Goddess Interrupted (6 page)

Ava shuddered, but said nothing. I fidgeted. “Nyx?” I said, hating how little I knew about any of this. My lessons from the year before had focused on the Greek myths, not their true heritage, and no amount of studying would ever make up for the fact that I hadn’t lived through it like the rest of them. Or at least hadn’t heard the stories for millennia.

“She is the best guard we have,” said my mother. “Henry volunteered to keep Cronus and the rest of the Titans who posed a risk to humanity locked up in the Underworld so there would be no humans around to tempt them, but we knew that if we allowed Cronus to remain conscious, he would find a way out. So the only solution we had was to keep him trapped in his dreams, which is Nyx’s specialty.”

“Then how did he wake up?” I said. “How did he get to the palace?”

James shoved his hands into his pockets. “Henry and I think he’s been waking up for some time—at least a few decades. He’s kept quiet until now, gaining strength, but there’s no way to check and see how awake he really is without risking our lives.”

“The Titans created us,” said my mother. “And they can kill us, as well.”

That was the last thing I wanted to think about, Henry running off to fight that monster again while he might very well be in agony. “You still haven’t told me how he woke up in the first place,” I said, struggling to keep my voice from shaking.

“We don’t know,” said James. “We think Calliope did it.”

“But—” I frowned. “You said he’s been waking up for ages.”

“Decades,” he corrected.

I rolled my eyes. What was a lifetime to most people was the blink of an eye to the council. I would get there eventually, I supposed—if Cronus didn’t eat me first—but until then, I was on mortal time. Six months was six months, not a pleasant nap.

“There’s a strong possibility Calliope planned ahead and started the process when Henry made it clear he would never return her feelings,” said James. “When he started to bring girls home to meet the family and get tested, well…” He shrugged. “She must have snapped. No one but Calliope has the power to break Nyx’s loyalty to Henry and persuade her to wake Cronus up.”

Another thing I wasn’t crazy about hearing: how powerful the goddess who wanted me dead happened to be. “It doesn’t make any sense. If she was trying to protect humans, then why would she risk things going back to the way they were under the Titans?”

“We don’t know,” said my mother. “If we did, we would try to reason with her, but that has proven futile so far.”

“There’s a possibility she bargained with him,” said James. “Why she would trust him to keep his word, I don’t know, but she took your decision hard—”

“She hates you.” Ava squeezed my hand. “It’s the kind of hate that’s all-consuming, and it doesn’t stop for anything. Especially not reason.”

So I had been the target after all, not Ava. I shuddered to think what might have happened if I’d frozen, too.

And was James right? Would Henry have ripped the world apart if Cronus had killed me? I wanted to believe it would have been because of how he felt for me, but a nagging voice in the back of my mind pointed out that if I died, he might have to give up his position as ruler of the Underworld and fade, if he didn’t die going after Cronus. That would’ve pissed me off, too.

“James,” I croaked. “Please get your arm fixed before you bleed to death.”

Glancing at his ripped jacket that was now soaked with blood, he frowned, as if he’d forgotten he’d been injured in the first place. More proof my wound only hurt so badly because I could remember what pain felt like. “Oh. Right. I’ll go do that, then. You’re okay?”

I nodded, and he hesitated before crossing the antechamber and kissing my cheek. He didn’t say goodbye, and I was grateful for that small sign the council wasn’t afraid the world was about to end.

“Come,” said my mother, offering her hand. “Let’s get you someplace where you can rest.”

I wanted to protest. If Henry couldn’t rest, then what right did I have to do so while he was out battling a Titan? However, I knew better than to fight my mother on it. Stubbornness really did run in the family.

She and Ava helped me as I limped to the bedroom. It was humiliating, feeling as if my leg was on fire when the wound was gone and no one else seemed to be affected by injuries that were worse than mine. I tried to walk on my own and ignore it, but that only resulted in a few agonizing steps and the embarrassment of having to stop and lean against the wall. Eventually I gave in and let them help me.

Once I was settled in bed against the mountain of pillows and silk, my mother excused herself. “I would stay, but the others need me, too,” she said apologetically.

