34. Eurydice

34

EURYDICE

All the fears I’ve been trying very hard to keep control of come rushing to the fore when Persephone walks into the library, looking pale and shaky. I surge to my feet and rush to her side. “What’s wrong? Is it the babies?”

“They’re fine.” She pulls me into her arms and hugs me tight. “It didn’t go well. They’re on their way back now, but Charon and several others need medical attention. I don’t know how badly they were hurt.”

Terror takes hold and nearly steals my voice. This is my worst fear. Charon, hurt. Dead. I knew this would be dangerous today, but a part of me hoped that I was overreacting. I feel strong hands on my shoulders and allow Orpheus to pull me back into his embrace. It’s only then, with him supporting me, that I see the look on my sister’s face. It’s sympathetic, yes, but that’s not all it is. I frown. “You’re asking me if I can handle it.”

“It’s okay if you can’t. The first couple times, I had issues with it too.” She takes a breath and her hand falls to her gently rounded stomach. “But if you can’t, then you’ll be a distraction, and we can’t afford that right now. If you want, you can wait here, and I’ll—”

“I can handle it.” I squeeze Orpheus’s arm and step out of his embrace. There’s absolutely no way I’m going to allow them to shuffle me off to the side. I’ve fought too hard to be taken seriously. But that’s not even the driving force right now. I need to see Charon, to know he’s going to be okay. My sister looks doubtful, so I repeat, “Persephone. I can handle it.”

To her credit, she doesn’t question me again. She nods. “Then let’s go.” She turns and strides out of the room.

I go to follow but stop and turn to Orpheus. He looks just as worried as I feel. I open my mouth, but he gets there before I’m able to speak. “If you’re about to offer me an out, I don’t want it. I’m worried about him too.”

“I know you don’t like blood.” Gods, I hope Persephone overstated things. The truth is that I don’t like blood much either. I learned to deal with it. You can’t live on a farm—even a very rich one—without bumping up against the messiness of life, but it never got easier. And this is people. My stomach twists in knots.

Orpheus steps around me and offers me his arm. The gentlemanly gesture should look ridiculous, especially considering our current circumstances, but on him it’s as natural as breathing. “We’re wasting time.” He says it gently, as if I can’t see the tension in his jaw or the worry in his dark eyes. “Are you ready?”

“No.” But I place my hand in the crook of his arm, and we walk out the door together.

Persephone leads us to a part of the house that I’ve never been in before. Based on my mental map, it’s on the opposite side of the garage than I usually enter from. I understand why it’s new to me the moment we walk through the doors and find an arsenal. There are gun racks filled with weapons on three of the walls. There’s also what appears to be tactical gear and a number of other things I have no names for. That’s not where my sister heads though.

Her destination is a door I missed on my first glance. It leads into a hallway studded with more doors. She glances over her shoulder at me. “This is where most of our staff sleeps, or at least the ones who don’t want bedrooms on the second floor.”

Considering I’m the only one I know who sleeps on the second floor, it seems like everyone who works for Hades and Persephone prefers to be housed down here. “I see.”

We turn a corner and push through double set of doors into a room identical to one we would find in a hospital. The only difference is that it’s quite a bit bigger than I expected, but if I don’t miss my guess, they have everything they need here in order to conduct a surgery. The room isn’t empty either. There’s a trio of people in scrubs at the sinks on the far side of the room, washing their hands. Hades stands a few feet back from them with his arms crossed over his chest and a forbidding expression on his face. It only lightens a little bit when he catches sight of my sister as she hurries to him and throws herself into his arms.

I’m happy my brother-in-law is safe. Really, I am. But he’s not what catches and holds my attention. No, that’s the five gurneys with bodies on them.

My legs are shaking, but I muscle past that instinctive response as I carefully cross the room to look down at the people. Two of them are burned so badly I’m not even sure who they are. I recognize the other two, but I don’t pause until I get to the final one. To Charon.

At the sight of him on his side, my knees really do buckle. Only Orpheus’s arm around my waist keeps me off the floor. I suspected it would be bad when Persephone tried to warn me away, but I had no idea. Charon isn’t as badly injured as the first two, at least on the front. But his back? The burned skin has my stomach attempting to rebel. “Oh, Charon.”

“The burns are nasty, but he’ll be fine as long as they don’t get infected.” This is from the nurse who I hadn’t even realized had approached. He’s a tall white man with an easygoing smile and a comforting energy. “We gave him something for the pain, which is why he’s unconscious right now.”

I want to believe him, but I don’t think I’ll take a full breath until Charon opens his eyes and tells me with his own words that he’ll be fine. It’s not going to happen right now.

The nurse motions toward the door. “The others, however, need our help immediately. It would be best if you waited in the hallway while we work to save them.”

“Of course.” Orpheus tightens his hold on my waist and steers us toward the door. “We’ll wait outside, but please come get us when he wakes up.”

“I will.”

Part of me wants to argue that I don’t want to leave the room, that I want to ensure Charon doesn’t leave my sight. I can’t shake the feeling that if he does, I’ll never see him again. The only thing that keeps my lips pressed together is the fact that Hades and Persephone have also been exiled to the hallway.

