“Aida.” Mo’s voice was behind her now. She whirled and almost fell into him. He looked out of place in his stylish blue jacket, white shirt, and perfectly pressed trousers. A dark curl fell into one eye. “How did you find this place? And how do you know each other?”
Luciano yanked her forward. “Don’t stop, Aida! He can’t hurt you.”
Suddenly Mo was in front of Luciano. He folded his arms and cocked his head as if in thought. “Now, who told you that?”
Momus lifted his arms into the air with a casual, almost bored gesture, and all the bones around them rose with them. Then, he demonstratively pushed his hands toward the ground, sending them crashing down. Aida and Luciano shielded themselves, trapped in the eye of a skeletal storm.
“Please, don’t do this,” Aida begged when the bones had settled.
“I have so many questions, Aida,” Mo said, shaking his head like a disappointed father. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are.” She hated how desperate she sounded.
“Are we?” Mo flicked his hand toward Luciano. “It seems he might be a better friend to you than me.” He scowled.
She tried to reason with him. “Mo, people have more than one friend.”
He scoffed at her. “Do they now? I’m curious to know which friend helped you. There’s no way you reached this sanctuary without someone’s aegis.”
Aida caught a glance of Euphrosyne behind Mo. The goddess closed her eyes and smiled. The air was suddenly even more deeply suffused with the fragrance that evoked memories of love and an acute sense of longing. It filled Aida with a resolve she didn’t know she had.
“That doesn’t matter. But you are right. If we had truly been friends, Mo, I would never have had a reason to come here. My happiness would have mattered to you. But look!” She spread her arms wide, indicating the thousands of bones around them. “Does this look like happiness? Do you think I want to be here? I loved my MODA job. I was so happy. And I was happy about our friendship,” she said, lying about the last part. “But then I discovered you were busy taking it all away. Tell me, Mo, what did you think our understanding was?”
Aida couldn’t read his expression, and he didn’t respond. Instead, he stood there, arms crossed, contemplating her. She caught another glimpse of Effie. Her eyes, a piercing crystalline blue, a striking contrast with her dark skin, met Aida’s with an intensity that propelled her forward.
Aida stepped around Mo, hoping Luciano would follow and Mo would take pity, allowing them to pass. She reached her hand into her pocket and closed it upon the mechanism Vulcan had given to her. She just needed to get close enough...
Luciano, quick to understand, moved ahead of her, guiding her through the scattered bones and clearing a path toward the chair. Aida pulled her hand out of her pocket and was just aboutto throw the ball against the black marble of the dais when suddenly hands were on her shoulders.
Skeletal hands.
Aida was ripped backward to the floor with a painful thud. Vulcan’s precious sphere fell from her hand and rolled into the bones. She scrambled after it, not caring what force had pulled her away from Euphrosyne. Desperation lent her vigor as she pushed her hands through the osseous fragments. Their only chance was to find that device.
Instead, her hands hit a leather boot. She looked up to see Disa standing above her, garbed in one of her outlandish haute couture dresses—a wild ankle-length bloodred tulle piece, the torso wrapped in wide elastic bands, with the bodice and one arm half covered in feathers that rose to a point higher than the goddess’s face. To Aida’s horror, a dozen skeletons were standing behind her. With graceful poise, the goddess of discord reached down, and her fingers deftly extracted the metal ball from its ivory bed.
“Looking for this?” she said.
Despair flooded Aida. A new voice echoed through the chamber, a dolorous waver that could only belong to one being.
“Who are you?”
Each word was slow, soaked in sorrowful emotion.
Luciano was by Aida’s side. He helped her stand.
“Lady Oizys,” Luciano greeted the goddess of misery. His voice wavered.
Aida’s gaze shifted from Discordia to the new arrival, her heart sinking as she beheld the embodiment of despair. Miseria stood draped in her mournful magnificence. Her form was slender, almost fragile, yet her presence filled the chamber with an overwhelming melancholy. Her skin, pale as the moon, seemed almost ethereal. Her hair flowed around her like a veil of shadows, shifting subtly as if stirred by an unseen breeze. Her attire was elegant, a gown that seemed woven from the very nightitself, moving around her in fluid sorrowful waves. Miseria’s eyes, a deep fathomless black, held within them the pain of every sorrow ever felt, their gaze penetrating and inescapable. Aida looked away. Sophie’s aegis could hardly hold up. She wanted to lie down in the sea of bones and die.
“Hello there, sister. Good of you to arrive. Let me introduce you to Miss Reale and Mr. Leto, employees of MODA.” Mo smirked at them. “I suppose you both know you’re fired.”
“Why are you doing this?” Aida asked. She couldn’t stop the tears as she shouted at Mo. “Why do you want any of this?”
The god of guile stepped toward them, his lips twisted in a menacing scowl. Startled, Aida backed up, yanking on Luciano’s sleeve. He was reeling in the depths of Miseria’s despair and was difficult to move. She pulled at him, dragging him away from the advancing god until they hit the dais and fell backward on the step. When she fell, Aida’s hand brushed against Euphrosyne’s foot, and a jolt ripped through her, a bright light of delirious joy that seemed to light up all her senses. She reached out for Luciano’s hand and took it, letting the happiness flow through him too.
“That will not help you.” Miseria’s voice was like a low roll of thunder. She gently moved one hand toward the bone-laden floor, and every last bone began to tremble. The sound was incredible, echoing off the chamber walls. They watched in horror as all the skeletons knitted themselves back together. Soon there was an army in front of them, thousands of dead trembling, waiting for a command.
Luciano raised his voice, defiant. “You can’t kill us.”