“I know,” I said. Whatever the others were discussing was undoubtedly more important and productive than hanging around with me. I wanted her to stay, but she wasn’t just my mother down here, and she had more responsibilities than holding my hand when I was upset.

After making me promise to let her know if I needed anything, she strode out the door, leaving behind a trail of worry she couldn’t hide. That, more than anything else that had happened that day, ate at me until I was sick with anxiety.

“Everything’s going to be okay, right?” I said to Ava as she settled down next to me. Pogo jumped up on the bed and snuggled between us, and I idly stroked his fur. At least I could count on him not to fret.

Ava didn’t answer right away. Wondering if she hadn’t heard me, I turned toward her, only to see that she was crying again.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. No matter how many fights they had or—or anything, they’ve never purposely hurt innocent people before. We’re supposed to protect them, and the six were always really, really adamant about that, you know? That’s why we never thought Calliope was the one killing Henry’s girls. It’s just—she’s never done anything like that before. None of them have.”

She set her head on my shoulder, and I forced myself to swallow the lump of fear in my throat. Ava needed reassurance much more than I did.

“They’ll figure it out,” I said, even though I had no way of knowing if I was telling the truth or not. “They’re strong, right? The council. And she’s one against thirteen.”

“But she has Cronus,” Ava said with a sniff. “When he regains his strength, there’s nothing any of us can do to stop him. It took the six of them ages to contain him the first time, and the only reason they won the war then was because they had the element of surprise. The Titans never thought they’d go against them. But now…”

Now Cronus knew what to expect, and he’d had nearly the entire span of humanity to come up with a way to defeat them. “There’s more of you now though,” I said, keeping my voice steady for Ava’s sake. It was easier to keep a lid on my own fears when she was in such bad shape. “You can win again.”

Ava wiped her cheeks, and when she gave me a hopeless look, I blinked, taken aback. Despite her moments of doubt, Ava had always been bubbly and optimistic, seeing the best in a situation no matter how bleak it was. After she’d died in Eden, instead of bemoaning the loss of her mortal life, no matter how temporary it might have been, she embraced being dead. Even when I’d imposed a harsh punishment for the role she’d played in the scuffle that had resulted in Xander’s supposed death and Theo’s grave injuries, she hadn’t turned on me. She’d fished my body from the river after Calliope had killed me, and she’d brought me back to Henry, believing he could do something to save me. Ava was the one who believed in the impossible, not me. When she lost hope, how was I supposed to have any?

“You don’t understand,” she said in a broken voice. “It took all six of them the first time. It doesn’t matter how many new gods there are. None of us combined are as powerful as a single one of them. Without Calliope fighting with them, we don’t stand a chance.”

I looked away, refusing to let her see my eyes fill with tears. Losing would mean destruction beyond anything I could comprehend. At best, it would mean enslavement for Henry and my mother and everyone I’d come to care about; at worst, it would mean our deaths.

The council might have had countless lifetimes to live, but I was nineteen years old, and I really wanted to see twenty.

* * *

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, Ava was gone and Pogo snored in the indent she’d left in the pillow. Sighing, I took inventory, pleased that at least some of the pain had dulled. Even if it did still hurt to move around, I was determined to grin and bear it.

But the moment I sat up, pain exploded behind my eyes, giving me a splitting headache. I moaned and lay back down, and Pogo licked my cheek as I massaged my temples. Apparently all the pain had gathered in my head while I’d been sleeping.

Someone to my right giggled, and my eyes flew open, taking in the rock walls around me. I wasn’t in my bedroom anymore. Instead I stood in the cavern where I’d watched Henry battle the fog I now knew to be Cronus, and the massive gate loomed before me, carved from the stone itself. I twisted around to find whoever it was that had laughed, and suddenly I was nose-to-nose with Calliope.

I froze. This was it. She’d somehow managed to kidnap me, and there was nothing I could do to protect myself. If she was half as powerful as Ava said she was, she could probably rip me in half with a single thought, and I knew better than to hope there was any way I could talk myself out of this.

To my amazement, she looked past me and stepped forward. Instead of running into me, she moved through me, as if I were nothing more than a ghost.

