Another loud, resounding crack, and he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“But the healers took them all, right?” Nora looked around at the others. They were all sitting outside of Agler’s and Maddie’s tent again. In the wake of Owen’s return, everyone was worried and concerned. “If they were dead, then what would be the point of getting the healers?”
“Well, I think the healers always come, in any case,” Agler said. “I don’t know…”
“So, you’re saying that they are dead,” Nora said. She chewed furiously on her lip.
“We don’t know any more than you do,” Maddie said.
“I really liked Coeus,” Nora said. Then she flinched. “Oh gods. I said liked. Past tense. I don’t want him to be dead.”
“None of us do,” Sawyer said.
“And Alexander?” Nora felt sick to her stomach. “This is awful. I can’t believe that Owen did this.”
Sawyer shot her a glance. “You rethinking that stance now?”
“Stance?” Nora said.
“About whether or not you want Owen dead?” Sawyer said.
Nora squeezed her eyes shut.
When she opened her eyes, she noticed that Phoebe was walking across the enclave towards them.
Nora got to her feet and hurried out to meet her.
Phoebe was already most of the way there. So, Nora only walked out a few feet.
“Coeus?” Nora said. “Any word?”
Phoebe looked pale. “They won’t let me see him. And they don’t know anything.”
“Well, they must know if he’s… gone or not, don’t they?”
“I’m sure they do,” Phoebe said. “But they aren’t saying anything until they’ve had a chance to examine them all. If one of the healers mistakenly makes a call one way or the other, it could be devastating.”
Nora nodded.
Phoebe swallowed. “He would never have wanted you to go after Owen, but…”
Nora nodded slowly. “It has to be me, doesn’t it? It’s like I said.”
Phoebe nodded slowly. “He’ll kill the others, but I don’t think he’ll kill you. I can’t in good conscience send more muses to their deaths. So, yes, I’ve come to transfer the power to you for the exiling hex. We’ll give you a dimension device, and you’ll go to Mount Olympus.”
“Of course,” Nora said. “Of course.”
Phoebe reached out and touched her shoulder gently. “Alone. It has to be alone.”
Nora nodded. “Of course it does. I wouldn’t risk any…” She turned back to look at her friends. Then she turned back to Phoebe. “Alone.”
* * *
Mount Olympus was a towering mountain, reaching into the heavens. A great, white building sat at the top of the mountain. The building was really a cluster of buildings, composed of spires and pinnacles. All were gleaming white. When the sun shone against them, it was so bright that Nora had to avert her eyes.
The trees and grass around the building reflected back the sun as well. Their leaves were silvery green, with golden trunks. They glittered against the sky and flanked the long, white, marble staircase that led up to the great building.
The entrance to the building was decorated with stately columns.
That was where Owen was standing, a tiny figure up in the distance. He gazed down on Nora from far, far above her.
She began climbing the steps. She lifted up her skirts and took one step after the other. As she walked, she kept her gaze fixed on Owen, who was still standing at the top of the steps.
At first, she was too far away. Even if she had called out to him, he wouldn’t have heard her.
By the time she was in earshot, however, she realized she didn’t want to call out. She didn’t know what to say.
Phoebe was strong enough to do the exiling hex if she just had her sights on Owen. However, transferring the power of the hex to Nora had weakened it considerably. Nora would have to be touching Owen while she said the words. Phoebe said that it wouldn’t be necessary for Nora to keep her hands on him the whole time. As long as she had her hands on him at one point, that would be enough.
So, Nora kept climbing.
She climbed. And climbed. And climbed.
And finally, she reached the top.
When she got there, Owen had backed away. He stood behind one of the columns. His dark eyes were shadowed. But when he looked up at her, she could see hurt written all over his face.
She licked her lips. “It didn’t have to go this way, Owen.”
Owen lifted his chin, a twisted smile on his face. “Oh, is this the part where you offer me another chance? Where you explain to me how all I have to do is give up my ambition, and I can go back home?”
Nora shook her head. “No, I’m afraid there are no more chances, Owen. You killed people. The muses that were sent after you…” She wasn’t entirely sure that they were all dead. But she had a fairly good idea. They hadn’t looked alive. And the way everyone was reacting… She was holding onto stupid hope to think that anyone could’ve survived.
She kept thinking about Coeus. How he had always been good to them. She couldn’t believe he was gone.
“So, then why are you here?”
Nora closed the distance between them. She gazed into his eyes.
He looked back, his nostrils flaring as he let out a noisy breath.
Slowly, she reached out her hand, and she caressed his face. “I hereby exile you—”
Owen shoved her off.
She went sprawling, landing on her backside on the marble floor.
“That’s why you’re here? You’re here to kick me out of my home?”
Nora struggled to get to her feet. “I’m sorry, Owen. But you’ve given us no choice.”
“And they sent you to do it? You?” He shook his head. “Nora, I really thought...” He laughed harshly. “I believed you. It felt real to me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“We did used to have something, though, didn’t we?” Owen passed a hand over his face. “I still remember. You were a little girl in the snow. I remember I got us to safety. And I protected you for all those years.”
