100

100

There Can Be Only One

The fact that a brand-new uniform was delivered to my cell this evening with dinner was a good clue that the next Labor is soon. Tonight, most likely.

I ate. I dressed. And I’ve been sitting on my bed, waiting. I should rest or something, but the anxious energy of nerves and…well, too many nerves to figure out all the other emotions swirling around in there…won’t let me relax.

So I pace. And sit. And pace.

And through the night and into the next day, I watch the door, anticipating one face, hoping for another. I’ve put Zai in a tricky position, but I have absolute faith that he did what I asked. It took convincing, but he agreed.

In the evening, the door suddenly opens—I didn’t even hear footsteps on the other side—and I get to my feet, expecting one of the Daemones or maybe Hades to walk through and take me to my final fight.

Instead…a goddess enters. Dressed in a flowing pink chiffon dress, made up with glittering gold at her eyes and lips, she strolls casually through the door as if this is just a normal Tuesday.

“Hello, darling,” Aphrodite trills.

She doesn’t even glance at Zeles, who let her in. Instead, she looks around my cell, nose wrinkling.

“How very…drab,” she comments. “You must be so bored.”

“I get by.”

She pins me with a gaze sparkling with mischief. “I’d be happy to give you a mental orgasm just to lighten up your dreary day.”

Zeles stiffens where he still stands in the doorway.

Her back is to him, so he doesn’t see the way more mischief tugs at her lips. She’s fucking with the Daemon deliberately.

“I’m about to go into a Labor,” I point out.

Aphrodite hums deeply, suggestively. “It’s the best way to relax before battle that I’ve ever found.”

Battle? Is that a hint?

She raises her eyebrows at me, eyes wide and questioning.

I clear my throat around a chuckle lodged there. “No. Thank you, though.”

She twitches her shoulders in annoyance. “I can feel the unrealized sexual tension stretching from Hades’ home on the other side of Olympus to here.” Then she gives me a look that is insistent and pointed. “Are you sure you don’t want my help?”

Then she glances sideways, indicating Zeles. She wants him to leave.

“Oh… Well… I guess it wouldn’t hurt…”

“Excellent!” She claps her hands joyfully.

Zeles, whose unemotional face is as close to horrified and simultaneously fascinated as I think he gets, clears his throat. “I’ll give you some…privacy.”

He’s through the door like a gunshot, and Aphrodite laughs, her face transforming to genuine humor and not something designed to elicit a specific response. In my opinion, she’s much more beautiful this way. Real.

Sobering, she lets her gaze skate over me.

“Why did you come?” I ask.

“Demeter.”

My eyes widen. That’s the last thing I was expecting, mostly because Zai and I are the only two people who know I reached out to that goddess, through him, asking her to come talk to me. But understanding comes quickly enough, and I grimace. “She won’t come?”

Aphrodite pauses, then shakes her head. “She said no pet of Hades was worthy of her time.”

Stubborn, prideful, arrogant deities. I’m surprised any of them have noses left after cutting them off so often to spite their faces.

“Why did you wish to see her?” Aphrodite asks.

I study her face like she did mine a second ago. Strangely, of all the gods and goddesses, I think I trust her the most. Possibly even more than Hades, with all his secrets and lies. Maybe it’s because she’s let me see the side of her that is real. I’m honestly not sure.

Sharing this secret with her, though…

I take a deep breath. Then another. Please let this be the right decision. “Persephone didn’t die.”

There. I said it. Too late to take it back now. The only way is forward.

The goddess of love and passion’s eyes go wide. “That’s not possible,” she whispers through tight lips.

My heart beats harder at her reaction alone. Did I fuck up by telling her? “You’d better sit down.”

Once we’re both in chairs facing each other through the glass, I tell her the little I know. “Is it possible for the King of the Gods to release prisoners from Tartarus?” I ask.

A little frown has formed between her perfect brows. “No,” she says slowly. “The only way to open Tartarus requires all seven of the gods and goddesses who trapped the Titans in there. Even for Persephone, I don’t think we could convince all seven to risk trying it.” The frown deepens. “How did she get in?” she asks, more to herself than me. “And why?”

Then she lifts her gaze to mine, speculation replacing confusion. “You were going to tell Demeter?”

I nod. “Diego is her champion. The Crucible is his as long as he lives through this Labor. Maybe she could figure out how to use that power to get her daughter back. You said it yourself—Hades always has a plan.”

Hades should have told Persephone’s mother before now, but it’s so like him to play his cards close and to try to fix this on his own.

“I was going to trade this information for a promise to make Boone a god,” I say.

She gives a seductive hum. “I knew I liked you for a reason.” Then her expression becomes serious. “Why now? Why go to all this trouble rather than tell her after the challenge yourself?”

“Because I may not survive,” I say. “And she deserves to know.”

She nods, lips thin. “But I still don’t know what Hades is thinking,” she says. “Opening Tartarus is dangerous and not possible. Not without all of us.”

Aphrodite turns her face away from me, gaze seeming to search the stark white wall opposite. Then she takes her own deep breath, a small sign that tells me how shaken the goddess is. “If Jackie was closer to winning, I would offer to save Boone for you.”

I sit back slightly. My proposal to the other champions really has made the rounds.

“But not Persephone.” Aphrodite returns her gaze to mine. “I won’t tell Demeter this secret.”

Shock reverberates through me, straightening my spine and slashing my brows in a confused frown. “What? Why not?”

“It could start another war between us, and after the last one…” Her eyes darken with pain. “I can’t risk that.”

A war?

Sadness lingers in her expression. “Demeter almost burned down Olympus the day Hades told her Persephone died. He was smart to tell her that lie. Kind, too. If she knew her daughter was alive and where she is—” She shrugs. Then a frown slowly tugs at her features. “I’m guessing Hades doesn’t want anyone else to know?”

I say nothing.

Aphrodite lets out a low whistle. “And yet you’d trust me with this?” She stares, her expression inscrutable, then softly says, “I’m honored. Truly.”

I offer her a crooked smile. “I think you’re one of the good ones.”

Which makes her chuckle. “We’re all equally good…and bad. Just like mortals.”

“Some of you are worse than others,” I mutter darkly.

Aphrodite rolls her eyes. “Athena is…who she is. Zeus, too. All of us, really. We are what we were born to be. Better than the violent Titans but far from perfect.”

“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.