Goddess in Time (14 page)

Finally.

Without hesitation, I reach forward and take the coin.

B
efore my fingers even touch the metal, there is a bright flash and I'm standing in a familiar hallway. I'm on Mount Olympus and it feels different than when I was here a few days ago. It feels . . . old.

I glance up at the big gilded clock that hangs above the mosaic at the far end of the hall. It's a few minutes after two. Just a short time before the moment that changed everything.

Is it possible? Am I really here, ten years ago? Can I really prevent myself from screwing up so many lives?

Until this instant I never stopped to think about how I would do it, how I would stop things. I just thought I'd . . . you know, stop them. But can I walk up to my seven-year-old self and say, “Hey, this is a bad idea. Quit it”?

Will it break my brain?

A door at the other end of the hall swings open, and suddenly I don't have time for strategy. I spin around just as little Nicole and Griffin slip out of the storage closet—a bottle of ambrosia clutched in my tiny hands, a golden cup in his—and scurry down the hall. Giggling and laughing at the prospect of the fun they're about to have.

I'm frozen, watching the last moments of innocent joy I ever remember feeling. After this, everything changed. Life could never be fun again. I got a harsh reality lesson at a very young age. I'm witnessing—rewitnessing—the most important moment in my life.

It's a little overwhelming.

Instinct takes over and I press my back up against the cool marble wall, trying to make myself invisible as they pass by.

It works. They don't notice me, and soon they're rounding the corner and making fast for the nursery.

“Crap.” I ball my hands into fists. “I came here to stop us. Not to cower and hide.”

Pushing away from my hiding spot, I race after them—me—us. I follow the hallway, winding around corner after corner. Over the clomping sound of my combat boots on the marble floor, I can hear their—my—our—laughter, always a turn ahead of me.

Finally, I come around the last bend, skidding to a stop in the hallway that leads to the nursery. Little Nicole and Griffin are standing outside the door, arguing over who is going to get to feed the ambrosia to Hera's son.

I'd forgotten that part.

Memory resurfaces as I watch my younger self make a pouty face at Griffin as he snatches the bottle from her hand. With a smirk, he turns and reaches for the door handle.

“No!” I shout, sprinting the distance to the nursery door.

They don't react.

Even as I'm racing full-out, I can sense that something is wrong. There is something . . . unreal about what I'm experiencing. I get to the door right as it closes behind young Nicole and Griffin.

“There's still time,” I gasp, reaching for the closing door. “I can still—”

My fingers glide right through the golden handle.

“What the—?”

I try to grab the handle, the door itself, anything, but my hand moves through the surfaces as if they're nothing more than illusion.

In a last-ditch effort, I step fully through the door, no longer shocked to find myself standing the nursery just as Griffin is about to deliver the immortality-killing dose.

“NO!” I scream.

Tears streak down my cheeks as I watch my young self cheer Griffin on as he feeds the drops of golden liquid to the baby.

Footsteps echo in the hall outside the nursery.

I know what's coming—
who's
coming. Hera and her entourage are on their way to check on the baby, and they're going to find him drained of his immortality, with me and Griffin standing over the crib.

I can't watch.

As the queen enters the room, I walk through a side wall, into an unused chamber.

My first response is disbelief. After everything I've been through, everything my friends and I have
worked hard to achieve, I can't believe it amounted to nothing. I visited Olympus, Poseidon's palace, and Hades. I confronted the god of time, the queen of the underworld, and finally the Fates themselves. All those challenges, all those successes
can't
have been for nothing.

My second response is anger. Wrath. Pure, unadulterated fury. I met every requirement. I overcame every obstacle. I've earned the right to fix things. I've earned the right to be something more than a pawn in some twisted game.

I let out a primal scream, putting all of my fury and frustration into the release.

But the release doesn't come. The fury doesn't release, and I feel like a bottle of soda ready to explode as soon as someone loosens the cap.

There is only one way to relieve the pressure.

“Moirae!”
I scream. “You tricked me! Your own daughter, you cheated me like the gods have been cheating humans for millennia! How dare you? Cowards!”

I just want to yell. I just want them to know how betrayed I feel—about everything. I know they can hear me, even in the future.

I don't expect them to show up.

When the three sisters shimmer into the spot in front of me, they don't look the least bit embarrassed. They should be ashamed or contrite or at least look guilty as Hades for sending me on a goose chase to the past.

But no, they look completely undisturbed.

“You tricked me,” I accuse.

“It was no trick,” the middle-aged one says.

“We told you it was illegal,” the young one adds.

“Impossible,” the old one corrects. “We told you it was impossible.”

“Impossible,” the young one agrees.

“It's not!” I insist. “It can't be.”

Why else would it be illegal? Why else would they and Chronos have given me such dire warnings about changing the past unless it was
possible
for me to do so? Why bother? It doesn't make any sense.

“We did not allow it,” the middle-aged one says.

The young one shakes her head.

“Why not?” I demand, feeling tears well in my eyes. “Why would you let me come back and not change anything?”

What was the point? Everything I've done, every risk I've taken . . . and it all came down to the Fates—my mothers—saying no.

This is the gods' surprise twist at its finest. No less unfair than the original decree that set me on this path in the first place. No less cruel.

“To allow a mortal to change the course of time,” the middle-aged one—the reasonable one—explains, “would put all of time at risk.”

“Bad things,” the young one says, nodding vigorously. “Very bad things.”

The old one mutters something about “impetuous” and “youth”—honestly, who wouldn't be young compared to her?

All of the time and energy and emotion I've put into the quest over the last few days just drains out of me, washing away like chalk art in a rainstorm. My entire body sags and I feel . . . defeated. This really is the end.

