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There was no food. The Spartoi had been scavenging as they went—walking all the way from the fucking villa we’d left them in near Athens—but there just wasn’t enough. Not when everyone was hoarding what was available, when nothing was growing, when the animals had all been killed for food before they’d died of starvation. Perhaps there were still fish, though from our experience in sailing across the sea, it had grown so cold that I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the ocean life had frozen to death.
The Spartoi shared their limited rations with me, but I hadn’t truly realized how desperate the situation was until now.
Not just for us. Foreveryone. Lifting the darkness had only been the beginning.
My muscles burned from walking over the rocky, dry, uneven ground, and my head spun from hunger, but I didn’t give myself a second to pause or think about the pain. Instead, I walked between Ariston and Theras, giving them a crash course in ASL while they translated back down the ranks. I had no idea how accurate the information those at the very back were getting, but I wasn’t about to sit everyone down and give them a silent lecture so they all got the same information either.
We had to keep moving.
The road looked like it had once been lined by grass and trees, but was now an arid wasteland. There was no reprieve from the sun beating down on us overhead, and as much as I tried to be grateful for it after the days of darkness, some cloud cover and a decent rain would be pretty welcome right now. We rounded a corner, the ground so dry that every step seemed to kick up a small storm of dust, and Theras and I stumbled to a stop at the same time, causing the lines behind us to crash into one another in confusion.
What the fuck wasthat?
There were deep, curved grooves in the ground like nothing I’d ever seen before. The mark they’d left in the dirt was like a footprint, or perhaps some kind of fossil? It looked as though twogiantsnakes had been lying here, close but not intertwined, but there was no path leading to or from them, no evidence they’d slithered away.
Also, snakes didn’t grow this large, I was certain of it. Not even in Asia, where I was pretty sure some super fuck-off serpents lived.
Whatever it was, it was making Theras nervous.
“Ekhidna,” he muttered. “Khimaira. Typhoeus. Hydra.”
Hydra. That one I’d heard of, which meant he was probably listing other terrifying, very much mythological beasts. Or maybe they weren’t as mythological as I liked to think. Nothing made sense anymore.
‘Let’s go,’I signed, before gesturing at my eyes and then our surroundings and the sky, telling them to look out. No more language lessons for us—not when there was some kind of monster on the loose.
I was a vegetarian, but I was hungry enough to consider eating at least a little bit of monster. And the Spartoi had no such qualms about eating meat.
Where are you, Grace? Are you safe? Are Riot and Dare taking care of you?
I’ll be there soon, I promised, swearing it on all the stars in the sky, and to Nyx herself. If I had to beg for Riot’s forgiveness, I would. I’d prove to Grace that I was sorry, that I’d never meant to hurt him, and that I’d do anything to make up for it.
Once, I’d thought I could stay away, that maybe she’d be better off without me, and I could keep her safe from a distance. Fight her battles for her, so she didn’t have to. But with a monster on the loose? No. No, more than ever, I needed to get back to her side.
Grace was my treasure, and I was her shield. Nothing would get through me if it meant keeping her safe. I just had to find her.
Chapter 7
“Whatisthisplace?”I asked Arete, stepping out of the realm of the gods into what must be hell on earth.
“Poveglia,” Arete replied, looking around with a resigned face. Or maybe she was just tired—I wasn’t sure how much power or energy, whatever it was, she’d drawn from my blood, but it appeared as though traveling through dimensions had taken it out of her. “This entire island is a shrine to unfulfilled potential. Or perhaps a grave where it goes to die.”
“Lots of losers like me on here?” I asked uneasily. The building we were standing in front of was right on the water’s edge, and even the scaffolding holding up the red brick, Mediterranean-style structure looked to be decades abandoned. Even with just the moon above illuminating the place, I could see that it was thick with brown rust.
“It is long-since abandoned,” Arete said solemnly. “This was a plague island, where the dead and dying were dumped and burned. In more recent centuries, it was home to an asylum.” She gestured at the derelict structure we were standing in front of. “Those who died here did so… unpleasantly. Their souls were never properly laid to rest. Even Thanatos has abandoned this island, leaving the dead in charge.”
Holy shit, I was going to wet my pants and I didn’t feel one ounce of shame about it.
“You brought me to ahaunted island? Atnight? What the actual fuck? No. Hell no. Take me back. I don’t fuck with ghosts.”
“I can’t.” Arete grimaced. “Or I won’t, rather. This is the Fates’ favorite haunt when they’re in the upperworld. Excuse the pun.”
“I most certainly donotexcuse the pun. Get me the fuck off the haunted island. Are there ghosts in the water? I can swim.”
“Well, fishermen do avoid these waters…”
Great. In the moonlight, without any electricity to light up homes at night, it was hard to tell how far off the coast we were. I squinted into the darkness, wondering if that was in fact a land mass nearby. It didn’t look far, but jumping into potentially ghost-filled waters blind seemed like it would be a bad life choice under the best of circumstances.
“Of course, there is no guarantee the Moirai will make themselves visible to you, as we discussed. The Fates are fickle.”
