If weapons couldn’t hurt it, I needed a plan. Gods, where was Eleos to scare the damn thing when you needed him?
I heard scraping steel behind me and spun around to see a Ma’at knight charging me. Lifting my spear, I blocked his strike and danced out of his reach. Crimson mist churned around his neck and enchanted his eyes.
A dozen more of Mother’s men surrounded the chimera—surroundedme. One stepped forward, speaking with his voice, but not with his own mind.
“You’re going to die here, Set,” Eris said through her puppet, twisting his mouth into a grin.
40
Eleos
Something had gone wrong. Flames engulfed the western gate, and smoke rose into the sky. Crowds rushed in waves around us, desperately fleeing in the opposite direction.
Nothing was ever simple.
Seraphim stared at the growing fire before turning to me with an unspoken question.
“Go,” I shouted over the screams. “We’ll get Cerys.”
Nodding, she sprinted away from us—toward whatever chaos had disrupted Seth’s challenge.
“Come on!” Percy grabbed my arm and yanked.
Forcing my head away from the flames, I sprinted after him, sticking close to his back as we darted through the streams of people. Leaping into one of the channels, we sloshed through the water to escape the throng. Finally able to see more than a foot in front of me, I twisted my neck to glance behind.
“Where’s Phaedrus?” I shouted.
“What?” Percy spared a single glance around. “I don’t know! Maybe he went with Seraphim.”
Great. Now we’d lost the person we couldleasttrust.Raising my eyes, I focused on the peak of Cerys’ pyramid.
The sight of flames and smoke faded as we fled east. For a brief moment, the screams stopped. A few curious people left their homes and routines to see what had forced part of the city into a fervor. Two streets down from the brief solace, the shouting began anew.
It was faint at first. But with each step we took toward the pyramid, the voices grew.
A mob clustered around a raised platform. Icelus paced back and forth along its stage, and Cerys stood at its center, hands bound behind her back, two Hades Knights at her side—spears pointed toward her neck.
The blood-red banners of Hades hung from pillars towering above her head.
I gritted my teeth, trying to make sense of what anyone was saying in this cacophony.
One word stuck out from the crowd’s chant: ‘false.’
“The Oracle,” Icelus shouted, continuing his speech. “Is given a sacred duty, and blessing—to hear the voices of our divines. But she has forsaken this gift and given its aid to traitors! Because of her, countless lives have been lost.”
‘Traitor!’ rose from the crowd. Someone lobbed a rock, and it soared over the square, striking Cerys in the leg. She winced, but maintained her regal expression.
Percy lunged forward, but I grabbed his arm.
These weren’tnoblescalling for her head. They werecivilians.
Many wore the rags of the poor, while others dressed in the finer togas of the middle class. Save for Icelus and the knights, not one hailed from the ruling class of the ‘gods.’
“Haimyx protects us. Shields us,” Icelus continued. “We can live blessed, peaceful lives because of his sacrifices. To turn against him is to throw us all into chaos. Into war. Intodeath.”
They cheered in response. I stared in disbelief.
How could these people—whose very souls hummed with dread—celebrate the nobles who dictated their lives? Who ripped them from their families, who sent them to death gauntlets for their own amusement, who cut short the thread of their freedom?