For ten years, I've been consumed by guilt. I've lived with it every minute of every day, dreamed of it every night. I thought that finally, after all this time, it would be over. I thought I would finally be absolved.

“Please,” I whisper, sinking to my knees on the floor. I look up at the three women, who are watching me, unseeing, with varying degrees of pity and confusion in their expressions. “If you care for me at all—if you feel bad about anything that's happened—then please . . .
make this right.”

The old one snorts.

The young one scowls and tilts her head.

The middle-aged one is still. Unblinking as she holds up the eye to study me. I focus on her. I stare right back, trying to convey every last ounce of my anguish through whatever means possible.

When I see a glint of moisture beneath her empty eye sockets, I feel the first spark of hope rekindle.

I don't move, don't breathe, don't anything as she turns to the old one and says something in an ancient Greek dialect I can't understand.

Their conversation is hushed and vehement. From the body language, I can tell the middle-aged one has made a suggestion, the old one disagrees, and the young one . . . well, I'm not sure she understands what's going on any more than I do.

Finally, when I am about to pass out from holding my breath, they turn back to me. The middle-aged one steps closer and holds the eye toward me.

“We have come up with an acceptable alternative,” she says.

I don't ask,
Acceptable to who?

“We will agree to change the course of your parents' . . .” She shifts uncomfortably. “Of your
adopted
parents' lives, on one condition.”

“Yes,” I blurt. “Okay.”

“You have not heard the condition,” the old one snaps.

“It doesn't matter,” I reply. “I'll do anything.”

“But still, you must consider,” the middle-aged one says. “The condition is this: you must accept the gift of your heritage.”

“A gift?” I echo.

Like a present. That sounds like a good thing, not like something I have to weigh and consider before I decide.

Of course, this is the world of Greek mythology. Nothing is ever that straightforward. This must be the crowning surprise twist, the grand finale.

I ask, “What kind of gift?”

“An ability,” the middle-aged one replies.

“Precognition,”
the old one grumbles.

My silence must betray my confusion, because the young one explains, “You'll see the future.”

“Second sight,” the middle-aged one adds.

I jerk back, leaning back into my heels. Now, that I did not expect.

Maybe I should have. After what happened in Poseidon's throne room and at the entrance to the Hall of Springtime, maybe I should have guessed this was coming.

The ability to see the future is not unheard of in the world of gods and myths, but the people who get the gift . . . well, let's just say they don't always wind up with happy endings. Cassandra went insane because no one believed her prophecies. Tiresias was blind and spent seven years as a woman. Manto was taken captive as a prize of war.

So, yeah, not great things.

But the idea that by this one simple—fine,
not
simple, but easy—action, I can make everything right with my parents? Where do I sign up?

“Yes,” I say again, this time with full knowledge of what I'm accepting. “I'll do it. I'll accept the gift.”

The middle-aged one extends her hand. I reach up and take it, and when I do I feel flash of light in my mind. It's like a thousand thoughts explode into my brain at once.

I close my eyes to shut out as much sensation as possible.

“You will learn to filter them,” the middle-aged one promises.

“Calm your mind,” the young one says.

“Focus on a single point,” the old one advises. “Focus on your parents.”

The moment she mentions my parents, all the random thoughts clear away and I can see my mom and dad. My
real
mom and dad—not the three women who . . .
made
me.

I open my eyes.

“They're back,” I say, my voice a rough whisper. “My parents are back on Serfopoula. Back in the
hematheos
world.”

I don't know how I know that, but I feel it all the way into the core of my soul. Whatever the Fates did worked. My parents are coming home.

A bubble of joy—true, honest to goodness
joy
—fills my chest. I can't even begin to describe the sense of relief.

My smile fades when the old one says, “No, not yet.”

“But they soon will be,” the middle-aged one says.

“That certainty you felt,” the young one explains, “was your guide to the future. You saw what
will
be true.”

That blows my mind more than a little. I shake my head, trying to wrap my brain around the idea—the reality—that I can now sense the future. And the fact that I've succeeded. I've completed my quest. I went back in time and, with a little extra help, changed the past.

“Until you learn to manage your new power,” the old one says, “we will limit the flow of knowledge.”

“Wouldn't want to overload your brain,” the young one says.

The old one elbows her in the ribs.

“You should know,” the middle-aged one says, in a voice that sets me immediately on alert, “that only
your
family thread has changed.”

“Only my—?” The meaning of her words becomes clear before I can ask what she means. “Griffin.”

She nods.

The old one says, “We cannot change his fate.”

“You
cannot change his fate,” the young one adds.

“
I
can't,” I echo.

I close my eyes as the middle-aged one nods. When I do, I see Griffin standing on the Academy yacht, setting a bulky backpack down on the deck as he waves good-bye to the handful of us gathered on the dock to watch him depart.

As the yacht sails away, I know—in that unknowable way—that he's starting a quest of his own.

“I can't,” I say, opening my eyes. “But
he
can.”

“His fate,” the old one says, “his parents' fates, are only his to change.”

“You cannot guide him,” the middle-aged one says.

“But you can encourage him,” the young one cheers. “And boy will he need your encouragement.”

The old one elbows her in the side again.

“Be cautious with your gift,” the middle-aged one says. “The future is a great responsibility.”

Responsibility
is pretty much a four-letter word to me, but I think this is one I can handle. Better me than most of the
theo
brats at the Academy. At least I know the power will be in good hands.

And because a girl doesn't change all her spots at once, I just might use that power to get the best of Headmaster Petrolas every once in a while.