I wasn’t really here. Just like what had happened when I’d first arrived in the Underworld, this was another vision, and Calliope had no idea I was watching.

I hurried to follow her. She walked proudly through the cavern toward a smaller cave to the side, and I noticed an oddly shaped pile beyond the light that glowed from the ceiling. I could only make out shadows, but whatever it was made Calliope giggle again.

“I can’t believe it.” She stopped a foot from the cave entrance. “Eons of putting up with you, and this is all it takes?”

My insides turned to ice. I didn’t want to look, but my feet moved forward anyway until I could make out the three bodies piled together, bound by chains made of fog and stone.

Walter on the left, his head slumped forward as blood trickled down his cheek. Phillip on the right, an ugly wound running through an eye, down his face and disappearing underneath his shirt.

And Henry in the middle, as pale and still as death.

Chapter Five
Options

I flew to Henry’s side, too afraid to touch him, but too frightened to turn away, either. Desperately I searched all three brothers for any sign that they were still alive, but I saw nothing. No rise and fall of the chest, no telltale flutter of a pulse in their necks—except those were mortal ways of judging if someone was still living. Henry and his brothers weren’t mortal and never had been.

And finally, finally I saw Henry’s eyes crack open. Unlike Calliope, he seemed to focus directly on me, but whether or not he could really see me, I couldn’t be sure. He hadn’t seen me the first time. Then again, he’d been in the middle of a fight then, too.

“It’s okay,” I whispered as I tried to take his hand, but my fingers slipped through his. “Everything will be all right. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you, I promise.”

He sighed inaudibly and closed his eyes, and something inside of me flickered. Had he heard me after all? I reached out to stroke his cheek, stopping a fraction of an inch above his skin. At least this way I could pretend I was touching him.

“Father,” called Calliope from behind me, and I tore myself away from Henry to watch her. “Are you prepared to subdue the others?”

A low rumble echoed through the cavern, no language I could understand, and the smaller rocks on the ground skidded a few inches away from the gate.

“Pardon me,” said Calliope, sarcasm dripping from her sugary voice. “I thought I’d woken the most powerful being in the universe. My mistake.”

In the time it took to blink, a tendril of fog slipped between the bars and lashed toward her. Calliope fell backward, and it narrowly missed, though I suspected that had nothing to do with her ability to defend herself.

“Stop!” she cried, panicked, and satisfaction surged through me. “You need me and you know it.”

The rumbling continued, and Calliope scrambled to her feet, every trace of dignity gone. “You do,” she said, and the uncertainty in her voice was glorious. “No one else is trying to free you, and without me, you’ll be trapped for the rest of eternity by that stupid gate. So you can either do things my way, or you can stay right where you are. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Of course it mattered to her, and Cronus must have known it as well, because his rumblings sounded suspiciously like laughter. Another tendril of fog crept toward Calliope until it was only inches away from her smooth skin. Trembling, she stood her ground as Cronus caressed her cheek.

As quickly as he’d appeared, the fog vanished. Calliope paled, and for a moment I almost felt bad for her. Then I remembered Henry and his brothers tied up in a cave a few feet away, and any drop of sympathy I’d ever had for her evaporated.

Pogo’s warm tongue against my ear brought me crashing back into reality. The rocks melted away, replaced by the red walls of the bedroom, and my stomach turned inside out as the full impact of my vision hit me.

“Mom!” I shrieked, kicking off my blankets and rolling off the bed. I landed with a thud on my hands and knees, and every inch of my body screamed in protest, but I forced myself to stand. Pogo trotted after me, his ears alert, and every step felt like knives as I ran out the door, nearly tripping on the hem of my silver dress.

I was halfway to the throne room when I rounded a corner and smacked into her, and for the second time in as many minutes, I sprawled on the ground.

“Kate?” My mother knelt beside me, her hands hovering as if she wasn’t sure it was safe to touch me.

“I’m fine,” I gasped. “Mom, Henry and the others—Calliope, she has them, and Cronus—”

“What about him?” My mother paled. “Did you see something?”

