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“You immortals are really something else,” I mumbled, taking a healthy step back the moment she released me. “Wild is my friend. It’s not his fault that he’s a Keres. It’s not his fault that the man he loved di—” I choked on the word, not quite able to get it out. No, Bullet wasn’t dead. I couldn’t accept that.
I didn’t know where exactly he was, or how to get him back, but he wasn’t dead. I couldn’t accept that the Fates would heap that much suffering on us. Hadn’t we been through enough?
“Just tell me how to get home, okay? I’m sure you think you have some super important task to assign me, but the most important thing right now is that I’m there for Grace. Sheneedsme. I can’t let her down.”
“I’m not going to tell you how to get home. I’m going to tell you about how soul bonds work.”
By the fucking gods, it was like talking to a wall.
“I don’t—”
“You have a job to do,” Arete insisted, crossing her arms and glaring at me imperiously. “Do you know who I am?”
“Arete. Yes. You already told me. You’re an agathos.”
“An agathos of?” she prompted.
Shit, I knew this one. What was it…
Arete sighed. “Many things, in truth. I am a broad, abstract, hard-to-define idea of excellence and bravery and virtue. Ultimately, what I can be defined by ispotential.” She gave me a long, searching look. “Of your group—your soul bond,hersoul bonds—you are the one who has come into my care because of your potential.”
“My potential,” I repeated slowly. My potential for what?
“Indeed, your potential. The way you squander it, mostly.Sucha waste. It’s difficult to witness.”
“Are you going to actually tell me what you want from me or just insult me?” I asked, throwing my hands up in exasperation. My failure to live up to my potential was something I’d been aware of my entire life. Even my useless father had seen it, though what he wanted tousemy potential for was a little more nefarious.
“I want to tell you how soul bonds work.”
“What does that have to do with my potential? Does it even matter anymore? The bonds are gone. Gaia ripped them all away.”
“Indeed. So, are you going to live up to your full potential and restore them, or not?”
Chapter 2
“Whoareyou?”Irepeated. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
I was staring into the flaming eyes of a monster, a dark shadow of black and red scales with enormous wings and snakes for legs. The sky behind the beast was lit up a brilliant orange, sparks of tiny flames raining down over our heads from the stream of fire it had spewed out into the air.
It was terrifying and mesmerizing all at once.
Maybe I was losing my mind, but for a moment, all I wanted to do was stand there and watch. To make sense of what I was seeing, of this new world of myths and monsters.
“Time to go,” Dare rasped, wrapping a hand around my forearm and dragging me backward. I was dimly aware of everyone else already moving, running as far from the pit as possible, but my limbs were slow to cooperate despite Dare’s insistence.
“Wait, what if it isn’t bad? What if it’s on our side?”
Dare didn’t answer, half dragging me along behind him as we ran in the general direction of Eirene’s house, Milos barking frantically at my side.
“Follow us!” Dare yelled, gesturing frantically at Vasileios and the others without slowing down.
The monster stayed at the mouth of the pit, hovering in the air and spewing fire. An actual, honest-to-goddessmonster.
Was it guarding the entrance to Tartarus? Was this Tartarus’ version of Cerberus? Bullet would have known the answer. He’d have known exactly what the beast was, and whose side it was on, and how to communicate with it. I was lost without his guidance.
“Run, Grace,” Dare urged.Right. My grief would have to wait.
We stumbled over the uneven ground, each taking turns at catching the other, Vasileios and hopefully all of the others hot on our heels. The sky still resembled lava, but we weren’t being followed.
