He bowed deeply, moving nimbly as he nearly fell on his face. “Mama, a visitor,” he said and then glanced over his shoulder at me with raised brows, as if to say, “Introduce yourself.”
I squared my shoulders. “Hello, Fire. Do you remember me?”
She cocked her head, staring at me, brows furrowed quizzically. My heart sank. Why had I come here? What could Fiera possibly have to do with Hades and Caly? Lachesis had gotten it wrong, surely.
Planting her hands on her hips, she dipped her head once. “Why have you come to my realm, Love?”
My brows shot up, hope fluttered delicate wings in my breast. “I… I was sent here.”
She thinned her lips. “No one comes here willingly. Ask me when was the last time I had a visitor, Aphrodite.”
“When was the—”
“Never,” she snipped, and I almost grinned to hear it.
Last I’d seen Fiera, she’d been as waspish and quick to temper as the element she controlled. So it was good to see a bit of that spark still in her.
“I remember you,” she said, softly, as though mostly to herself. Her jeweled orangey-golden eyes narrowed to thin slits. “Though I don’t remember how. Or even why.”
Pea Brain, who was standing again, looked back at me. He knew how. In his eyes, I read misery. I hadn’t been the only one who’d been made to suffer by being forgotten by the one I’d loved most.
I gave his hand a quick squeeze before looking back at Fiera and nodding.
“True. You do know me. How much of the old life do you remember? Do you even recall a curse? What do you know, Fiera?”
Her nostrils flared, and it looked to me like she was grinding her front teeth. The hands she’d held loose and relaxed just seconds ago were now squeezed into tight fists, her knuckles a shade of bone white.
“It’s been many moons since I awoke in a land that looks and feels real but does not feel like home. Pea Brain has spoken to me often of another life, one I can barely remember, but that feels so very real. We lost something, didn’t we? Something of great importance.”
I inhaled deeply. “Yes, Fiera. We lost a lot.”
“And is that why you’re here, then?” She snorted. “Because if you have, you shouldn’t have bothered. Most of what Pea Brain tells me, I can hardly remember, only feelings, impressions that his stories were once true. But whether they were or weren’t, they aren’t now. I can’t help you.”
I took a step forward. She looked like a woman dejected, but also like a barely leashed tiger. She was angry, spitting mad, but she couldn’t understand why. I’d thought my situation worst of all, remembering everything while those around me had forgotten it all, replacing the real with a version of reality that had no merit or basis in fact. I’d almost begun to envy those who’d forgotten everything. There was no old life to miss for them because this new one was all they’d ever known. I’d not stopped to consider that there might actually be worse than my situation, or even Pea Brain’s.
Not to have the memories, but to feel the pain and longing for what had once been surely had to be worst of all. At least I knew what I yearned for. To be so completely in the dark about all of it and yet still crave it, still want it… I couldn’t fathom how that might turn a god mad.
She swallowed hard and took a step toward me. Her dress was crackling at the hem with licking curls of golden flame. “Pea Brain told me… tells me,” she corrected herself, “of a love game. That I was there because I had commanded the one I called sister to give me a companion.”
“He is right. You were there.”
Her long lashes fluttered like feathered wing tips upon her alabaster cheeks as she inhaled deeply and shuddered. “And did I? Did I find such a one?”
I thought of Xolotl, the Aztec fire god and her proposed mate. They’d not gotten on at all—or so Caly and I had believed. Xolotl and Fiera had bickered from sun up to sun down. Like oil and water, they’d simply not mixed. But then we’d seen him sacrifice himself for her in the games. Baba Yaga’s attack on Fiera had nearly been successful, until Xolotl had gotten in front of her and taken the hit himself. Fiera had gone mad to get him back.
I knew little of the Aztec god. I’d never bothered to get to know him because I hadn’t thought them a good match. They were both too fiery and fierce—alphas, the both of them, each trying to dominate the other. But in that one moment of sacrifice and selflessness, I’d felt the spark, the shivering promise of more between them.