Nora remembered. Her voice came out hoarse. “It isn’t enough, Owen.”
“But I love you,” he said.
She swallowed. “You admitted to me that you weren’t capable of love, didn’t you?”
He took a stumbling step backwards, almost as if she’d slapped him.
Nora flinched. But she couldn’t feel sorry for Owen. Not after everything that he’d done. So she closed the distance between them again. She put her hand on his shoulder. “I do hereby exile you from Helicon, the world of the muses, and strip you of any access—”
Owen spun around, knocking her away. He opened up his palms, and purple light burst forth from them.
Nora felt the power hit her. It seared inside—through her flesh, through her muscle, all the way to her bones. She felt as if every part of her was suddenly alight in the most horrific pain she could imagine. She screamed in agony.
“I love you,” Owen said. “And this is how you treat me?” He thrust more power at her.
Nora writhed in pain. She felt as if her body was being ripped apart.
Owen shook his head at her. “Nora, why? Why?”
She took advantage of the short break to reach out one of her hands and shoot forth a beam of red light. Nimue’s power.
But when it hit Owen, he barely flinched. He seemed to simply absorb it. He laughed. “Oh, you’re going to have to try harder than that, Nora.”
She tried to send another bolt of light at him.
But before she could do anything, he was sending more excruciating pain through her body.
She fell to her knees, shrieking.
He stood over her, his hands like claws, his face underlit by the bright light that emanated from him. He looked demented.
Nora sobbed. “Please, Owen. Please. You’re hurting me.”
Owen
stopped. He gasped. “You deserve to be hurt.”
“Owen, no.”
Owen raised both his hands above his head. As before, he seemed to call down all of the powers of nature—lightning, fire, water, wind, and earth. The bolt came down from the heavens, into Owen’s hands. He drew it down in front of his body. And then he pushed it toward Nora.
The world was blotted out by white-hot pain. Nora felt as if her teeth were being ripped out one by one, as if all of her bones had been shattered, as if her tongue had been split in two. It was indescribable pain, pain that she had never ever experienced.
It hurt too much to make any noise.
She couldn’t see. She couldn’t move.
She could barely hear the footsteps of Owen as he stood over her.
He was going to finish her off. Within another minute she would be just as dead as the other muses who had tried this. She’d gambled with the idea that Owen would spare her, and she had lost. There was nothing in Owen anymore—no compassion. And whatever ties they’d shared had been ruined when she betrayed him.
She waited.
She could hear Owen’s labored breath.
She opened her eyes.
Owen was staring down at her. There were tears in his eyes.
Nora gasped. She drew breath into her ruined lungs, and it was agony. But she managed to breathe out the last few words. “I strip you of any power connected to our realm. May the Fates guide you now, you lost soul.”
She felt the power of the hex leave her body and find him.
She had done it. She’d exiled him.
Owen felt it too. He let out a disbelieving noise, something like a strangled sob.
Nora’s entire body hurt. She groaned.
Owen’s shoulders were shaking. “You took it from me again.”
“I… I had to,” she managed.
He screwed up his face, and for one moment, she was sure that he was going to call all the power again, that he was going to force it into her, wrack her body with pain until she couldn’t handle it and gave up her spirit.
But then, the tension left him. He stood there, looking like an old scarecrow barely being held upright. He managed the ghost of a laugh. “You shouldn’t make me so angry, Nora. Sometime, I really think I’ll kill you.”
Nora let out a shuddering sigh.
Owen turned his back on her and walked away, his footfalls echoing through the marble columns.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Nora couldn’t get to her feet. She rolled over into a tight ball and groaned against the pain.
After lying that way for some time, she finally realized that it was up to her to get out of this. Help wasn’t coming. She was on her own.
With some effort, she managed to manipulate the dimension device to send her back home. There was the typical jarring sensation of being yanked along by her spine, and then…
Home.
She was lying on the ground next to the main fire pit, and she was surrounded by the smells and sounds of Helicon.
Grateful, she passed out.
When she woke up, she was in the healers enclave. She was lying on a bed, not a hammock, and she felt a strange, floating feeling, as if her head wasn’t attached to her body. There was no pain, though, and she was glad of it. It must be some kind of muse magic, some kind of pain-killing spell or something.
She noticed that someone had brought her pet cat-duck, Catling. The little creature purred, nuzzling against her.
“Catling,” she whispered. She lifted her arm—it felt heavy, like it weighed tons—and scratched Catling under her chin. Her fingers trailed over Catling’s webbed feet, over her furry feathers.
Catling burrowed against her warmth.
Nora closed her eyes. She slept again.
She slept for a long time.
* * *
Owen didn’t like killing, and he didn’t like dead things.
He had known this for quite some time, probably ever since he’d seen the lifeless body of Dirk Night lying next to the open rip in Helicon. He thought that killing would make him feel even more powerful. He thought he would relish snuffing out life, being a master of that.
But it only left him cold.
And dead things were worthless. Live things could be controlled, could be manipulated. Dead things were just… meat.