Now, without the distraction of those gurneys, I actually take in my brother-in-law and realize that he looks like shit. He’s limping, and half his face is caked in blood. It doesn’t slow him down even a little. He leads the way to the next door over, which reveals a comfortably appointed waiting room.

Persephone sinks down onto one of the overstuffed chairs. “What happened?”

In answer, Hades curses longer and harder than I’ve ever heard him before. “They played us. They set a trap and we walked right into it, and we couldn’t even salvage it by taking one of them captive, because they fought to the death.”

My sister goes pale. “It was all for nothing?”

“Not for nothing.” He shakes his head slowly. “But at this juncture, I have to make a hard call, little siren. One you’re not going to like.”

Orpheus and I exchange a look, and I feel the same worry I see reflected in his expression. Somehow, I know that the next words out of Hades’s mouth will change everything.

My suspicions are confirmed when he takes my sister’s hands and says, “I can’t allow this to happen again. There’s not a damn thing I can do about the upper city right now, but I can protect the lower city.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m closing passage between the upper city and the lower city. After today, no one crosses the River Styx.”

Shock makes me forget myself. “Can you do that?”

“Yes.” He looks at me, and then past me at Orpheus. “It wasn’t an option under the last Zeus because he would’ve starved us out. It also served my purpose to allow his spies over the river. That ends now. No one comes into the lower city that I have not personally welcomed through the barrier.”

My sister’s mouth works, but no sound comes out. Finally, she clears her throat. “But the barrier is failing.”

“The external barrier.” He holds up two fingers. “That one is keyed to Poseidon and his descendants. The one around the lower city is keyed to me and mine. Right now, that includes me and you…by virtue of the children you carry.”

My sister’s still visibly struggling with what he’s suggesting. “But my family.” She glances at me. “Our family.”

“It’s not forever, little siren. I wouldn’t make this move if we weren’t in desperate times. Our enemies crossed the river to attack us—to attack you. If I don’t do this, there’s nothing to stop them from doing it again. I will not allow it. Even if it causes a rift between me and the rest of the Thirteen, it’s a small price to pay. They will stand against Circe—or fail—on their own.”

“Hades—”

“Until they can come to me as a unified front, I’m done endangering our people for their petty politics.” He turns to me. “I need you to deliver Ariadne to one of the bridges as soon as possible. The barrier goes down at sunset. As for you.” His gaze flicks to Orpheus. “Both Eurydice and Charon value you, and for the sake of my love for them, I will grant you permission to stay here. But you will stay here, Orpheus, until—if—I lower the barrier again. If that’s not what you want, then you need to cross the bridge into the upper city before sunset as well.”

It’s all happening too quickly. I’m afraid to look at Orpheus. It was one thing for him to decide to stay with us when he still had access to his family, but Hades is taking that away. I know Orpheus loves me, and that he can see himself falling for Charon, but what is that compared to his family that he all but worships?

“I understand.” He slips his hand into mine and squeezes. “Let’s go get Ariadne.”

The second we stop in the hallway, I dig my phone out of my pocket. Persephone made promises to Ariadne, but she’s not going to be thinking about those right now. And Hades obviously isn’t thinking clearly either, or he wouldn’t tell me to just drop her at one of the bridges. She won’t be safe. I understand she’s not his priority right now, but it still frustrates me.

Easier to focus on that frustration than on the worry about what comes next. I cling to the nurse’s assurance the Charon will be okay. He has to be okay.

I stare at my phone as we walk down the hallway. Who do I trust enough to hand off Ariadne to? Eris is the one who got me into this in the first place, but she’s not Aphrodite any longer, and I don’t know the person who currently holds the Aphrodite title very well. Not enough to trust.

I certainly don’t trust my mother enough.

Really, in the end, there’s only one answer. One person powerful enough to keep Ariadne safe from the rest of the Thirteen. I take a deep breath and I call Callisto. It’s almost as if she’s waiting to hear from me, because she answers on the first ring. “Hello, Eurydice.”

“I need your help.” I quickly detail the situation—including the promises Persephone made. The promises I made. “Can you do it?”

She laughs in a way that is not at all reassuring. “Of course I can. Anything for my little sisters. Though, if this proves anything, it’s that you’re both too soft. That girl is a weapon in the right hands.”

True fear sparks through me. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed the moves Callisto has been making since she married Zeus and became Hera. I’ve noticed. MuseWatch did a single article on my sister renovating the orphanage the comes with her title, but no one paid much attention to it. Or if they did, they think it’s a cute little hobby. They don’t see it as her rebuilding the base that the last Zeus spent most of his reign undermining. With him, Hera became an empty title for his doomed spouses and nothing more.

My sister would never be satisfied with an empty title, for her whole identity to be someone’s wife. She also doesn’t hold much in the way of love for the city itself. The only people she cares about are me, our sisters, and our mother. That’s it.

“I want you to promise me that you won’t hurt her, and you’ll keep our promises to her. I want your word.”

Orpheus and I reach the stairs and start up them. It takes two flights before my sister answers me. “Did either of you give her a choice? Or did you just decide what would be best for her?”

“Callisto.”

She laughs again, the sound no more comforting this time than it was the last. “Fine, fine. I’ll play nice with your little war prize. Bring her to the Cypress Bridge. I’ll be waiting on the other side.”