A laugh escapes me, loud and sharp, and maybe a little manic. Of everything I’ve seen in the last twenty-four hours—hellmouths, skeletal ferrymen, black rivers, and screaming souls—the idea that Hayes and Amber are somehow destined to be married is hands-down the most absurd.
“What’s so funny?” she snaps, one hand flying to her hip.
“Oh, come on.” I shake my head. “You mayactlike aprincess, Amber, but that doesn’t magically make you one.”
I glance at Hayes, waiting for him to join my laughter and tell her to knock it off.
“She’s telling the truth,” Hayes says, his voice low and flat. “We have seers here. The gods have always relied on them.” He goes quiet for a moment. “When I was born, Tiresias—one of the oldest and most respected—gave my parents a prophecy.”
His tone shifts. His voice is mechanical now, like something he’s memorized long ago:
“In the decade of the Prince,
a girl—part Earth, part Under—will be born
in the northwestern hemisphere during Samhain.
She will marry the Prince,
and by her will, the immortal races will be united,
and balance restored.”
I stare at him.
“You’re telling me that vague-ass riddle is why you think my sister is your fated bride?”
Hayes has the audacity to just shrug.
“She fits the criteria,” he says, then starts ticking things off on his fingers. “Same decade. October birthday. Western U.S. And she’s a halfbreed—half mortal, half immortal.” He meets my eyes. “Want to venture a guess how many girls check all those boxes?”
“But that doesn’t make sense. Amber’s not a half-anything. She’s normal,” I say. “Just like me.”
Hayes shoots Amber a look, tense and tight. “I told you this was too much for today.”
“She’ll be fine.” Amber waves him off. “She’s tough. She can handle it.”
“Handle what?” I bite out. “Just say it already.”
There’s a beat. Then Hayes exhales slowly, carefully.
“Your father wasn’t mortal, Al. He was a Titan.”
My chest locks up, my lungs straining as if all the air’s been vacuumed out of the room.
A Titan?
Not a deadbeat. Not some coward who abandoned us. A literal Titan god. Just like Mom always said.
All those times I thought she’d lost it, spinning stories about gods and magic and bloodlines. I chalked it up to grief. Delusion. But she was telling the truth this whole time. And Hayes?—
He let me believe she was crazy.
“How could you?” I whisper. “You let me think my mom was sick. That there was something wrong with her?—”
“I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice thick with guilt.
“You knew how scared I was. And you saidnothing?”