He hadn’t meant to kill the muses that had come before. He’d been so angry. He had tried to strike a deal, to tell them to leave him alone and he would leave them alone.
True, he had been lying. He had no intention of leaving Helicon alone. But he would have left it alone for a while, anyway. Enough time to lull the muses back into a false sense of security. Why couldn’t they have just done as he asked?
But, no. They had come after him, trying to exile him. And then he had no choice. He had to kill.
Except, it hadn’t been that way. It hadn’t been a conscious decision. One minute, he was funneling power into them, fueled by his rage, and the next minute… meat.
Owen didn’t like it. It made him feel uncomfortable.
He knew that Nora sometimes felt discomfort when it came to seeing other people hurt or embarrassed. It was so strong that she didn’t even like to watch the show I Love Lucy, because Lucy was always getting into situations that threatened to be awkward or disastrous. That kind of thing made Nora nervous. She felt so bad for a character in a black-and-white TV show that she avoided it.
Owen had never quite understood that. He had thought he was above such things. He could watch other people in pain, and it didn’t phase him at all.
But the dead things.
The dead things made him feel discomfort. They made his skin crawl.
He didn’t like it.
Weeks went by.
He was exiled from Helicon, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to get back. He was alone. He missed Nora. He missed the way that she would make fun of him, would challenge him, even the way she would get him drunk and ply him for information.
He didn’t have anything anymore.
What had he done wrong?
Maybe, when he found out Nora was playing him, he shouldn’t have gone into a rage like that. Maybe he should have just absorbed the knowledge and used it to his advantage. He could’ve stayed there, and he could’ve payed her back.
But he had gotten so angry. Sometimes he felt like the anger used his body. Like the anger took over him, and he was nothing but anger. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like being out of control.
He was lonely. As one week faded into the next, he began to feel listless. He wandered through the empty halls of Mount Olympus, the places that had once been occupied by the gods… Now it was nothing more than empty stone. The place was hollow. Beautiful, but cold.
It was like a skeleton, the gleaming bones picked clean by birds.
Owen wondered what it would’ve been like during its days of splendor. He wondered if he would have been welcome here, son of a god. Even though Dionysus had never had any use for him, that didn’t mean he might not have found a place amongst his father’s people.
The truth was, he had never belonged anywhere.
It was this thought, this thought which he had continuously, that made him long for Helicon over and over again.
It wasn’t as if he really belonged there either. But he thought he could make it a place that he belonged. Except he’d been thwarted, yet again.
He knew that he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Helicon would be his. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to do it yet.
The first step, of course would be to figure out how to remove the exile hex. But the muse magic was strong. Even though he had the power of the gods, he was no match for it. Some kinds of magic were simply too ancient and stable to be tampered with. Getting around it would be a challenge. He wasn’t sure he felt up to it.
He didn’t feel up to much of anything. He spent his days in a sad haze, feeling sorry for himself, staring at blank walls.
But o
ne day, while he was strolling through the vineyard of grapes used to make ambrosia, he heard someone yelling his name.
He made his way back to the entrance of Mount Olympus, and found two of his loyals waiting there for him. Jed and Kevin.
“There you are,” said Jed. “We were afraid you left.”
“No, I’m still here,” said Owen. “How did you get here?”
Kevin held up a dimension device. “Stole it. We couldn’t believe how badly you were treated.”
“Yeah,” said Jed. “We know that what you did to Coeus and Alexander and the others was self-defense.”
Owen nodded slowly. “It was. Self-defense.”
“Anyway, it was wrong,” said Kevin.
“We’re here to help you get back into Helicon,” said Jed.
“Anything you need, man,” said Kevin.
Owen raised his eyebrows. For the first time in a long time, he felt his spirits lift.
* * *
The Winter Solstice in Helicon was a celebration that lasted for several days. Unlike some of the other seasonal celebration, the weather wasn’t changed. Instead, though it was the Winter Solstice, it felt like high summer. All of the muses cavorted in the warmth, feasting, drinking, and playing music.
At least most years, it was a season of unbridled joy.
But not this year. This year, the Solstice was much more subdued.
The festivities began with a tribute to those muses who had been killed by Owen Asher. Four of them were dead, Alexander among them. Coeus was hanging on by a thread. He was in some sort of coma and hadn’t woken since arriving back in Helicon. The other surviving muse, one of the muse police, was conscious but unable to move his limbs or speak. Sometimes he made agonizing screams that rent the air and carried all throughout the land.
Whatever Owen had done to him, he was still feeling the effects.
Nora herself could attest to the effects of Owen’s power. She was barely up and around by the time of the Solstice. It was taking her a long time to heal. She couldn’t be on her feet for too long. Whatever it was that Owen had done to her, she was lucky to have survived.
At the commemoration for the dead muses, she gave a speech, which was part tribute to them, and part apology for allowing Owen to do what he had done. She felt responsible. After all, she was the one who had kept him there for so long, and she was the one who’d fought for him to stay even longer. If Phoebe’d had her way, Owen would have been exiled at Halloween. Perhaps none of it would’ve happened.
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