I nodded. Everything she’d told me about the Titans ran through my mind, making me dizzy. “Calliope has them, and I think—” My voice caught in my throat, and no matter how hard I blinked, I couldn’t stop my eyes from watering.

This was really it. They couldn’t defeat Calliope and Cronus on their own, and it was only a matter of time before Calliope killed Henry. It was a miracle he was still alive in the first place.

In a low, frantic voice, I relayed the details of my vision, my words stumbling and knotting together, making it that much more difficult to speak. “Mom,” I finally said in a small voice, desperate for her to do something to fix this. When I’d been a child, I’d been sure she could do the impossible. Now I was positive she could, but somewhere deep inside of me in a part I didn’t want to admit existed, I knew there was nothing she could do to make this mess go away. “She’s going to let Cronus kill them.”

Her face grew hard, and for one awful moment I saw the power behind my mother’s kind eyes and rosy cheeks. “Sofia,” she called in a voice that rattled me from the inside out.

Sofia was by her side in a second, and like my mother, every trace of gentleness was gone as waves of power radiated from them both. On her own, my mother was a force of nature. With Sofia standing beside her, I was sure they could rip the world to shreds.

“Come, sister,” said my mother. She looked at me, and for a moment a drop of humanity returned to her face. “Take care of yourself, sweetheart,” she said, touching my cheek. I shivered. “And put on a sweater. I’ll return to you as soon as I can.”

With that, she and Sofia joined hands, and like Henry and his brothers had sped off into the vast Underworld, so did my mother and her sister, the only two left who knew how to defeat Cronus.

Feeling hollow and more alone than I ever had before, I pressed my lips together and dragged myself back to my room to change, wondering how much of my family I would lose before this was all said and done.

* * *

The throne room seemed empty without Henry and the rest of his siblings. What was left of the council sat in a circle beside the platform, the chairs collected from all around the palace. I sat on a hard stool that reminded me of the one I’d endured six months ago, when the council had made its decision about whether I would become one of them. At least that one had been padded.

No one touched the two thrones. One was supposed to be mine, but the ceremony hadn’t finished, and even if it had, I didn’t want to be up there without Henry. I wasn’t ready to rule alone—I wasn’t even sure I was ready to rule by his side. With him and the others now gone, I didn’t want to think about what that would do to the natural order of things around the Underworld. Were souls stuck in limbo until Henry returned? What if he never came back?

No. I wasn’t going to think like that. There had to be a way for this to work out—something Calliope wanted more than revenge.

A sick feeling crept over me. She did want something more than revenge. She wanted Henry—and she wanted me dead.

That wasn’t an option yet. Even if I marched up to her and offered her my neck, there was no guarantee it would end things. Cronus was more powerful than I could possibly imagine, and from my vision it was clear that no matter how in control Calliope pretended to be, she wasn’t. She wasn’t the one who was going to decide when this was over.

“What do we do now?”

My voice echoed in the dead silence of the throne room. It’d been nearly ten minutes and no one had said a word, and I could no longer take sitting there while Henry and my mother were in danger.

“What do you mean?” said Ella, who shared a wide armchair with Theo. The two of them were wrapped together as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and I envied them. They still had each other.

“I mean, how do we help them?” I said. “If Mom and Sofia can’t free them, if they—” If they got captured, too. “What are we supposed to do?”

Ella and Theo exchanged looks, and next to them, Irene sighed. “There is no helping them, not when Cronus and Calliope have them.”

I blinked. That was it? “There has to be something we can do.” I looked around the circle for support, but no one met my eye. Not even James. “We can’t leave them there. How is that even an option?”

“Because anything else would be suicide,” said Dylan with a sneer. “While you were getting your beauty sleep, the rest of us went over every feasible plan. With Diana and Sofia, our options were limited. Without them, we have no choice but to wait until Calliope makes her next move. We can’t face her head-on, not if you want there to be any of us left to fight Cronus when he finds a way to escape.”

When,
not
if.
“There has to be something we can do.”

“They knew that this was a possibility,” said Irene. “They knew our powers are limited in this realm, and they took that chance and left us anyway.”

