the dýnami were known only to the immortals and their most pious disciples, the priests and priestesses.”
Chloe thought back to the high priest Archelaos, who had insisted on taking the dýnami after Aison’s death in the old timeline. She envisioned the priestess at the first Lycaea Festival, and the bronze wolf, which Aison had stood beside with his head covered and hands bound, moments away from being sacrificed. Aison was to become the first Lycaean and the keeper of the dýnami, for purposes only Apollo knew.
>
Maybe Apollo wanted it to be found. Maybe he wanted to see what chaos it would cause when left to drift in the tides of time. “So are you saying this was inevitable,” Chloe asked the councilman, “that eventually the dýnami would be taken by a rebel spirit?”
The councilman lowered himself carefully into his chair and opened his desk drawer. “Excuse me,” he said, pulling out a syringe.
Chloe shivered, remembering a moment in the old timeline when he’d stuck another syringe into his arm, right after Apollo had possessed him and lifted him off the sanctuary floor. “What’s that?” she couldn’t help asking.
“A gift from my father.” He removed his coat and rolled up his sleeve. “Helps with the pain of growing unnaturally old.” He slid the needle into the bruised circle on his forearm, injecting a rose-colored liquid into his bloodstream.
“Nectar.” Athena smiled and looked around the office, as if taking inventory. “If ever you decide to peddle your medicine to the masses, you would rival the gods with your riches.”
The councilman flinched as he pulled out the syringe.
“Why don’t you just drink it?” Hector said.
“It absorbs faster this way.” The councilman rolled down his sleeve, then steepled his hands on the mahogany desk. “Enough about my aches and pains. I’m only saying that given enough time, the enemy—or enemies, as it were—would have found a weakness, a chink in our collective armor through which to take advantage.”
Athena laughed. “Who would have thought it could possibly be a sea nymph who would find it?”
“Or that something so small would be the catalyst for…” Hector’s words trailed off as he struggled to find the right words.
“The end of the world as we know it?” Chloe suggested.
Hector shrugged, the adolescent’s way of agreeing, albeit reluctantly.
“The beginning of the world as we once knew it,” said Athena. “A world when the rebel spirits were not rebels at all, but rather deities to be worshipped and adored. Then your kind, the Asher kind, was created to change the story.”