But I can’t make myself take it. My gut is screaming at me that this is wrong.
Hands fisted at my sides, I close my eyes and try to think.
Will the gods leave their champions—who will have lost them the Crucible—to die with the sirens? Even if I end the Labor, the gods don’t have to go get them. The Crucible will be over. No need for their mortal champions after today. And the gods are known for their pettiness.
Well, almost all of them.
But could Hades even save them if he wanted, once I ended the Labor? Something tells me in my bones that Zeus set this final Labor up so that there would be no champions left but his own. He just wasn’t expecting me.
But if I stop now, I could lose it all. For Hades. For Boone. For Persephone.
My hand shakes as I slip my fingers into a zippered pocket, bring out one of my pearls, and study it. The thing is…I can’t let the others just die. And I don’t think Hades would want me to, either.
Realization stays my hand for a second as that last thought connects all the dots for me suddenly.
Hades wouldn’t want me to leave them. Even hating the danger I’d be in. Even hating my losing. He’d know that I can’t abandon them. That I would never choose to.
My eyes widen as I suddenly realize why he’s been pushing me away. He knew what this would cost me, and he was giving me a choice.
He’s always seen me better than anyone else, even myself sometimes. My memory flashes back to that moment when we first met, when he said my ability to put myself first would serve me well. I’d thought he was calling me selfish—but maybe he saw me clearly even then. That, probably in some part due to my curse and my need to be loved, I put everyone else before myself. But sometimes, I need to put myself first. Like now.
I need to make the best choice now for me. Not because of Hades. Or Persephone. Or even for Boone. I need to choose what I can live with—and that means saving my friends.
And he knew.
I remember the way Hades held me after Isabel died. The way he never left my side both times I was injured. The way he was when we came together. Those moments were real. Not him moving pieces on the chess board. Real.
He wouldn’t want me to win now if it means living with the pain that I could have saved everyone. Or at least tried to.
I know that’s real, too.
Because if he already knew I could win this challenge, then he also knew I would win it for him. If I didn’t hate him, then I might choose winning for him over saving everyone else. And he made me hate him so that I would make the choice for me.
In his own fucked-up way, he’s told me exactly what’s in his heart.
Because he was willing to sacrifice what I felt for him, even his own needs, to give me a choice. And I don’t hesitate to use his gift now.
I swallow the pearl, picturing exactly where I want to go.
Using my pearls is jarring every time. The same force throws that invisible lasso around my waist and drags me until I’m standing on top of a rock that juts out over pristine blue waves that rush up against it, sending a mist of water over me. When the waves recede, I can see the details of everything on the bottom of the ocean.
Only in an oddly colored way, thanks to the Tears of Eos.
What I’m standing on is one of many such rocks, projecting from the water like spikes, that form a crown around a small island. Doors, windows, and recognizable shapes of buildings are carved out of the natural rock. And all around—in the crevices, on the boulders, in the water—are flowers bursting with color…and bones. Human bones bleached white by the weather and sun. Thousands of them.
Anthemusa. The Isle of Sirens.
But where are they? Shouldn’t at least a few of them be out here on these rocks, luring sailors to their deaths? I check the skies but see no birdlike creatures anywhere.
Carefully, I pick my way across my rock ledge to the island itself. It isn’t massive, but I’ll have a lot of spaces to check in the carved buildings. Or get caught.
I decide to approach this methodically, a room at a time.
Before I set foot through the first doorway, though, I hear it. Singing. But a turmoil of singing, almost like listening to a pack of coyotes in a killing frenzy.
Zeus be damned, that’s not good.
As quickly and quietly as I can, checking around each corner and in every door I pass, I follow the sound, tracking it as it gets louder and louder until I almost stumble into them.
Sirens, hundreds of them, are gathered in an amphitheater carved into the rock of the island itself. At the heart of the theatre, the stone forms a semicircle of tiered seats around a flat bottom, facing a stage that looks like several stories of carved pillars and doorways.
I stand in the shadow of an archway at the back, at the top of a set of steep stairs leading down into the amphitheater. A bird’s-eye view, so to speak. In the flat space before the theater, also carved from rock, are straight-backed chairs that look like thrones. Five of them, in which more sirens sit. The leaders, maybe?
Kneeling before them, faces slack with enchanted wonder, are Zai, Rima, and Diego.
None of them are restrained or fighting. They appear perfectly content to sit there as the sirens seem to argue, but in song. To me, so many voices are a cacophony. I can’t tell what they are saying or arguing over.
But I’m guessing it’s over my friends.
Where are the others?
I scan the grounds for any sign of where they could be and pause at the sight of two younger sirens standing with their backs to a door that leads into the stage itself.
They have to be in there. Right?
Make a plan, Lyra.
Coming up with this one doesn’t take long, but it’s going to involve at least two more pearls if everything goes perfectly. Exactly the number of pearls I have left.
