105
105
All The Reasons Why
The darkness here is so thick, the stars and moon don’t penetrate. A few feet in front of me, it’s like a wall of shadow has been raised, obscuring everything.
Which means not only do we have to deal with whatever creature is next without seeing it coming, we have to find the gate, too.
Trinica pulls a strange pink stone out of a pocket and studies it. The prize she won from Athena’s Labor—the Stone of Imithacles, a relic none of us had heard of before but which will give one true answer a day. “Might as well put this to use,” she says, then closes her fingers tightly around it. “How do we pass through this last gate safely?” she asks.
She closes her eyes, but I don’t hear or see anything. I guess the others don’t, either, because we’re watching her and glancing at one another. All while the kraken and my remaining skeleton warriors battle on the other side of the gate.
Then she opens her eyes. “It said, don’t listen.”
“Don’t listen to what?” Rima asks.
“What does that mean?” Diego’s disembodied voice asks.
Which is when I hear it. I think we all do, because each of us slowly stiffens.
Singing.
Beautiful voices raised in song.
Don’t listen.
“Sirens,” Zai whispers beside me.
“You’re finally here,” a voice as beguiling as a lover’s sigh beckons from the dark. “Come play with us.”
The others immediately all move forward, their gazes dreamy. Diego must take his ring off, too, because out of nowhere, he appears, then is swallowed by the wall of shadows.
Everyone but me, Jackie…and Samuel.
Jackie grabs Rima’s arm, but she shakes her off hard and keeps going. Samuel reaches for Dae, but Dae’s too fast, sprinting away.
“Stop!” I try to pull Zai back, but he pushes me to the ground before disappearing into the dark like the others.
Confusion is a writhing knot in my stomach. Jackie’s blessing is to see through enchantments, so I guess she’s protected from the sirens. But Samuel…
He stares back at us for a wide-eyed blink.
“That explains the color of your eyes today,” Jackie whispers. “You’ve been glamoured.”
In other words, Zeus did something to him to help him resist this.
“Why aren’t you affected?” she asks me.
“No clue.”
It doesn’t matter. One of us still needs to get to that gate. Maybe if we do, the Labor will stop and they’ll be okay. But I doubt it.
We all look into the darkness.
“We need to get the others across the line,” Jackie says.
Not waiting for us to agree, she heads into the dark.
With a nod, Samuel activates his shield, holding it before him as he also heads off.
I extract the tiny vial from my vest—my prize from Apollo—and squeeze drops of Eos’ tears into my eyes. Immediately, my vision changes—it’s like looking at the world through iridescent light, as if dawn has turned the land around me blue and bronze and orange and yellow, highlighting the details.
“Here we go,” I whisper to myself.
Then step into the shadows.
Even with my enhanced sight, the darkness is suffocating. It feels like I’m buried alive or drowning. The sensation is beyond unpleasant. It takes every ounce of focus I have not to give in to the panic trying to crawl up my throat.
Around me, scattered across the wide, long, flat earth, are the other champions. They seem to be walking in circles or sort of drunken, meandering paths. I move slowly, one step in front of the other, guard up for anything dangerous.
But it’s just the nine of us. No monsters. No sirens. I don’t even hear them now.
“Yes!” Trinica lifts her arms to the skies like a child reaching for a parent. “Take me!”
Something flashes from the sky to the ground so fast I can’t make it out, and just as fast, it zooms upward.
And Trinica is gone.
“Holy shit!” I stumble back.
“What was that?” Jackie calls to me.
“I don’t know.” Do sirens move that fast? And where did they take Trinica?
A sound like a flag snapping in a stiff wind has me whirling around in time to see the same thing take Diego.
Then Jackie yells, and I whirl again to find her with her wings spread, fighting another winged creature that’s trying to take her into the sky. The thing manages to pin her wings and arms down, and it rockets away.
Do something, Lyra.
Only there’s nothing I can do except stumble around.
They’re too fast.
“Where are you?” I hear a siren’s singsong voice behind me and whirl to find it standing in front of Samuel, who has his shield up. Can it not see him? Is the shield warded against them or something?
“I hear you,” Zai calls out, and the siren whirls.
When she goes for Zai, I have an axe ready, and I throw. It hits the creature in the arm, and the siren screams. But then two more descend, taking her and Zai with them when they go.
My axe clatters to the ground in their wake. I run over to scoop it up, only for that same sound to come down close by. When I look around, Amir is gone.
There’s a flash of gold flying through the air at the siren coming for Rima. Samuel must have thrown his Aegis at whatever is after her. But he misses, and almost a single breath later, a siren takes him, too.
Then Rima. Then Dae.
And then…I’m alone.
I mean completely alone. Abandoned in the middle of the desert, cracked, dry earth beneath my feet. Quiet settles all around me. Even the kraken and minotaur, trapped behind the walls at my back, have gone silent. And the darkness feels like it’s pressing in on me, growing heavier and heavier.
I can’t breathe.
All the champions are gone.
I swallow.
Then jump when that flash of movement comes down right on top of me, and suddenly, a siren is standing before me.
Even with the Tears of Eos painting the details of her face and form in unique lights and lines, I can still see the beauty and deadly danger of the creature. She is all woman except for her arms, which are wings, the feathers reaching the ground. She wears a skirt of sorts, belted low over her hips and with slits up the sides that bare her long legs, and flowers cover her breasts. Her hair is made of feathers sweeping back from her face like a warrior’s headdress, reminding me of Athena’s armor.
I don’t think her skin is human flesh. It’s white, with intricate, swirling markings that look like feathers and tears at the same time. And her face and features could rival Aphrodite for symmetrical, curving perfection.
The siren lifts her chin, slowly turning her head from side to side, eyes skating past me as she seems to search around her. “I sense you, mortal. Why can’t I see you?” Gods, what a voice. Like honey and music and the sound of gentle running water. “Come to me and let me love you.”
I stay very still, holding my breath so even my chest doesn’t move.
She cocks her head the way a bird of prey does. “I will love you better than anyone in your life,” she tempts.
For the briefest second, Hades’ face fills my mind. Then the siren’s gaze shoots to me, and I wrap my hand across my mouth to smother my breath.
But she still can’t see me.
Like I’m invisible.
And that’s when I know for sure.
What Homer didn’t know when he composed the Odyssey, something they now teach us in school, is that sirens don’t just lure humans with their songs—they crave the human’s love almost to the point of sickness, and so they steal them away to their island, where there isn’t food or water to sustain mortal lives.
My stomach twists into a thousand knots, my chest so tight I can’t breathe from the pain echoing in my heart.
Hades didn’t choose me because he saw something special when we first met. The exact opposite, in fact.
I take a shuddering breath. Then another. Hades picked me because of what I’m not.
Lovable.