“I know the last thing you want to do is trust me,” echoed Ava as I slipped back to Olympus. “But I need to show you something.”
I snapped back into the nursery, hungry with hope. Glancing around as if she wasn’t sure I was there, Ava exited the room, and I followed on her heels. She led me down the hallway and the narrow staircase I’d used the day before. We stopped on the same level that held my prison, and my stomach exploded with butterflies. Where was Ava taking me? Calliope couldn’t possibly be holding Henry down here, could she?
Ava paused at a door. Nicholas’s room. The clang of metal against metal ripped through the silence, mingling with his screams. I flinched, but Ava pushed the door open and stormed inside. I hurried after her.
“You swore you’d stop,” she said, and it took me a moment to realize she wasn’t talking to me. “I did what you told me to. Now you hold up your end of the bargain.”
Calliope stood in the middle of a dank room with shelves and worktables along the edge. Discarded scraps of metal and dozens of weapons—some glowing weakly and others nothing more than lumps of steel—littered every surface.
Nicholas’s forge. This was where he’d made that damn dagger.
Right beside the dying fire in the center of the room, someone had welded a metal chair to the floor with opaque fog. Nicholas slumped against it, bloody and broken in ways gods should’ve never been. He was half-conscious, his face slashed and purple and his body a mess of cuts and bruises.
“Your side of our deal hasn’t been finished yet,” said Calliope. “Kate is still alive.”
Ava scowled. “That has nothing to do with—”
“I don’t care.” Calliope’s voice sliced through the air like a scythe. “You will do what I say, or I will kill Nicholas. That is all there is to it.”
He groaned, his eyeballs moving underneath his swollen lids, and Ava reached for him. Calliope stepped between them.
“I don’t think so,” she said with girlish delight. “You know what happens if you touch him.”
“I don’t care anymore.” Ava darted around Calliope and knelt beside the chair. “Nicholas? I’m here. I’m so sorry, baby.”
Nicholas tried to mumble something through his cracked lips and broken jaw, but it was unintelligible. To me, at least; Ava’s eyes filled with tears, and she gently took his hand. When her skin touched his, a hissing sound filled the tiny prison, and Ava winced. But it wasn’t until Nicholas grunted that she let go. Where she’d touched him, her palm turned scarlet, as if she’d handled hot embers.
“I will release him once I have won the war,” said Calliope. “No sooner.”
Ava’s face twisted with barely contained rage, and she shifted her stance as if she were about to throttle her. Calliope must’ve noticed, too, because in the blink of an eye, the dagger appeared in her hand, and she held it delicately to Nicholas’s throat.
“I wouldn’t if I were you, my dear,” she purred.
It was a damn shame I was insubstantial, else I would’ve happily punched her lights out. Ava clenched her fists, apparently having the same idea, but she made no further move toward Calliope. “You monster,” she hissed. “He’s your son.”
“We all make sacrifices. Surely you of all people must understand that.”
The room trembled, and like she had the night before, Ava began to glow magenta. “No wonder Daddy never loved you. There’s nothing lovable about you. All this time I thought he was in the wrong, treating you the way he did, but you deserved it. You pervert love and family until they’re unrecognizable, all for your own twisted sense of satisfaction. No one, not even Cronus, deserves to burn in Tartarus more than you do.”
“Is that so?” said Calliope in a dangerous voice. “It must be such a pity for you then, knowing we will win and you will never escape me.”
“Oh, I will,” said Ava. “First chance I get, I’m getting the hell out of here and—”
“What’s going on?”
Henry stood in the doorway, cradling Milo. I moved toward them so fast that I could’ve sworn I created a breeze, but Henry looked straight through me, his focus on Calliope.
A knife twisted in the pit of my stomach, but he couldn’t see me. He had no idea I was there. Even if he did, he’d still be looking at Calliope like she was the most beautiful thing in the world.
“Hello, darling,” said Calliope. “I was just coming to see you. How’s the baby?”
“He’s fine.” Henry gave Ava a curious look, and she averted her eyes, her hand hovering half an inch over Nicholas’s. “What’s going on?”
“Ava here seems to believe that despite his crimes against us, Nicholas is entitled to leave now,” said Calliope, and she giggled. “As if we could afford such a risk. We can’t have Nicholas rushing back with our secrets, now, can we?”
Henry eyed Nicholas the way he’d looked at Calliope after the brothers had captured her in the Underworld and tied her up in chains. My stomach lurched. The Henry I knew and loved had to be in there somewhere, but right now, this wasn’t him. No matter how badly it hurt, I had to remember that. Whether it was Ava’s influence or Calliope’s power to cut the ties of loyalty between Henry and the rest of the council, it didn’t matter. He was the enemy now.
No, not the enemy. As much of a prisoner as Nicholas and Milo.
“Of course, my dearest love,” said Henry, and I gagged. “We will do what we must to ensure victory.”
Crossing the room, he gave Calliope a sensuous kiss. I shielded my eyes and scowled. But despite my best efforts to ignore them, I couldn’t resist a glance, and that’s when I saw it.
Henry’s eyes were open, and he was staring right at Ava.
In his arms, Milo stirred and reached for me. He knew I was there. Did Henry know, as well? He wasn’t Cronus—Calliope would never kiss him like that if he was. But could he sense me?
To my astonishment, Ava nodded once, so slightly that at first I wasn’t sure if I’d seen her right. Henry closed his eyes again, however, and I was certain. Henry and Ava were working together.
Against Calliope? For Calliope? To save Milo? Or had she told Henry that I would be here and listening in on everything that happened?
I couldn’t be sure unless Ava told me, and whether or not Henry knew I was there, he was still kissing Calliope. Maybe he had to. Maybe he wanted to. I didn’t have the answers, but that didn’t matter. He wouldn’t have been kissing her if it was up to him, and I had to hold on to that.