He shoots me a smile that’s just a little bit lacking.
“What was the constellation Hera made?” I ask.
They all look to Dae, who tips his head back like he can see the stars here. He can’t—or not the same stars, though I pick out shapes in the bright spots that glow on the ceiling—so he slowly lowers his gaze. “It’s called halmeoni,” he says. That isn’t English, and I don’t think it’s Greek. I raise my brows in question.
“Grandmother,” he says quietly. “In Korean.”
For him? My throat closes around an ache. Maybe Hera wasn’t quite as hard-hearted about that as she seemed.
Dae meets my gaze, and in his eyes, I can see an understanding. A mutual sort of wound. We both lost the people we love most. “Maybe she’ll give you one for Boone, too,” he says. He even smiles a little, kindness there in his eyes. “She could call it the thief.”
I smile back, dropping my gaze to my hands, which are now tangled in my lap. “I think he’d love that.”
I glance around at the others. “Where’s…” I almost don’t want to ask. “Samuel?”
Meike takes my hand. “What did they tell you?”
I look from face to face. “They told me about each game and who won. And about…Neve. She died in the Fields of Forgetting?”
“That’s one way to put it,” Dex mutters darkly.
I frown, and Jackie says, “She wore her armor as protection—after the last Labor involving fields, she said—and when she got lost and the storms came, it attracted lightning. It was—” She has to stop and swallow.
“Gruesome,” Trinica says, stone-faced. “It was gruesome.”
I glance around at the others. Now that I can take a closer look, it’s more obvious. They are, all of them, shell-shocked. That’s the only way to describe it. As if the worst has been thrown at them and they’ve come out different on the other side.
“Oh gods. I’m so sorry.”
“She was a competitive bitch,” Dae says fiercely, and then his lips pull up in a bitter smile. “But she was our bitch.”
Dex looks away. So does Rima.
Dae studies me. “Nora was devastated when Neve’s death was announced in the Overworld.”
I look down into my lap again, trying not to replay the image of Boone falling away from me.
“Artemis took me to her so I could speak with her,” he says, and I lift my head. “Tell her the details of how it happened.”
I like Dae more for having done that. Artemis, too, for that matter.
“And Samuel?” I ask again. “He’s not—”
“He’s still alive.” Dex is the one to speak. “Barely. He was trying to hold off the mother while the rest of us returned the babies. Turns out that band of metal he wore around his wrist was Aegis, the shield. He used it to protect himself, and it got stuck in the mother chimera’s serpent-tail mouth. He couldn’t get it off. The lion head—” Dex grimaces. “It ripped his hand right off.”
My stomach turns queasy. I’ve seen videos of what lions do to their prey.
Which is when I notice that, while the others are visibly upset, Diego is sitting and just sort of smiling.
Zai must catch the drift of my thoughts, because he gives Diego a nudge, and Diego frowns in confusion at first, then a dawning sort of frustration. He’s hardly spoken tonight. Maybe because he not only survived but is in the lead now.
“Sorry, Lyra,” he says. “My prize for winning Demeter’s Labor makes me feel no pain, physical but also mental. Including grief.”
Oh. I have no idea what to say to that.
“Anyway,” Dae says, “Samuel is still healing.”
“I’m glad. He is a good man.” I glance at Diego. I know he is, too, despite that mark.
“Is memory lane why you dragged us down here?” Dex demands harshly. “So you could catch up on all the things we’ve been put through while you’ve been taking a break—”
I lift my dress, not worrying about flashing them my underwear, and he blanches at the sight, the rest of his accusation pittering away.
Styx left its marks on me. It healed my flesh, but the solid black spiderweb-looking pattern is scorched into me for all to see. Front and back.
“You weren’t the only ones fighting to stay alive.” I hold his gaze until he glances away.
“Gods, Lyra.” Zai shifts in his seat.
Rima folds her hands in her lap. “So why did you ask us down here?”
I lower my dress, smoothing it over my knees. Now for the hard part. “I have a story to tell, and then a…proposal to make to you all.”
Dex surges to his feet. “If you think we are going to ally—”
I hold up a hand, cutting him off. “That’s not the proposal.”