But then the curse had rolled through the lands, and any thought of making successful love matches had been shoved far to the back of my mind. Like so many others, I had no idea where Xolotl was today, and up until this very moment, hadn’t much cared, if I was being honest.
I rolled my top lip between my teeth and worried it. Never a dumb one, she glanced at my mouth, then back to my eyes. “You know something, don’t you? Tell me,” she commanded.
I might be a goddess, but the primordials were something else entirely. Not even the Titans could stand against them. They were the most ancient of us and also the most powerful. And unlike the rest of my brothers and sisters on Olympus, they rarely cared for the bloodthirsty games of the Golden Pantheon, as they called my kind. The primordials simply wanted to be and to do as they pleased, rarely interfering in the lives of those around them.
Their powers weren’t derived from or even strengthened by petitioners or believers. They simply were and always would be, so long as the many earths in all the universes rolled with land, air, fire, and water. They’d existed long before us and would continue on long after we’d all gone.
I sighed deeply. “Fiera, I wish I could tell you what you wanted to hear. But the truth is that I don’t know. We did pair you off.”
Her nostrils flared, and she went absolutely still. But I knew she was listening with all her heart because of how she stared at me so unflinchingly. I shook my head and spread my arms.
“What was his name?” she asked, voice sounding deeper, more determined.
“Xolotl,” I said.
Her lashes fluttered, and for a second, she swayed, and a tiny curve of a smile crossed her features, there one second but gone the next, making me question whether I’d even seen it all.
Then she opened her eyes, and it wasn’t only the hem of her skirt but her entire gown that burned with flame. The kerchief that had been holding her hair back was gone, and the green fiery curls danced like electricity around her trim shoulders. She looked every inch the powerful goddess she was.
“You were honest with me,” she said, and I frowned.
“What?”
“I was testing you. I had to. Hades was very specific that I not hand this over to anyone but you. The real you. I had to make sure that you were really you and not the Aphrodite of this time.”
“Wait,” I shook my head. “You remember me?”
Her beautiful face was an unreadable mask, but her eyes flashed. “No. Only this. I am haunted by dreams every night. The same thing since this all began. He comes to me, and hands me a skeleton key.”
I blinked. “Wh-who comes to you?”
Inhaling deeply, she looked suddenly angry. “Him. The one they call Death. He tells me the fate of my world and his hinges on me not forgetting.”
Feeling shocked and numb, I stare at her for a minute. “So you knew I was coming?”
“Like I said, I’ve been dreaming of this. The memories are not my own, and yet somehow, they are. He told me that if I safeguarded his key, he and Calypso would restore my timeline. My…” She cleared her throat. “Xolotl. That somehow by helping them, I’d be helping myself too.”
Saying that I was shell-shocked would be a slight understatement. I was speechless, and my fingertips tingled. I swallowed and then swallowed again, trying to force the jumble of words out of my throat.
“Where’s the key, Fiera? Do you know? Please, tell me you know.”
She squeezed her hand into a fist, and a flash of golden light shone through he
r fingers. Then she turned her fist over and stared at me, her eyes hard and flinty. Her beautiful rose-colored lips were thinned.
“There is so much I don’t remember. But I do know this. I feel hate burning like a cinder in my heart, spreading deeper and wider every day. It takes everything I have not to raze the world for what it has done to me.”
“So why haven’t you?” I had to know.
Blue sparked in the pupils of her golden eyes. She was now a towering inferno of fire and fury. And accustomed as I was to seeing displays of power, she did make me feel breathless and dizzy.
The primordials were truly a spectacular sight to behold when in god mode.
“Because I want it back!”
Her words trembled with the echoes of thousands of voices, adding a shivery resonance to her tone. I curled my free hand into a fist. Pea Brain, who I’d nearly forgotten about, squeezed my hand tightly, as if to ground me.
I trembled, grateful to the little imp for staying by my side.
