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Gaia scoffed. “You are the perfect mixture of tragic and desperate, Grace Bellamy. Everything youthinkis special about yourself can be boiled down to that.”
“No, it can’t,” I replied quietly, throwing my own sense of self-preservation out the window. “Circumstance made Gracewhatshe is, notwhoshe is, and it’swhoshe is that makes her special.”
Gaia seemed to grow a little more in size, the vines draped around her body moving restlessly.
“Iam what made her special,” Gaia hissed. “I am what makes any of you special. Icreatedmortal life. You should all be on your knees thanking me each and every day, the useless agathos most of all. Oh, they pay lip service to me, but their actions, their lack of respect for the earth I have given them, speak otherwise. You have all grown too confident, too assured of your own importance.”
I glanced at Nyx, hoping she’d intercede and talk Gaia down, but she seemed perfectly content to watch her sister rage. Great.
“You think that the return of the Olympians and a so-called “second age of heroes” would somehow improve the lives of agathos and daimons, but it won’t. Agathos arehelpmeets. That is your role. Daimons are malevolent spirits, that is their role,” Gaia clipped. “Most agathos are compensated for dedicating their lives to service withsoul bonds, and yet you still have the nerve to complain. It’sstillnot enough. You complain about agathos and daimons having nochoice. That you somehow deserve morefreedom. You make speeches for mortals and claim you deservemore.What would humans give to be presented their soulmates? You havenoappreciation for the generosity you’ve been shown.”
“Agathos are immensely grateful for their soul bonds—” Grace rasped.
“It doesn’t seem like it to me,” Gaia cut in. “Perhaps you’d rather be human. I wonder if you’d complain then.”
With that rather ominous hypothetical, Gaia turned her back on Grace, returning her attention to Nyx. “Lift the veil of darkness, let the sun shine on my earth once more, and I will gift a direct path foronevolunteer to go to Tartarus. Let your ungrateful little Prophêtis do with that what she will.”
Oh no, I didnotlike the sound of that.
Firstly, because a path to Tartarusandthe return of daylight were both things we wanted, and a gift from a goddess never came without a cost.
Secondly, I knew exactly what Grace would do with a path for one to Tartarus, and it wasn’t an option that any of her bonded would be happy with.
We were going to fight about this for sure.
“You have a deal, sister mine,” Nyx replied serenely. “The veil is lifted.”
There was a split second pause before Gaia replied. “The path is open.”
Grace attempted to rein in her burst of cautious excitement. The darkness was gone. It wasn’t a magical fix for all the damage that had been done, but the earth would heal, wouldn’t it? Humanity would survive.
We could rebuild. We had hope where there’d been none before.
“Happy travels, little Prophêtis,” Gaia told Grace, her voice full of disdain. “Have one more gift before I go—a lesson in humility and appreciation. Perhaps, were you a better kind of agathos, it wouldn’t have been a lesson you needed.”
Grace’s faint hope morphed into terror as Gaia disappeared, taking what felt like a part of us with her. There was a sucking sensation in my chest, like a vacuum had been shoved between my ribs and pulled out something essential, something I needed as much as I needed air to breathe or water to drink.
I doubled over, dragging Grace with me as my knees hit the ground. What was happening to me?
Grace let out a sound of anguish, releasing my hand, her nails scraping at her chest as though she was trying to claw through to her skin.
She felt it too. It wasn’tme, it was all of us. It was the bonds.
Gaia had broken the bonds.
The bond that had been keeping me alive.
Chapter 22
Myheartwasgone.Ripped free of my chest.
There was no other way of describing the sensation of the bond being torn out of my soul. Grace was the center of my universe. The connection to her had given me hope and meaning when I’d had none.
And it was gone. How was it gone? What did it mean?
How did I get it back? I wouldn’t survive without it.Wewouldn’t, not one of us.
I needed it back.
