The bubbling sensation that comes with fading away and fading back in at a new place takes me from where I’m sitting by Isabel’s body in the cave to a black marble floor, still wet and miserable. Two booted feet appear in my line of sight. If feet can be angry, these are.
“What were you thinking, Lyra?” Hades growls at me. No, not growls…pops like firecrackers in the street at the New Year.
The last thing I need is to be yelled at after what I just went through. What’s he mad about, anyway? I didn’t win, but I didn’t fucking die, either.
“Dragon teeth?” he thunders next.
Oh.
The mention of dragon teeth reminds me about hearing his voice in my head.
But I don’t ask.
I don’t say anything.
“Where did you get—” Hades cuts himself off. Then, if anything, his voice goes quieter. “The thief who brought you your things. He gave them to you.”
I am not getting Boone in trouble for helping me.
“Did he give you the axe, too?”
I jerk my gaze up at that. “I—”
From out of nowhere, Hades manifests another axe—one that looks exactly like mine.
“It’s a matched pair,” he says. “Odin gifted them to the oldest son of Cronos after we imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus.”
So that’s the symbol on the handle—I thought it was Zeus, but it’s Odin. I bet Zeus loved being passed over for Hades, given that he was the King of the Gods at that point.
“About ten mortal years ago, I thought I lost one.” He gives the axe I’m still gripping a pointed look. “I guess not.”
My eyes go painfully wide. “It just showed up, and it wouldn’t let me get rid of it,” I say.
He slips his axe into one of the rings on the leather straps he’s back to wearing. “I don’t care why you have it. You used it in front of the gods.”
“They’ll think it’s just a switchblade.”
“I can assure you, they know exactly what it is,” he snaps. “That makes two relics, and neither is the one from me. Damn it, Lyra. We were already pushing it with the pearls.”
That was the last concern going through my head at the time. “There are no rules in the Crucible about bringing my own relics,” I say quietly. “Just tell the Daemones where I got them.”
The wrong thing to say, based on the way his silence now flays me.
“You think this is funny?” he murmurs eventually.
Anything but. “I didn’t smile,” I point out.
“Only two other champions used their gifts today. One did it to survive, and the other to win the Labor.”
I frown. “Diego used his gift to win?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hades snarls under his breath. “What do you think the glow was?”
Glow? What glow? “I missed that part. Too busy trying to not die.”
“His gift is the Halo of Heroism. It gives him an edge in all four virtues—Mind, Heart, Courage, and Strength. It appeared over his head while he was working on the problem.”
Well…shit. “That gift is going to make him undefeatable.”
“What you should be asking”—he’s back to thundering—“is why not a single other champion used their gifts when they could have.”
He’s right. He’s right, but I can’t deal with it.
I drop back to lay on the cool floor and fling an arm over my eyes. Vaguely, it’s sunk in that we’re in Hades’ house in Olympus again. I just don’t have the energy to care.
“Are you taking a fucking nap?” I feel him loom overhead.
I don’t open my eyes. “Can you just…give me a minute?”
The ominous silence that settles in the room grows teeth and claws the longer I lay here. It finally penetrates the exhaustion, shock, and sorrow currently holding me in a state of numbness.
I blow out a soft breath. “How long has it been since anyone made you wait?”
“I. Don’t. Wait.” Each word is clipped at the end like he’s biting off the sounds.
And I don’t know what it is about him being a dick in this moment—maybe the arrogant selfishness of it, the “I’m an all-powerful god” of it—but a laugh bursts from me. An abrupt bark of sound that is as much of a surprise to me as it probably is to him and gets swallowed by the silence of his rising ire.
But now that I’ve broken the seal, I can’t stop. Laughter pours out of me, violent and fraught. I manage to sit up, but I mean it. I can’t stop.