As quickly as her flame had come on, it vanished, leaving behind only the dirt-smudged, pretty female with sad, woebegone eyes.
“He promised me,” she whispered tightly. “He promised.”
“Hades always keeps his promises, Fiera. You should know that about him. He never says anything he doesn’t mean.”
She snarled, then swiped at her cheeks, and I noticed the shimmering trail of fiery blue sliding down them. The goddess of the flame cried.
It was so shocking to see that all I could do was stare in helpless wonder. It was beautiful and haunting and would probably stay with me all the days of my long life.
“He’d better,” she whispered huskily before opening her hand.
Resting on her palm was a skeleton key with a skull and crossbones at the end and two black hearts joined by hands in the middle. It was dark and foreboding and exactly what the god of the underworld would weave.
I couldn’t seem to make my feet move. Finally, Pea Brain released my hand, moved over to her in his strange, hopping walk, and reached up tentatively for the key.
Fiera didn’t move a muscle or even look at him. Instead, she watched me with hard, flinty eyes.
Pea Brain came back to me and, taking my hand in his, gently set the key upon it.
I stared at the key, my stomach was so unsettled that I felt like I might vomit. Hope sat on my chest like an anvil, making it almost impossible for me to take a proper breath.
After staring at the thing in silence for a good five seconds, I finally remembered to look back at her.
Fiera didn’t look like anyone special anymore. There was no glow or burn on her now. She merely looked like a simple mortal who’d been completely broken by time and circumstance.
I shook my head because it wasn’t supposed to be like this. None of it was. Fiera wasn’t this. She was as powerful a force as her sister, Caly. She was a ball of raging wildcat, not this broken and lonely looking woman.
“Thank you, Fiera. Thank you.”
“Make it right, Aphrodite. Make him remember, or I fear Calypso and I might not survive this.”
“What?” I frowned. “You’re primordials, you can’t die.”
She scoffed. “Is that what Caly told you?” Rolling her eyes, she hugged her arms to her chest. “We don’t need the worship of others to exist, Aphrodite, it’s true. But we absolutely can fade.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”
She laughed, and the sound was full of bitterness. “Believe what you want. It doesn’t alter facts. We have to want to be here. We have to want to stay.”
My lips felt numb as I heard myself ask, “And if you don’t?”
“You’re smart. I think you know.” She waved. “I’m tired, Aphrodite. Tired of all this nonsense. Fix it or don’t. I’m not even sure it matters anymore. Not to me.”
“Hey.” I took another step forward, forcing her eyes to mine. “Don't you speak that way. I will fix this. Hades and I will fix this. Caly will come back to us, and together, they will help create order again.”
She snorted. “Ah, the innocence of youth. Believe as you will.”
Knowing I should never touch a primordial who didn’t wish to be touched, I did it anyway. I squeezed her arm in my hand.
She tensed and held her hands up. Her eyes flashed with flame, and for just a breathless second, I imagined I’d be burned to ashes where I stood. But she didn’t make another move. Simply stared at me.
“Don’t give up yet, Fiera. Hold on. Hang in there. Believe in the impossible. I do.”
“You speak of Hephaestus,” she murmured, and my skin shivered.
“How do you know of him?”
“I might live in a world of fire, but I’m not blind or stupid or dumb. I hear things. I know more. I may not remember my previous life as fully as you, but I remember enough to be curious, to follow the lives of those who I suspect once meant a great deal to me. My sister is water. Her husband a brooding death god who doesn’t stir from his throne of skulls. The world you’ve adopted is in chaos and disarray. Do you really believe any of this can be fixed?”
Her words were a sharp bark, full of anger and righteous fury. But beneath the obvious, I heard a fainter bit of emotion. It was fragile, but definitely there.
Moving my other hand to her other bicep, I squeezed her tight.
“Yes, Fiera. I do. Come hell or high water, I will make him remember. And once he does, Calypso won’t know what hit her.”
