“He wouldn’t say.” There’s an edge to those words. Is Hades pushing Charon away the same way he is me?
No. That doesn’t make sense.
My gaze skates past him and out the window at his back, looking over the brilliance of Olympus in the sun. It’s all so gaudy to me now, after the Underworld.
“He wouldn’t have gone if it wasn’t important, Lyra.”
“Don’t make excuses for him. He was in my bed last night…” I’m vaguely aware of the way Charon startles, but I’m still stuck following the runaway train of my thoughts. “And today he can’t be bothered to watch while I fight to win that fucking—”
I cut myself off, because the anger is rushing in on the back of resentment toward Hades, toward all of them, and the overwhelming sense that I’m even more alone than ever. It’s like there’s a dam I keep building up only to have it break again behind the weight of the flood. Over and over.
I force myself to move, like I’m shrugging it off, like I’d reject a touch. “He warned me he had nothing to give beyond…” I shake my head. “I just didn’t realize—”
I walk away. If I don’t move, the anger will drown me.
Charon goes to follow, but I ignore him, stalking out the back of Hades’ house, down the terraces to the lands beyond. I keep walking through the fields of soft grasses and summer flowers toward the closest mountain. A path catches my eye, and I follow it.
I just need to not stand still.
The steps are small, forcing me to shorten my strides, and they never stop going up. And up. And up. Winding around the curves of the mountain. And with each step, I’m going over and over every single moment since I tried to throw a rock at Zeus’ temple.
This doesn’t feel right, Hades’ rejection. The callous treatment. It doesn’t feel like who he is. Who he’s shown me. To abandon me this way, and just because he fucked me?
The drop to my right gets so sheer, it would make mortals with a fear of heights plaster themselves against the stone wall. I barely notice. I don’t see the end of the path until I round the last bend and pause, for one small second shocked out of my spinning thoughts and emotions.
Hera’s observatory.
“Wow,” I whisper.
White Corinthian pillars lead up a pathway to a set of floating stairs. Literally floating, not attached to each other or the ground. Those wind up to a domed building, also floating on a bed of clouds. It’s an observatory made of a pink stone of some sort—maybe pink quartz, because the glow of lanterns inside is visible. Over the top of the observatory, like a sail, is a thin, intricately carved sliver of a silver moon. It’s set on rails, and I imagine that it moves with the telescope inside so that it doesn’t block the view.
Even from below, from where I stand, the sky here seems so much closer. So much bigger. I imagine that at night, it would feel like I could just reach out and touch the moon itself. Feel the heat of the stars.
Stars.
Hades calls me his star.
“Are you all right, Lyra?” Cerberus’ serious voice drifts through my mind, and I glance back to find the hellhound standing on the path behind me, all three heads cocked, each set of oddly colored eyes reflecting concern. “I felt your distress.”
Am I all right?
“Not really. No.” Not okay.
All that pounding, restless anger has abandoned me the same way Hades did today, leaving behind confusion and a ton of other shit, and I plop down in the grass right where I’m standing.
After a second, Cerberus lumbers over and proceeds to lay his big body down beside me, curling around me like a shield, positioned so that I can lean back against his shoulder, with his three heads hovering to my right and his hind quarters to my left. His fluffy tail flops in my lap, like a very big, smoky-smelling fur blanket.
“Hades wouldn’t have slept with you if he felt nothing,” Charon says.
I guess he followed me, too. He’s standing now where the stairs from the mountain meet this field, looking poised to turn and walk away if I tell him to.
I sigh and drop my head back against Cerberus, looking up at the brilliant blues of the cloudless sky. Rain would be more appropriate weather for my day. Thunderstorms, maybe. “He told me that there was nothing he could give me. I knew it was…just physical.”
And I convinced myself a little bit that he didn’t really mean it. Because of the way he touched me, the way he looked at me, the things he said, the way he made me feel…
Charon takes a step closer.
Ber’s head comes up, baring a fang. “If you upset her, you answer to me.” He lets me hear what he’s saying to Charon.
“All of us,” the other two tack on.
The ferryman’s eyebrows wing high. “Now I see what Hades means about changing loyalties,” he grumbles. “I will try not to upset her, but she needs to hear this.”
Hear what, exactly? There’s nothing he can say that will change Hades’ mind.
Charon approaches and goes down on one knee before where I sit, expression earnest on that boyishly handsome face. “He’s different with you.”
“That’s true,” Cerberus confirms in triple stereo.
I brush a hand over the tail in my lap. “Because he needs me to win.”
“Because he actually smiles around you,” Charon insists.
I frown. “He smiles around others, too—”
Charon shakes his head. “He’s looser with Cerb and me. Relaxes a bit. But even more with you. And smiles? Not the calculated ones, but sincere ones… No. Never.”
That can’t be right. I would have noticed. Although lately, my powers of observation seem to have been glitching.
