“I know what it’s like to be alone,” I whispered. “Not for—for as long as you have, but I know what it’s like to lose everything you love. And the way the gods turned on you isn’t fair. You were nothing but nice to them. You gave them everything they could possibly dream of, and in return, they imprisoned you for eternity. It isn’t fair. You have a right to be free.”
It scared me how easily the words slipped out, as if I really believed them. Maybe secretly part of me did. Not that Cronus deserved freedom; but that I understood what he’d gone through, in a way. I’d been so afraid of being alone that I’d given up half of the rest of my life on the chance that I wouldn’t have to be.
“Let me help you.” My heart pounded as the air began to thin. “Please. I want to. And maybe—maybe we can help each other.”
The air turned bitter cold as all the warmth of the desert disappeared, and I shivered. I’d barely moved, but it was enough; the fog touched my bare skin, cold and silky and much more solid than I’d expected. Like feathers, maybe, or snow.
It didn’t hurt.
Instead, like he’d done to Calliope, he caressed my cheek, and through that single touch, I felt power beyond imagining. It was nothing like the force that Henry and the others had used to chase Cronus away. It was immeasurable, as if the entire universe was compressed into that lone tendril of fog. At last I understood why they were all afraid of him.
His touch lasted half a second, and he was gone before I could open my eyes. My mind reeled as I tried to comprehend what had happened, and despite the sun once again beating down on me, my skin felt like ice. I collapsed onto my hands and knees, the coarse sand scraping my palms, but it didn’t matter.
He’d spared me.
James and Ava were by my side in an instant. Sand f lew everywhere as Ava fell to her knees, and James hovered over me, his hands an inch above my back, as if he thought one touch would make me disintegrate into ash.
“You’re alive?” said Ava with wide eyes, as if she weren’t willing to believe it. She took my hand and held it like she was the only thing anchoring me to this place. I wasn’t so sure she was wrong.
“What happened?” said James, urgency and concern war-ring in his voice. I shakily leaned back on my knees, but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at either of them. I’d lied to Cronus and stolen any chance James and Ava had of walking out of there alive. I had no idea how to open the gate, and when I admitted the truth—
It wouldn’t come to that, I thought f irmly to myself, or at least as f irmly as I could manage when my brain felt like jelly. I’d bought us time. Anything could happen before we reached the gate, if we ever did. In the meantime, I had a little longer to come up with a plan.
“Water,” I said, my mouth as dry as the desert around us.
My lips were cracked, and my muscles screamed in protest every time I moved, but I was alive.
I trembled like I hadn’t felt warmth in years, and together James and Ava hoisted me up and helped me toward a small oasis in the distance. It looked so picture-perfect that if I hadn’t known this was someone’s idea of a desert instead of the real thing, I would’ve guessed it was a mirage.
We covered the distance faster than I’d expected, or maybe time was moving quickly for me now that I knew I no longer had a chance of walking out of that cavern alive.
The best I could hope for was that the others would leave before Cronus had a chance to strike.
They set me down underneath a grove of palm trees, and I leaned against one and closed my eyes. I hated being weak compared to them. They’d fought Cronus with barely a complaint, and I couldn’t even talk to him without feeling drained.
“Tell us what happened,” said James. He cracked open a coconut, splashing milk all over his shirt, but he didn’t seem to care. He dipped one of the halves into the pool of water and offered it to me, and my hands shook as I took it.
I drank deeply. The deliciously cool water spread through me, and once I’d f inished my second drink, I sat up and took inventory of my injuries. My leg throbbed and I was dizzy, but Cronus hadn’t hurt me again. I ran my f ingers through my hair in an attempt to comb it out, but it was too much of a sweaty mess to bother, so I searched my jacket pocket for a hair tie to pull it back.
Instead of elastic, my f ingers brushed up against something that felt like silk. No, not silk. A f lower petal. Startled, I f ished it out and cupped the crushed yellow blossom in my hand. It was small, with seven pointed petals that looked as if the ends had been dipped in purple, and slowly it began to uncurl.
I’d never seen anything like it, let alone picked it and put it in my pocket. And it was alive; it wasn’t dead or crushed like I’d thought it was. In seconds, it was whole and open, and the center looked like a shimmering drop of nectar. It couldn’t have possibly come from the surface.
From one of the afterlives we’d walked through? It had to be. But I’d stuck my hands in my pockets in the woods before Cronus had chased us, and it hadn’t been there then.
Had I simply not noticed it? That was the only explanation.
Or maybe I was too dazed to think straight.
Tucking it back into the safety of my pocket beside the quartz-and-pearl f lower from Henry, I combed my hair out with my f ingers and said shakily, “What did you two—
what did you see?”
Wordlessly Ava offered me a hair tie, and I took it. It was bright pink. “We saw Cronus eat you.”
“You were engulfed,” said James, and he hesitated. “We thought you were gone.”
I stared into the clear pool. My ref lection stared back at me, and I leaned forward to splash some water onto my grimy face. I was a mess. “Me, too,” I mumbled as I rubbed off the dirt.
“So why didn’t he kill you?” said Ava. She held a coconut in her hand, and a second later, a neon-pink curly straw appeared from inside of it. She sipped it, and I could see the milk rise through the swirls.
I didn’t answer right away. I had to tell them the truth, but they weren’t stupid. They would see what I planned to do, and if James and Ava thought I was so much as considering sacrif icing myself, they would march me right back to the palace.
I needed James to f ind Persephone, and he would only show me how to get there if he thought he would be showing me the way home, too. That left only one option.
Avoiding the whole truth.
“Because I told him I’d open the gate if he didn’t hurt us,” I said.