Only the ancient and crushing magic remains. Suddenly, that vanishes as well. Stillness replaces everything, a shocking backlash to the raging storm. My ears can’t adjust. They throb for sound, but there’s nothing to hear except for the heavy pounding of my own broken heart.
I turn my head, and my eyes meet Griffin’s. He’s on his knees, mouthing something to me from across the still-boiling circle around me. He lifts his hand, reaching for me, his lips moving frenetically, his face full of pleading and devastation and panicked fear.
I shake my head. I can’t hear him. I don’t understand a word.
My hair lifts straight up as a great force abruptly pulls at me like a breath sucking me in. I clutch the blood-slicked cobbles, suddenly sick with fright. My nails break, my grip slips, and my fingers pop off the stones. Screaming, I shoot upward, still reaching out and kicking as I go.
My desperate shout makes no noise. Griffin, Sykouri, then Fisa and all of Thalyria spiral away, tunneling to a point beyond my vision. A vast and quiet darkness inhales me, swallowing me whole. The stars and I whirl in an endless loop, their far-off flickers of light the same gold I saw reflected in the swirling depths of the Chaos Wizard’s timeless eyes.
There’s no breath. No light. No sound. I don’t hear my heartbeat anymore, or feel anything at all. Somewhere in the ether, I close my eyes and go weightless, anchored only by the terrifying realization that I didn’t just lose Kato today. I must have lost myself.
CHAPTER 23
I come awake to shadows. That’s all I see. Around me. In me. I still can’t hear, and my head pounds like it’s been kicked and kicked and kicked and will never recover. Not from this.
I look around, but I already know that Griffin isn’t here. No one I love is, except for the tiny person I carry inside me.
I lower my hand to my belly, and for the first time ever from the outside, I feel Little Bean kick.
Her tiny life force flutters steadily as I stare blankly at a horizon of granite and cloud. I’m high up on a cliffside with a somber valley below. The cliff continues upward, sheer and soaring above my head, and my shelf of rock is small—no more than a few paces in any direction. There’s no way off.
Well, there’s down. But my wings seem to have disappeared again, and without them, down isn’t much of an option. At least my shoulder is healed.
I can’t be dead or else my daughter would be, too. And I’ve seen the steps a person takes to the Styx—a series of events that had nothing to do with this. The dreariness here reminds me of Asphodel, but there’s neither the same sense of finality for what once was nor the implicit potential to move on to the next phase of existence. This feels stagnant and stale, like nothing ever alters in this place.
I fit right in with the bleak landscape, just another shadow along with the rest. I breathe and have a pulse, but there’s no hunger or thirst. I doubt there ever will be. This doesn’t seem like a place for mundane, mortal needs. This seems like a place where scary things crawl out from under rocks.
Even that thought doesn’t bother me. I’m numb except for the very real physical ache in my head. Numb even to Little Bean’s tender stroke.
A cool, damp breeze sends my hair swirling around my head. It’s shorter than I remember, and the ends look like they’ve been burned off. For some reason, there’s only one dagger left in my belt. I slide it free, fist my hair in my other hand, and then shear it off at my nape. I open my hand, and the light wind takes the scorched ends away, sweeping them off into the deep, dark gap. I drop the dagger by my knee. It hits the stone shelf in total silence.
No sound. No needs. No emotion. Maybe the three go hand in hand.
I stare blankly ahead into a thick bank of clouds. Across the valley from me and on both sides, they drape the hills and craggy mountains like colorless garments and misshapen hats. Fog clings to rock, obscuring the closest peaks and even the cliffside right next to me. My shelf is open and clear, though, just like the valley below. There’s a path right to me, cut through cloud. There’s nothing natural about it, but I can’t bring myself to care.
I sit and watch, although there’s nothing to see. At some point, a swarm of small black birds swoops through my field of vision, breaking the monotony with the brisk fluttering of hundreds of wings. I don’t startle at the unexpected sight, or wonder at the utter silence of it. Dulled inside and out, I watch the birds dive back down into the valley and out of sight.
Staring into the endless gray, I eventually debate letting feeling back in—if I even can. It’s the only way for the rawness of loss to settle into me, like a stepping-stone. My existence is built on them. On these blocks of death. If I climb it, then I’m accepting losing Kato, like I eventually accepted that knife in Eleni’s heart. I don’t want to do that. Not when I could have brought him back. If Zeus hadn’t stopped me, Iwouldhave brought Kato back.
But he did stop me. Zeus wrenched from me all that power I was finally ready to embrace. He took my wings. He brought me here. And now I’m a shadow, like everything else. Gray rock. Gray ground. Gray sky. Gray me.
It’s better that way. To see in color would be too painful. To live in color would be a betrayal of those I couldn’t save.
A lot of time must pass while I sit there on the side of the high cliff, my legs dangling over the ledge. It feels like a long stretch to have no needs, no desire to rest, or speak, or move. I don’t try to explore my surroundings—not that there’s much to see or anywhere to go—or to modify anything about my strange new circumstances. There’s no sun that rises or sets, no changing of weather, no passing of days. It’s neither too hot nor too cold. It just is, and that’s the best anyone can say of me, or this place.
The monotony is soothing. It doesn’t require thought. Or memory. It doesn’t poke at dormant emotions like a child prodding a snake with a stick. Nothing uncoils and strikes without warning. Nothing makes me feel. The gray doesn’t conjure the faces of those out of my reach, and it’s better that way. There’s almost peace.
The clouds remain as thick as ever, except for right in front of me. There’s nothing to see, far less even than on the Plain of Asphodel. There are no despairing souls, no angry evildoers. There’s no ferryman, no River Styx. There’s no Kato to send off to a glorious afterlife.
A spasm bursts beneath my ribs. It seems I can still feel. It’s awful. The spasm fades, replaced by gray.
I eventually lie down on my shelf of rock, looking out and letting my hand dangle over the edge. Hanging it over the side hides my wedding ring from me, because Griffin is starting to bump his way into nearly all my thoughts. He’s stubborn, not leaving me alone. With my thumb, I spin the metal band round and round on my finger, my mind straying to the lone figure who was still conscious in Sykouri, his bloodstained hand outstretched to me, his grief-stricken eyes pleading, his mouth moving on frantic words I couldn’t hear, trying to call me back from the brink of my own destruction.
Each blink solidifies the image, so I stop blinking. My eyes stay open, gritty and dry. I wish I could sleep. Sleep is the only real escape, especially from this thing inside me that keeps poking at that snake and trying to wake it up. Emotion stirs, bubbling inside, bubbling up. Closer and closer to the surface. If it boils over, it’ll leave me in a place I’m desperate to avoid. I need to shut it down, shut myself down. But it’s getting harder and harder, and sleep doesn’t appear to be a requirement here—whereverhereis.
As if that stray thought were a question, it conjures what might be an answer in the slow reveal of the landscape. It might take minutes. Hours.Days?I don’t want to be interested, but I can’t help watching and wondering as the blanket of clouds gradually evaporates, disappearing from the hills all around me, leaving them stark and bare. The bumps and cliffs and contours around the deep, dark valley slowly show themselves. Everything is still somber, just more grays upon grays, but for the first time, the air is clear, and I can see what’s around me.
The final clouds dissipate like wafts of smoke that might never have been, and I blink. I blink again.That can’t be right.