She trembled and her eyes slid shut. “Then know this—I have studied my sister at great length. There is a darkness in her now. A battle. The same battle that rages in me and Aria and Tiera. What took lifetimes to create in us, consciousness and the ability to empathize, is almost gone from us now. I remember dregs, small bits of it here and there. I cannot even connect to my imps,” she said softly and looked down at Pea Brain.
His head was hung to his chest, and he was sniffing loudly. My heart squeezed. He loved her as his mother, but his mother was admitting that she could not love him back.
“When a primordial’s consciousness is broken, it can be almost impossible to rebuild, and we cannot connect to memories the way others can. There is no magic cure for us,” she said bitterly. “We have no choice but to build new memories to replace the old ones. But deep down, there are elements that still remain, feelings that linger on. Things we cannot put a name on, only that it matters deeply to us still. That is what Hades will need to tap into with Caly. Tell him not to try making her remember. It will be useless. She will hear the stories, same as I do, but they will mean nothing.”
“Can he even reach her, then? Is she so beyond us now?”
She shrugged. “You tell me, goddess of love. Do you still have hope for us?”
Her laughter rang with cynicism.
“If I have to believe enough for all of us, then that’s what I’ll do. But I won’t give up. I’ve never been any good at that.”
She snorted. “Then you’re a fool, Aphrodite, and I wish you well. But now you must go, for I am weary of this talk.”
She snapped her fingers, and I was gone from the land of fire, instantly back in the land of the dead, frowning as I gazed at Hades lounging in his throne.
He looked at me in startled surprise. “How did you—”
Cutting my hand through the air, I shut him up. He’d cast me out a couple of weeks ago and told me never again to disturb him or return. I honestly didn’t have time to fight with the arrogant lunk any further. My time with Fiera had nearly drained any bit of hope inside of me.
I held up the key as I said, “This is it, Hades. Your fail-safe. You might not remember this, but you sent me to find it.”
He shook his head, frowning hard as he stared at the key between my fingers. “I never—”
“Yes, you did. You did all of this before the curse, set the chessboard in play. I’ve done my part, and now the rest is up to you. Take the key, unlock your heart, and fix this mess.”
/> Walking up to him, I handed him the key.
He looked stunned, still staring at the thing like it was a serpent ready to strike. When I handed it to him, I half expected him to shove me back or banish me as he’d done before. Instead, he opened his palm for it, the move like an automatic reflex.
The key looked so small in his hand, and I shook my head, tired and weary to my very core.
I’d lost everything because of this search to fix him and Caly—my home, my family, any chance I might have had with Hephy. “You’d better be worth this,” I hissed, angry now but not sure why. However, it was better than giving in to the tears that, once started, might never stop again.
“What is this?” he asked, voice full of grit as he finally stared at me with his star-speckled eyes.
I shook my head. “Don’t you recognize it?”
“No,” he said, but I heard a question, a note of doubt in his response. He did know, somewhere deep down.
Frustrated and tired, I snatched the key from his palm, and without thinking, I shoved it through his chest.
“It’s a soul key, Hades. Now wake up, damn you. Wake up!”
He roared as a dark and unholy light flared through the cavernous chambers of his throne room.
Hades
* * *
Once she’d finally left, I looked up. The key had ripped through me like a blade, but it hadn’t pierced only me. It had rocketed through all of the Underworld, setting off a dangerously high tectonic-plate reaction. The earthquake had sounded like a roar ripping through the lands itself.
My throne room was in shambles. My servants were cleaning up the mess as quickly as they could. In fact, all of the Underworld would need to be seen to.
I clutched my chest, rubbing at it furiously, feeling the agony of the blade that had sliced through me.
If I closed my eyes, I could conjure up the memory of its fire burning right through me, bringing with it memories I’d hidden away in the key. For weeks now, I’d felt a lethargy, a lack of feelings and emotions. I was literally a dead man walking. My hand moved over my heart—or rather, where my heart should be.
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 23