I snort.Moderation?This from the being that just rewrote my definition of torture by repeatedly killing my child and me? All my near-deaths? Well, they weren’t any fun, either, butthis… This was life-and-death whiplash—and not just my own. Prolonged. Pitiless. Mind-breaking. Most of me wishes I was still on the outside looking in, because inside is just too wrecked to think.
Perses studies me with a sour look. “Too much humanity. Then not enough.”
My eyes narrow. Something in his words pecks at me like Prometheus’s eagle, a sharp jab straight to the gut. “Why do you say that? What do you mean?”
“Your balance is off. From what I hear, it’s been off your entire short life. Repress. Explode. Repress. Explode. On endless repeat.”
I inhale sharply. That sounds too right. I can’t help wondering… If I had better control over myself, could I have saved Kato?
Pain and loss slice through my chest like a barbed saw. My heart clenches, and I throw up a wall in my mind to block out the sight of blue eyes without any light.
I swallow. Maybe with greater control, I would have known better than to try at all.
An awful smirk contorts Perses’s face. “You think that’s all you’ve lost?”
I stop breathing. All of me stops.Oh Gods, Griffin.
No. He was injured, but there’s no way those wounds would have gotten the better of him. There were healers.
What in the Gods’ names is Perses talking about?
My pulse starts to pound, panic hitting my veins like a shot of poison. He’s trying to scare me. And it’s working.
There’s a hitch in my voice. “What do you mean?”
“Zeus sent you here because you overstepped. You wielded the power you were given for something only the Gods should control, and you did it without a hint of restraint. For hisfavored one, he apparently considered a temporary stay in Tartarus to be punishment enough.” Perses spits out that revelation in a way that makes me feel like a spoiled child who should have gotten her backside paddled a thousand times over but never did. “But unlike everyone else in Tartarus, Zeus is giving you a second chance. Understand your magic. Finish what you started.”
“Understand your magic?” I glare at him. “The magic I didn’t even know about for years? That I’ve neveroncemade work like it should? Thatno onewill tell me how to use!”
Perses nods.
“Let me make sure I understand this. We’re the only two in Tartarus who can get out of here, andI’myour second chance?” I laugh just like Mother would and revel in it for once. “That’s unfortunate for you.”
Bronze eyes bore into mine, humorless, pitiless, flat as coins. “I’ve waited millennia for this. You will not take it from me. Now wake up, before it’s too late!”
He reaches out, and I dart to the side, expecting him to try to hurl me over the cliff again. He doesn’t. Instead, he draws a symbol against the cliff wall in front of me, repeating the same archaic swoops and lines in a big square pattern until the invisible traces of power meet again in the place where he started.
I frown, watching him. I’m familiar with the magic. Thanos showed me those ancient figures when he tried to teach me some protective ward marks, but I never usedopen. I only ever triedlock, and since lock never worked like it should, the written counter-spell ofopenwas moot.
Perses drops his hand from the wall, and the rock shudders, ripples, and then stabilizes again with a new view seeming to come from the inside. There are depth and color and sound. Like a window opening to another world, the square in the rock reveals a scene I recognize. It’s the great room in Castle Tarva, the place where we gathered as a family—for what little time we spent there. But it’s different, cozier, and filled with a din that’s indistinct but that speaks of habitation, activity, and warmth.
The scene swoops in to focus on a man in a chair. The ledge seems to lurch beneath my feet, and my eyes fill with tears. Trembling, I step toward the rock wall, closer to the only man who’ll ever make my heart both beat and stall.
“Do you have any idea how much time you’ve wasted?”
Perses’s question comes back to haunt me. Nausea roils in my stomach.
Gray shoots liberally through Griffin’s black hair, the silver threads more heavily concentrated at his temples. His face is thicker. Still handsome and strong, but lacking the sharp angles and hard planes of manhood’s prime and the trials of war. The familiar lines on his face are deeper, like they’ve been cut more permanently into his skin. He looks wiser. Settled. Concentrated on his task.
“You think that’s all you’ve lost?”
My heart drops straight through the gaping hole in my middle. I think I’ve lost a dozen years—or more.
Griffin is seated next to a small but crackling fire. His long legs are stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles. His familiar gray eyes diligently scan the parchment in his hands. He squints a little while reading, which he never used to do. There are more scrolls at his feet, not scattered around like I would no doubt leave them, but stacked tidily next to his chair and placed well away from the fire. When he finishes reading, he neatly rolls up the parchment in his hands, binds it, and then sets it down with the others.
He straightens and lifts his face. His expression lights up at once.He sees me!
I reach for him, and my fingertips bump against hard, cool rock.