The note of hurt in her voice surprised me. Did they think my mother and Sofia had abandoned them?

“Besides,” added Theo, “there’s still a chance they’ll succeed.”

“And if they don’t?” I said. As much as I wanted to grasp on to the hope that my mother would come back safely without the rest of the council’s intervention, if three of the six couldn’t withstand Calliope and Cronus, I didn’t see how it was possible that only two would.

“Then it’s only a matter of time before Cronus escapes,” said Dylan. “Once he does, he’ll tear the world apart, destroy humanity, and if we’re lucky, kill us quickly.”

The temperature in the throne room seemed to drop twenty degrees. “And none of you are willing to do anything about it?” I said, stunned. “You’re just going to sit back and let it happen, even though he’ll kill you anyway?”

“No,” said Ella sharply, and she glared at Dylan. “If we stay out of it, he might leave us alone.”

“So you’d rather lose the only hope you have of defeating Cronus and saving billions of lives, so long as there’s a chance you’ll be allowed to live?” I said. “Is this a joke?”

No one answered. Of course it wasn’t a joke. They were all serious, and I didn’t know what to say to that. These weren’t the people I’d met and gotten to know in Eden. They were cowards, and the idea that the most powerful beings on the planet could let humanity die—it didn’t make sense. They were supposed to protect them, not sit back and let Cronus kill everyone.

I balled my hands into fists. “You tested me for six months to make sure I was good enough to be one of you—moral enough and strong enough and selfless enough. And now you can’t even help save your own family?”

A small part of me understood that it must have been terrifying to face death when they’d lived for eons thinking they never would. Or at the very least, when they faded, it would be peaceful and without any pain. Death was part of being human, and I hadn’t forgotten what that felt like yet. They’d never had the chance to learn. But that wasn’t an excuse.

“Just because you had to be good enough to be one of us doesn’t mean the rest of us are.” Ava glared at Dylan as well, and he seemed to shrink under the intensity of it. “We’ve never exactly been upstanding, you know. We’re just good at acting holier than thou when it suits our needs. And some of us are better actors than others.”

I stood, and the screech of my stool against the floor gave me goose bumps. “I don’t care what you do. I’m going to find them. You can stay here and sit on your asses all day, or you can help. It doesn’t matter to me. But I would rather be torn to shreds than live with the guilt of knowing that I could have done something and didn’t.”

I didn’t want to die, and in a perfect world, no one would have to. This wasn’t a perfect world though, and they weren’t perfect beings. I wasn’t exactly making the smartest move either, storming off without a plan or an inkling of which direction to go in, but it was better than sitting around and driving myself crazy waiting for something that might never happen.

I turned on my heel and started down the aisle, ignoring the pain in my leg. I took three steps, but the sound of Irene’s voice echoed through the hall.

“Wait.”

I stopped and faced them again, my arms crossed tightly. “I’m not going to let any of you talk me out of it. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want any of you to either, but sitting around here waiting for Cronus to turn us into barbeque won’t do anything to help that.”

“We weren’t going to stop you,” said Dylan, and Ava shot him a look. His eyes narrowed, and he squared his shoulders, but at least he didn’t say anything else.

Irene cleared her throat. “What my dear brother meant to say is that while we are ineffective in the Underworld, there are things we could do aboveground.”

“Like what?” I said warily, wondering if it included finding a spot to hide.

“Create a trap,” said Nicholas, the large blond who had acted as my bodyguard in Eden. He rarely spoke, and I had to glance around the circle before I realized who was talking. “There are only so many exits Cronus can use if Henry—” He paused, and I knew what he meant to say. If Henry didn’t survive. “If Henry isn’t able to keep him in the Underworld,” he amended. “He might tip his hand early on and show us the route he intends to take. We could create a trap for him, something to hold him until we have a plan.”

“He’ll have to open the gate first if he wants to reach the surface,” said Dylan. “I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

I looked at James for an explanation, but he was too busy staring at his hands. “What do you mean?” I said. “Isn’t he already through?”

The other gods looked at me as if I’d asked why one plus one equals two, and my cheeks burned under their stares.