“Well, either way, after this is over, I shall pray to you often.”
Aphrodite’s smile is sincere and shows the depth of her heart for just a moment. “Take care in the last Labor, Lyra. I would like to hear those prayers.” She goes to the door and lifts her hand to knock, only to pause again and shoot me a devilish grin over her shoulder. “Moan.”
“Huh?”
She gives me a pointed look. “Mental orgasm, darling. I have a reputation to uphold.”
Oh.
It hits me what she wants me to do, which is put on a show.
Awesome.
I do my best, moving to lie down on the bed and rumple the sheets so I look appropriately thrashed, which is kind of hard to get enthusiastic about in the moment. Then I let out a keening moan, followed by a healthy, “Oh god.”
“Goddess,” she whispers. “Don’t forget who I am.”
“Oh goddess,” I cry out louder. Then again for good measure.
With an eye roll, she knocks, the door opens, and she’s gone.
Leaving me alone with a thousand competing thoughts.
In my short amount of time being locked up here, I’ve gone over every moment with Hades. Everything he’s said and done. For most of the time, my own heartache had me convinced that the way he was with me—the looks, the touches, the fact that he shared parts of himself with me—was an act to manipulate me. He saw my weakness for him and used it to keep me on his side and fighting to win the Labors. I even, for a second, convinced myself that his offer to help Boone was a lie.
Except he swore on the River Styx. That’s a sacred oath to the gods.
Something else he said comes to me now. Someday, I’ll tell you the rest, and I think you’ll agree it was a good reason… But I’m not sure now that it’s good enough for what you are having to pay.
What I am having to pay.
At the time, I thought he was only speaking about Boone and the death and fear I’ve gone through. But…what if he was talking about more? About him.
My thoughts take a new path. Away from me. Away from the pain of my own feelings, focusing instead on…him. On Hades.
I’m a trained liar.
One of the things we’re taught is to use as much of the truth as possible to make a lie feel more real. Not all of what he showed me, who he was with me, was a lie. It couldn’t have been.
He was holding himself so tightly together on Hera’s mountain.
But at the same time, he wasn’t playing the smart game with me. To get what he wants, he should have been leaning into my sympathies, using the determination I’ve shown to help the other champions survive. And why, after sleeping with me, not continue to use my feelings for him against me? Instead, he seemed to be trying to make me hate him.
Was he being deliberately, brutally nasty? Why?
I can only think of one reason.
Without the stained filter of bitterness and pain and trying very hard to look at it without rose-colored glasses, the way he was with me when we slept together makes no sense in the wake of how he treated me the very next day. That night, he didn’t have to tell me the things he did. He already had me.
Is Aphrodite right that Hades always has a plan? Is Charon right? Did Hades start out trying to deceive me but get tangled in his own web and grow fond of me instead? And without his brother’s curse, could he feel even more?
With a click of the handle, the door swings open and Nike enters. “It’s time,” she says.
101
One Last Blow
It’s time to compete in my last Labor. Or at least to not die, and then what? I was going to run away, but now…
“Are you able to tell me where?” I ask Nike as she unlocks the door to my cell.
The Daemon shakes her head.
“It’s okay,” I assure her, though she doesn’t look concerned. “I figured.”
“Follow me,” she says.
Which I do, out of my block of cells and into a long, narrow hall that leads through what could pass for a fancy version of the front office of a police department, and then outside into the night.
“We can’t teleport inside that building,” she explains. “Wards.”
I expect her to either fly or teleport me away, but instead, she spreads her wings wide and takes off without me.
“Hey!” I call after her. “Where do I—”
Hades appears in the silent jolt of an instant, standing several yards away. Like he can’t quite bring himself to be near me. His eyes glint silver in the glow of evening light as he takes all of me in with a single, sweeping glance. “They treated you well?”
