I mutely shook my head.
“That’s how he found you,” Atlas said. “It’s also the bond that was used to pull Silas back when he was Ripped away from you.”
“That was you who pulled him back. Your brotherly bond.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Atlas said. “We all know it was you who saved him.”
Then the Titan was gone. My hand rested on dirt instead of his warm body. I hadn’t realized I’d been stroking Atlas’s cheek, willing him to heal. If I had any idea how to fix his wounds, I would have, but he’d left before I could really try.
Then Silas was by my side, a hand on my shoulder. The attack from the skies let up. Apparently Atlas was correct in his theory; he’d pulled the Furies away from us. A selfless, deadly decision.
“That stupid Titan,” Silas said, more angrily this time. “He’s going to get himself killed.”
I didn’t bother to tell Silas that his brother was already half-dead. He could feel it.
“I need to go to him,” Silas said. “Stay here.”
But as Silas Phased, I grasped his hand. We locked eyes, and he knew I wasn’t letting go. He took me with him, squeezing my hand with a mixture of dismay and gratitude.
Our feet hit firm ground a second later. I didn’t recognize the location, except that we’d landed somewhere high, high up—well above The Isle. Atlas had Phased right into the skies. He might no longer have the strength to move the heavens, but he’d let them think he could.
The second Silas and I materialized, I saw the look of horror and dismay in Atlas’s eyes. The Titan glanced our way, his skin a shade of lifeless gray as his lips parted.
“No,” Atlas gasped. “Silas, it’s a trap!”
Chapter 19
Before I could eveninhale a breath, I realized Atlas was right. The Furies had executed their trap flawlessly. They had correctly anticipated Atlas’s move—that he’d try to draw them away from us—and they’d guessed that Silas would follow his injured brother into the clouds with me in tow.
Silas hadn’t even fully materialized from the Phase before the Furies shot out knotty black ropes to secure his limbs. His skin reddened at the contact, burning where it touched the evil magic. The sky serpents circled us, around and around and around, faster and faster until a blur of blackness cut off our view of anything else.
Atlas lay on a hard, white surface. My feet were on it too; it was like the Titan had turned the clouds around us to marble.
“How lovely.” One of the awful Furies spoke as the serpents slowed in their circling. “You’ve brought your mate with you, Silas. I can smell the bond.”
Silas looked at me, a faint sense of curiosity on his face.
“But whatareyou, pretty girl?” One of the Furies glided toward me. She had a long nose, bent like a crooked river. Her hair was stringy and black, like it’d been dipped in a vat of oil. She took a sniff as she neared me, looking at me with such intensity it was like she could see right through me. “What is that scent?”
I stood stock still, taking in my surroundings as the three Furies dismounted from their sky serpents onto the marbled surface to further examine the mystery that was me. The platform extended around us like a big disc of calcified clouds.
“How is it possible that I don’t recognize your scent?” The Fury’s eyebrows coiled in confusion, then in frustration, like the fact that I was perplexing to her was annoying. “Sister, come see for yourself.”
All three Furies stood on their platforms. Their sky serpents circled the white dais in the sky, creating a moving belt like a venomous version of Saturn’s rings. The monsters’ tongues flicked out, their horns bent at angles, their eyes waiting for the word from their masters to move, to consume, to destroy.
“She’d be delicious, whatever she is,” the second Fury said. “Her soul seems delectable.”
“So pure.” The third Fury licked her lips, like I was an appetizer. Or maybe a dessert, after they slaughtered Atlas and Silas. “The Darkest King has done well for us, sisters.”
“He’s been most generous with his sacrifices,” the second Fury agreed. “What do you say, Megaera? Shall we proceed?”
“She keeps her soul for now,” the first Fury—Megaera—commanded. She stroked a long, rotten nail beneath my chin. “At least until we figure out what she is.”
The other Furies looked disappointed. Instead, they turned their attention to Atlas with newfound hope. The Titan lay on his side, bound by black ropes, his eyes closed. His skin was gray and ashy and sickly. He didn’t have much strength left.
Silas was also bound, but in an upright position. Evil magic wound its way around his wrists, ankles, neck, and waist. There was hardly an inch of him free from those thick black ropes that seemed to shimmer with poisoned scales, an extension of the sky serpents themselves.
Anything less, and Silas would have been able to free himself. But this magic was something else. Straight from the underworld, so wicked even Silas was powerless against it.
