63

63

You Can’t Choose Your Family

I narrow my eyes, trying to make the faces on the television connect to a memory. Any memory.

“We are so worried about our little Lyra,” the man says.

I sit straight up in bed, tightening my grip on Hades.

The man has an arm wrapped around the woman’s waist. Her smile seems wooden.

“What in the—?”

The man is the right age to be my dad. Tall with broad shoulders and an equally broad belly, he has the same black hair as me…I guess. Brown eyes, though. And the shape of his face is different than mine. He beams straight into the camera. I don’t remember my dad’s face, but I don’t remember beaming smiles, either.

The woman is petite in the same way Meike is. Her brown hair is graying at the roots, but she does have green eyes. Like mine? Is there gold at the center? She’s too far from the camera to tell.

Do I even recognize her? I mean, my family’s faces are blurry in my head after all this time. I was only three when they dropped me in Felix’s lap. My memories of them include eating a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and a hazy recollection of my mother singing to me, but otherwise I just have the vague knowledge that I had parents once.

“They never called me Lyra,” I say. More to myself than Hades.

Lyra wasn’t my name before I joined the Order. I don’t remember what my name was, but that wasn’t it.

“We understand Lyra is working off a debt for your family as part of the Order of Thieves,” the newscaster says. “It is also said that the Order is getting threats. It seems many do not want Hades to become King of the Gods. What do you think of that?”

I shoot Hades a frowning look. “Is that true?”

“Are you surprised?”

No. Not really.

I missed my parents’ answer, but I catch the next question when I turn back to the TV. “Did Lyra volunteer to pay your debts? From the little we’ve managed to learn about her background, she doesn’t seem like the type who would.”

I scowl. The world thinks they know me, huh?

The man who is supposed to be my father lets his expression droop from suitably sad to remorseful, and I curl my hands into fists, not buying one scrap of it. “She asked us to let her go,” he says.

When I was fucking three years old?

“She’s always been brave and selfless that way. We are allowed no contact with her, of course. Those are the rules of the Order.” He wipes at his eyes. “They don’t want their pledges distracted by outside influences while they work.”

“Bullshit,” I mutter under my breath.

That man is spewing so many lies that I can’t even keep count.

“But the Order has kept in touch over the years,” he continues, “and we know that our debt is almost paid and soon our Lyra can come back to us.”

“Call me Lyra one more time, asshole.” It’s a good thing he’s on the other side of the screen, or I don’t know what I’d do.

There’s a dinging in the background—one of the medical instruments hooked up to me. But I’m not paying that any attention.

“What age was she when she went to the order?” is the next question.

“Lyra, you need to calm down.” Hades’ free hand cups my face, but his voice is coming from a tunnel a long way off. All I can see and hear are my supposed parents.

My mother opens her mouth, but my father squeezes her waist, and she closes it again.

“We signed something that does not allow us to disclose,” he says, “but old enough to make up her own mind.”

“Liar!” My axe has somehow made it into my hands, and I hurl it at the TV. It hits dead-on, lodging in the center. The screen splinters out from the blade, and the image disappears.

Hades sits on the bed beside me, and all I can see is his face. His gray eyes are darker…with what?

Anger?

At me? He should take it out on those two people—

He uses the pad of his thumb and wipes away tears I didn’t even realize had leaked out of my foolish, betraying eyes. Those people aren’t worth crying over. Period. End of sentence.

After what I just saw, I’m not even sure they ever had a debt in the first place. The clothes they were wearing, the generally well-fed look of them, the latest-gen iPhone in my father’s hand—it doesn’t seem like they’ve been suffering.

Hades says my name.

The beeping of the machine now penetrates, and it’s going in time to my rapid heartbeat. I’m looking at Hades, but I’m not really seeing him or hearing him. I’m just replaying those few questions and answers on the TV over and over and over in my mind. I’m shaking my head a little bit, as if rejection of all that is coming out in movement. If I don’t let it out somehow, it’s just going to build and fester. Maybe I know that.

I dash a hand across my eyes.

“Do you want me to smite them for you?” Hades asks.

That gets my attention. My gaze meets his, and I blink several times. “Could you?”

The look that he gives me is one not of admonishment but patience and…warmth. And I twist my lips and shake my head at the same time.

“No. Don’t smite them.”

I’m pretty sure he knew that would be my answer in the end. I dash my hand across my eyes again. Why won’t I stop watering like a poor, pathetic gray cloud that doesn’t stop drizzling? “They sent me to the Order when I was three.” The words come out softly.

I look away from Hades. His gaze is too full of understanding. Empathy just makes me want to cry harder. “Those people are not worth my tears. Of course they’re not worth it.”

Again I don’t realize I’m saying my thoughts out loud until he answers.

“No, they’re not.”

I pick at the thin blanket covering my legs. “The Order wouldn’t have told them that I am close to paying off their debt, because I paid it off years ago. I just had nowhere else to go. No one knows that.” I glance at him. “Except you. Every word out of that man’s mouth was lies. How could I…” I stop, shaking my head again.

“How could you what?” Hades asks.

“Come from liars like that?”

“Could be worse,” he murmurs. “You could have been swallowed alive as a baby by your Titan father.”

But I’m still in my own head, spinning like a tornado sucking up more and more debris. “And my mother just stood there saying nothing. She didn’t believe him. You could see it in her face. But she just said nothing. Is that what she did when he wanted to make me work off their debt at three years old? She just…let him?” I give myself a shake. “I know one thing for sure. I’m not going back to them.”

He tucks some hair behind my ear, his fingers gentle and soothing. “You don’t have to. You’re well past legally being an adult in the mortal world. They have no claim over you.”

My heart is still beating hard, the ping of the machine matching its rhythm. I wish Asclepius had turned that off. I wish my heart would just stop beating.

They’re not worth it.

Easy to think, harder to truly absorb. Maybe if I keep repeating it…

“I don’t have any family.” I whisper this to myself more than to Hades. “I don’t have anyone.”

Hades pulls me against him, tucking my head into his shoulder. “There is a saying you mortals like to use.” His voice is a deep, scratchy rumble under my ear. “It goes ‘blood is thicker than water.’”

I frown into his shoulder. “Are you telling me to forgive them and reunite?”

That at least stops the tears.

“No.” Hades leans away, holding my gaze captive. “I’m saying that if you use that phrase to define your family, then you shouldn’t be surprised if sometimes they try to pull you under.” He says this next part slowly, as if he’s considering each word. As if he’s trying not to poke at a sore spot. “But you can find a family and make them yours. A family that lifts you up, helps you float. One not made of blood.”

I swallow and stare at him. It’s possible if I win. If he takes away that curse. “Are Charon and Cerberus your family?”

“More than my brothers.” He shrugs.

“And Persephone?” I don’t know why I asked. I expect him to do what he always does when her name is brought up… Shut down.

Instead, he glances away—I think maybe toward the heart monitor, which has slowed down, I realize. My heartbeat is steady now.

“Yes. And Persephone,” he says. Slowly again. Not reluctantly, though. He’s deliberating what to tell me, I think. “But not the way mortals believe. Not even the way most of the gods believe.”

Like Charon said. “Does it hurt to talk about her?”

The sadness that darkens his eyes to a flat, gunmetal gray is unmistakable. So is the stab of jealousy in the region of my heart. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. What if I don’t like the answer?