Across the f ire, James cleared his throat. “She’s telling the truth, Kate,” he said. “He shouldn’t have saved you.” He had anyway. Smiling, I wrapped my arms around my body as the chilly night air settled over me. I didn’t know how that ranked as far as romantic gestures went, but I was pretty sure it was at least as high as getting me a puppy.
“Can you tell me how to control the visions?” I said to Persephone, feeling lighter than I had since coming down to the Underworld. Even if saving me hadn’t cost Henry much more than his rules and his pride, Persephone thought it was a big deal, and that mattered more to me than it should have. He would’ve done the same thing for her, I was sure, but he hadn’t. I still had some piece of him that she didn’t.
“It’s easy,” she said with a shrug. “You have to focus on where you want to go or the person you want to f ind.”
“You can f ind people?” I said, amazed. Persephone nodded.
“That’s probably how you’re doing it, thinking about Henry. It takes practice, but once you get it, it’ll come easier each time. Try,” she said. “Think of someone you want to see, and let yourself drift into it.”
As easy as Persephone seemed to think it was, I had no idea how to drift into anything. Still warm from discovering that Henry had broken the rules for me, I closed my eyes and pictured his face in my mind, and—
Nothing.
“It’s not working,” I said.
“Relax,” said Persephone. “It won’t happen right away.” Apparently it wasn’t going to happen at all. I tried again and again, until all of my contentment drained away, leaving me with a depressing lack of self-worth. My head pounded from concentrating so hard, and the more Persephone pushed me, the more out of reach it felt.
“It won’t come naturally at f irst,” she said several minutes later, which was about the most encouraging thing she’d said so far. “You’ve never had abilities before.” Why that made such a huge difference, I wasn’t sure, though it was clear I wasn’t going to get it that night. “I’m going for a walk,” I said, and I stood. Along with a killer headache, my leg throbbed again, and I shook it out. “I’ll bring everyone back some cotton candy.” Hugging myself for warmth, I headed toward the carnival entrance. Of course none of this was supposed to be easy—
if it was, any girl could’ve done it and the test wouldn’t have been necessary. Still, I felt like a complete and utter failure, slinking away while the three of them undoubtedly whispered about how I couldn’t do it.
Resentment f lared up inside of me, and I forced myself to suppress it. It wasn’t their fault I couldn’t control my visions, and if Persephone was telling the truth, I’d get it eventually. But I needed it now, not days or weeks or months in the future. If we didn’t know what was going on with Calliope—
A loud crash echoed through the cavern. Startled, I looked up toward the sound, and a sick sense of dread f illed the pit of my stomach.
Stars were falling from the sky.
CHAPTER TEN
FISSU R E
“Kate!”
James’s frantic voice rose above the sound of crashing rock and ringing bells, and I darted out of the carnival, covering my head instinctively. The ground shook beneath me, but there were no signs of the fallen stars.
I smacked into James. “What’s going on?” I said, unable to keep the panic out of my voice.
“I don’t know.” He wrapped his arm around me, and together we hurried back to the f ire. “Whatever it is, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
The f lames in the f ire shook with each crash that echoed through the cavern, but the rocks weren’t landing in the f ield or the forest or anywhere near the carnival. Ava and Persephone stared upward into the sky, wearing identical expressions of alarm. If it wasn’t happening here, then where—
Without warning, the world dropped out from around me, and I was on the surface again. Instead of the dense forest that surrounded Eden, I stood on a cliff overlooking the bluest water I’d ever seen as wave after wave rolled to the white shore.
James and I had only spent a few days on this particular island, but the ancient palace in the distance and the sharp drop into the water were unmistakable. This was Greece.
“Did you feel that?” someone shouted behind me. “I told you this would happen. I told you.” Dylan dashed past me, dressed in cargo shorts and a tank top. The other members of the council, all wearing similar outf its, clustered around something a few feet away. I inched closer to see.
Had I been transported back up here somehow without realizing it? Once I was close enough, I set my hand on Ella’s shoulder. It went right through her.
I was a ghost again, and this was a vision, but it wasn’t the one I’d wanted.
“He’s breaking through,” said Irene. She and several of the others held out their hands toward the ground, and a jolt of fear ran down my spine.
They formed a ring around a crack in the earth. It couldn’t have been more than a few feet long, but tendrils of fog slithered up through it, f licking like the tongue of a snake as if they were tasting the air itself.
Cronus.
The remaining members of the council held out their hands as they’d done back in the palace, and the tendrils twisted like they were annoyed, but they f inally disappeared back into the ground.
“He’s done it,” said Irene, wiping the sweat from her brow. “He’s cracked the surface.”
“Are we sure it goes all the way down?” said Theo.
“How else could he come up like that?” said Dylan.
“Honestly, am I the only one with half a brain here?” Nicholas, Ava’s husband, gave him a warning look. Dylan rolled his eyes and kicked a bit of dirt back into the crack.
“Do you think Calliope found a way to release him?” said Ella in a frightened voice that didn’t sound like her at all.
“If she did, then this is pointless,” said Dylan.
“Then we have to assume she didn’t,” said Irene. Her red hair seemed to shimmer in the sunlight, and for the f irst time since I’d met her, it was a mess. They all looked disheveled and exhausted. “We have to keep going as planned.”
“So Cronus can obliterate us as soon as he f inds out we were working against him?” said Dylan.
“So Cronus never gets the chance.” Irene waved her hand over the crack, and it f illed back up with dirt. Seconds later, however, it started to empty like the top of an hourglass as the dirt fell into the Underworld.