76

76

What Have I Done?

Hades scoops me up and sits on a huge leather chair, pulling me onto his lap, curving his body around mine as though to offer shelter. A stillness has taken me over.

Not numbness.

The pain is right here, eating at me. But I don’t want to move or speak, and I definitely won’t let myself cry. I know, somehow, it will get worse if I do.

“Lyra,” Hades murmurs. He strokes my hair softly.

I breathe. I try to breathe through it.

“Don’t hold it in, love.”

If anything, I clamp down tighter. I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to let it in. But the one thing I can’t stop are the memories.

Moments of Boone over twelve years. Moments I’m seeing through different eyes.

That cocky grin taunting me from around every corner. The way he used to sidle up next to me in the food line, usually to snatch something off my tray. “Whachya working on today?” he’d say.

He had a particular craving for pancakes. I’ve never seen someone smother anything in that much syrup. And he’d laugh when he got in trouble for using too much—our den wasn’t big on condiments—so he’d just go steal some more.

The time he stole that damned painting from under Lakshmi’s nose is there, too, fresh in my mind after he brought it up the other day.

New memories as well. I’d like to be your friend, he said.

Even this morning, just having breakfast together.

He was with me this morning.

My throat clogs.

Breathe.

He didn’t share this part of taking that painting with the gods the other night, and at the time I thought he was just making fun of me, but now the memory might haunt me for the rest of my life. “I took it for you, Lyra-Loo-Hoo. Won’t it look pretty on your bedroom wall?” Was he trying to be my friend even then? How had he known that I secretly coveted the beauty of that scene? I never shared that with anyone. Then he pointed at another one he’d taken, too. “That one, we can fence.” Not that I believed him, and not that Felix let him keep anything.

Oh gods. I did this. He’s dead because of me. My humming alerted the automaton inside that room and…

“Lyra.” Hades’ voice has taken on a thread of worry.

“I don’t want to let it out,” I tell him, my voice as small as I feel.

“Why?”

“If I sit here and cry, if I give in to it, I don’t know if I’ll ever get up again.” And that’s not me. I’m the person who gets shit done, who never stops moving, who figures out a solution to the problem in front of me, because they never stop coming, and then the next and the next until one day all the problems will be solved.

Only I can’t solve this one.

Hades’ arms tighten around me, and we sit in silence. I don’t know how long. He doesn’t push me to let go again, and the memories are coming faster now. I can’t make them stop.

It’s like discovering the fabric of my past was sewn into a tapestry that I couldn’t see until I stepped back. A thousand different moments that I disregarded or wrote off because of my curse.

A thousand missed opportunities.

My mind goes all the way back to the scrawny kid who showed up when I was eleven and Boone was thirteen, all elbows and knees but with hints of the man he’d become. He took one look at me, grinned, and said I was too small to be a thief and maybe the Order should throw me back.

Gods, he’s such a tease.

Was.

Sorrow grips my heart and squeezes hard.

Boone was such a tease.

Not anymore.

How would things be different if I hadn’t put up the walls he said I built around myself? If I’d tried harder?

We’ll never know now.

Boone is dead.

I can see his face as he falls off the tower.

It keeps cropping up between all the other memories, hitting harder every time. He never looked away. He watched me until the very end.

He didn’t die fast enough. Not right away. He felt those spikes—

Why can’t I stop reliving all this? I need to stop. I need to shut it down.

Oh gods…

“Boone.” His name whispers from my lips.

I curl into Hades, gripping his shirt, squeezing my eyes shut.

“I’m sorry,” Hades murmurs. “I’m sorry.” He runs a soothing hand over my hair. “I’m sorry.”

His words are like a ribbon of warmth wrapping around my heart, not taking away the pain but soothing it, gentling it. It slows the memories I don’t want to relive.

I stay tucked in against him. “Can you find B—”

My throat clogs around his name.

Breathe.

Start over.

“Can you find his soul a good place in Elysium? Like you did for Isabel?” I whisper, my voice thick. “I know he’s a thief, but—”

“Don’t worry about that. He’ll be taken care of.”

Is Boone down here already? Is he crossing the Styx on Charon’s boat? Is he walking into the Fields of Asphodel alone?

“Can I see him?”

Hades stiffens against me slightly. “No. It’s not good for souls to see loved ones so soon after. It confuses them or causes them pain, makes them want to go back. That’s how souls get trapped in the Overworld and become spirits.”

“Oh.” I pluck at his shirt. “Thank you.”

“Don’t… Don’t thank me, Lyra.”

His statement is the first thing that’s made the memories completely stop. I should be grateful. But I frown against his chest. “Why?”

“He was right. This is my fault. You’re here because of me. He was here because of me. I did this.” His voice is weighted with guilt. “I’m so sorry, Lyra.”

I lift my head. Dull gray eyes look back at me, and my heart squeezes. It took me getting roasted by a dragon and then losing Boone for Hades to realize what entering me into the Crucible really means to me. But the thing is…

“I’m not angry with you,” I tell him.

He can’t hold my gaze and looks away. “You should be.”

“You told me about Persephone.” I take a breath. “You may not want to tell me how the Crucible is involved, but I know you didn’t do this to me on a whim.”

His gaze cuts back to me, searching mine. For what? The truth in my words? The anger he thinks I should feel?

“You don’t do anything without a specific reason, Hades. A good reason. Am I wrong?”

Don’t tell me I’m wrong and you’re as petty as the others. I don’t think I could take it.

Hades swallows hard. “Someday, I’ll tell you the rest, and I think you’ll agree it was a good reason. In fact, I know you will. But I’m not sure now that it’s good enough for what you are having to pay. I didn’t know.”

I knew it. Deep in my heart. I’m not here because some capricious god is toying with me just for shits and giggles or greed for a throne. Boone won’t die for no reason at all.

At the mere thought of him, tears burn, and I close my eyes and screw up my face, stuffing them back down. I try to focus on Hades, on the distraction he’s providing. “Why can’t you tell me now? Maybe it will make me feel better.”

Hades shakes his head. “It’s too dangerous now. But if you win, I’ll…” He trails off.

I force my stinging eyes open to study the underside of his chin. “You’ll what? Tell me?”

He straightens against me, expression suddenly intent. “If you win.” He looks directly at me now, and I can feel the emotions vibrating through him. “If you win, I can save Boone.”