“Huh,” I say and keep sloshing through ankle-deep water, tossing only a quick glance at the screen to see a leanly athletic guy with light-beige skin and dark hair blink back at the camera.
Historically, the goddess favors women exclusively.
Boone just shrugs without breaking stride.
With practiced ease, we reach our destination—a solid-looking wall covered in a heroic depiction of Hermes, with his helm tucked under one arm and the Talaria, his winged sandals, on his feet. Graffiti, of course, to blend in with all the other art down here.
I pause to swing my flashlight both ways, checking that we weren’t followed but only catching the glow of a rat’s eyes before I douse the light. Boone switches off the phone, too. In the pitch-black darkness, I press my palm to the cement wall, feeling for the crypticodes I know are there—small, hidden, raised bumps, a system of letters that are imperceptible to the mortal eye, but we thieves know how to find them and can read them by touch. A way to leave directions for one another—which buildings to avoid, where there are holes in surveillance camera coverage, and so forth.
I don’t bother to read this one, since I know what it says. But at the end of the letters is the button, also hidden from sight, that I depress, triggering a thick cement door to swing open on a gust of breeze. We swiftly step inside before it closes just as fast. Every year or two, a new pledge doesn’t move quick enough, and it’s a bloody mess—one that is my lot to clean up—and a true shame.
As soon as the door seals shut behind us, the secret, god-made chambers that make up our den are immediately illuminated by lanterns blazing with a blue fire that never dies. Fire, it is said, that Hermes gifted the Order to light our dens all over the world.
Boone turns the phone back on.
“You get a signal down here?” I ask.
“I stole Felix’s wifi password.” He sets it on the floor as we both stop to take off the boots.
When I’m done, I put mine and the flashlight on the shelves available for all the pledges to use as we come and go. Boone’s still struggling with his, and I study his downbent head. He didn’t have to help me play keep-away with Chance.
He glances at the phone. “Looks like Hermes made his choice.”
I swallow before asking, “A thief?”
Boone squints at the screen, then shakes his head. “Zai Aridam?”
I pause at that. “Where have I heard that name before?”
He flips the phone around to show me, and sure enough, that name is scrolling across the image, and it finally clicks why it’s familiar. In the last Crucible, a hundred years ago, a man named Mathias Aridam was Zeus’ pick. He never returned. Actually, not a single mortal returned from that one. But their families were all blessed beyond measure.
Aridam. That family took their blessing and moved away from anyone who knew them. This can’t be a coincidence, can it?
“That’s all of them,” Boone says. “I hope they each return home at the end.”
He’s likely in the minority there, as we were still enjoying the result of so many blessings bestowed when no one returned from the last Crucible. I don’t say that out loud.
“Ready?” Boone gets to his feet.
I take a deep breath. “Sure. Why not?”
My stomach sinks when it looks like he’s about to answer my absolutely rhetorical question, but a shock of screams bursts from the phone’s speakers and we both glance down.
“What the—” We stare at the screen.
“Merciful hells,” I mutter.
Zeus’ temple now has a massive, billowing column of red flame out front, pouring black smoke into the skies. Only one god would use that as an entrance.
Hades.
I bet he was scoping out the temple earlier just for this. Of course that would be my luck. The one time I’ve gone anywhere near that forsaken place in all my life, I run into him.
“What is he up to now?” I mutter, ignoring the questioning glance Boone shoots me.
“Greetings, living mortals.” Hades’ voice doesn’t boom. It flows. My stomach clenches in stark recognition of that distinctive fathomless slide of a voice.
“As you all know, I have lost a dear one recently—my lovely Persephone.”
I squeeze my eyes shut at that.
Persephone. His darkly, obsessively beloved queen—Persephone.
His dead queen.
I shiver.
“In her honor…I, too, shall choose a champion,” he announces.
Holy shit. Hades doesn’t participate in the Crucible. Technically, he’s not even part of the major Olympians. Here in the Overworld, rumor has it that because he’s already King of the Underworld, the others in this pantheon don’t want to give him even more power, so he’s not allowed to become King of the Gods in Olympus as well.
A heave of murmurs rips through the crowds around the temple loud enough that the live feed picks it up.
And the mortal he picks. To be chosen by the god of death…yikes. I don’t care exactly what it is the gods have those people doing as champions—but that particular mortal is going to be so screwed.
Hades offers the crowds a slow smile. “And I shall choose…”
Suddenly, thick black smoke swirls around my feet, filling the chamber, and an immediate, knowing dread tries to tear a hole in my stomach. I jerk my head up to stare at Boone, who stares back with dawning horror widening his eyes. “Lyra?”
