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I swallowed thickly, suddenly glad for the wall of water.
“Any news from the upperworld?” Akeron asked cheerfully. “Last I heard, the battle lines are being drawn up, the stubborn agathos who fight in Gaia’s name getting ready to take their final stand.”
“What?” I asked, alarmed. I guessed, on reflection, it wasn’t that shocking. It wasn’t like Gaia had given us any indication before now that she was going to just give up.
“You’re not surprised, surely?” Akeron asked. “Agathos are hardly beings that do well with societal change. It was always going to come to this.”
“Isn’t there like… an agathos of compassion or something? Empathy?” I mumbled. Why’d everything have to be sodifficult?
“No,” Akeron scoffed. “There are agathos of peace, good order, victory, obedience. There are the Philophrosyne, agathos of kindliness, but they encourage individual acts of kindness and charity. The agathos were not put on earth to make humansgood, they were put there to make them manageable.”
That was a grim assessment.
“Grace,myagathos, is an agathos of luck. That doesn’t seem like a make-people-manageable kind of trait.”
“No one can be manageable unless they have some kind of hope to cling onto. The very human belief that no matter how dire things are, there’s always the possibility that they’ll improve, is essential for a peaceful, cooperative society. There’s no incentive for those at the very bottom to participate within it otherwise.”
That was a chilling thought.
It also made a lot harder to see the agathos as the enemy—even the real asshole ones who’d beaten the crap out of me before I’d left for Greece. I wasn’t going to chalk up their behavior entirely to instinct and let them off the hook—I had daimon instincts and I fought against them when it was the right thing to do. But it did shine a more sympathetic light on them, I supposed.
“We are approaching the Port of Charon, which separates my waters from the Styx’s. You have a choice to make, Philotes.”
“What’s that?” I asked uneasily.
“Well, since we are already going past, I can drop you on the living side of the Styx for you to make your way back to the safety of the upperworld. Where you belong, seeing as you’re not dead and all.”
“Without Bullet,” I stated flatly.
“Without the Oneiroi, yes, as he is no longer in this realm.”
“But he’ll come back,” I said slowly. “Hewillcome back. Bullet would do anything to get back to us.”
“There are no guarantees that he will return from Tartarus. Even if he does, he may not be the same Oneiroi you remember,” Akeron said cryptically.
“Well, I’ll take the chance and wait,” I replied stubbornly. “I made him a promise. A deal. I told him I’d bring him back, and I won’t let him down.”
“Even knowing he could find happiness in the underworld? It’s really rather lovely—Queen Persephone has filled it with flowers, and there are plenty of interesting souls to talk to. The ones who haven’t drugged themselves on the waters of the Lethe to forget their mortal lives, that is.”
“He won’t be happy. Not without Grace, not without Wild. Not without me and Riot. We’re Bullet’sfamily.We’d never leave him behind.”
As I spoke the words aloud, there was a weird sense of certainty that they applied to me too. I knew—without a doubt—that Grace was furious with me for knocking her out, though I was sure the others had immediately let her go. But I also knew that she’d come for me if I needed saving, that any of them would.
Bond or no bond, it was always going to be us against the world.
As much as I hated to be away from Grace even longer, I knew she’d be grateful in the long run. Grace would never be truly happy without Bullet.
Chapter 19
Iwokeupwitha splutter, coughing as water filled my mouth and soaked my face. No matter how much I turned my head away, throwing my arms up to protect myself, the water was incessant.
But then again, it was quite refreshing, actually. And I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until I started gulping down the cool liquid. Just before I drank enough to feel like I might be sick, the water vanished. I blinked through wet eyelashes, seeing a miniature rain cloud right over my face disappearing before my eyes, replaced by T’s intense gaze.
He looked… worried.
“Thanks for the water,” I rasped, my throat feeling like sandpaper. It had been dark when I closed my eyes, and it was dark now, but I got the sort of alarming feeling that I might have slept the whole day away. Or maybe I’d fallen unconscious for a bit? I was groggy and disoriented in a way that I wouldn’t usually be after a few hours’ sleep.
And I wassohungry.
