I squeal as I jerk my hands away from my face to stare directly up into the three massive, terrifying, precious, beautiful faces of Cerberus.
46
Safe Passage
“Not dying,” I tell Hades’ three-headed monster dog on a groan. “That’s what I’m doing here.”
Thank the Fates for whatever they did to ensure Cerberus met me before I landed here, and not after, no matter what Hades says about the mark on my lips.
“Then you are doing well,” Cer says.
Ber lifts his head to glance around. “How did you get down here?”
My arms are too tired to even lift a hand to point. “I fell into Hades’ waterfall in Olympus.”
Fire and brimstone. That sounds ludicrous even to my ears, and I lived it.
“You fell…” All three heads give a harsh bark that I think might be a laugh. “You are pulling our legs.” Rus even bark-laughs again.
I groan. “I’m afraid not.”
Cer noses me gently. “You speak the truth.”
“Yeah.”
Ber gives a little growl of disbelief. “No one could survive that except a demigod.”
“Color me lucky.” Take that, Zeus. Don’t need love to survive that trip.
“I do not know the meaning of that,” Cer says, “but assume it is sarcasm. Hades also enjoys sarcasm.”
I huff a laugh. Because Hades does. “I’m better at it than he is.”
I swallow, and my throat feels like someone scraped razors down the inside of it. “Is there any way you could help me get back to Olympus?”
I mean…Cerberus poofed in and out of Hades’ home on a wave of smoke, so why not?
“Not from this part of the Underworld.”
“Great,” I mutter and fling an arm that feels like a deadweight over my aching eyes. Then a small part of my brain engages, and I lower my arm to peep at him. “Wait. How did you know I was here?”
“Hades’ mark.” Rus draws his lips back in a fearsome grin. “It tells me every time you enter the Underworld.”
“I will always be able to find you, tiny mortal,” Ber says. And I think he means it as a warning, but to me, it feels like a promise. Protection.
Other than Hades, no one has ever protected me. Not even the Order, despite the fact that, to them, I’m an investment. And to Hades I’m a means to an end.
“You can call me Lyra.”
Cer and Rus bob their heads, but Ber cocks his as if he’s not sure about that. In unison, they speak. “I can’t get you to Olympus, but I can take you to a better place than this.”
Then he puts a paw on top of my chest. A paw the size of a small table with onyx claws straight out of nightmares, and he’s not the gentlest about it, so I grunt. But the sound of it is lost in the silence of traveling. I have no idea what we travel through—space, time, or otherwise—and I don’t care.
Gods, monsters, and magic.
We reappear in a blink, and smoke dissipates rapidly from around us, but because I’m lying on the ground it fills my nostrils and sets my already tortured airways to seizing. It takes me a minute to stop coughing.
I’m still underground, deep underground, but there are lights above me dotting the ceiling—bright blue and luminescent. I don’t know what is making them. Glowworms, maybe? Whatever. They look like stars in a velvety night sky against the black rock of the cavern ceiling.
“Thank you,” I say to my tattoos and send them back to sleep.
A lapping sound, rhythmic and soft, has me forcing my battered, limp body up onto my elbows to find that I’m lying on a dock at the bank of a wide river that glows the same color blue as the points of light on the ceiling.
I lean over the edge of the dock to peer closer. The water doesn’t glow. It’s like the currents deep in the river stir to life glittering specks of light that swirl and dance, creating pattern after pattern, like a kaleidoscope.
I whisper Hades’ words out loud. “It’s not black in the Underworld.”
It’s mesmerizing to watch.
“Styx?” I ask Cerberus.
“Yes,” Cer answers. “Don’t touch, or it could kill you.”
I frown. “I thought the waters that brought me here feed this river.”
“Yes.”
