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We sat on the ground next to Milos, Dare close enough that his side pressed against mine. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, the flickering golden flames highlighting the dark circles under his eyes. He was tired. We both were. But the idea of sleeping was… absurd. How could we sleep right now?
The burial rites had given me something else to focus on for a moment, but now all my problems were catching up with me again. Bullet was in some kind of in-between state in the Isles of the Blessed—somewhere in the Atlantic, according to Thanatos, though his soul might slip into the underworld at any moment. Riot and Wild were still missing. The path to Tartarus was open, and a monster had emerged from its depths. The bonds had been broken, and my soul was irreparably fractured. That was just the beginning of my list.
There was too much to do, to worry about, to contemplate something as mundane as sleep.
“The Fates did you a disservice, leaving me as your only companion,” Dare said, staring at the pyre. “I was already struggling to comprehend what exactly you’d all gone through, and I have no idea what to do now. What the next step is.”
“I have to enter the pit.” Was that my voice? It was so thin and reedy. Milos shuffled closer, and I absently scratched between her ears.
Dare made a strangled noise of protest. “It’s a trap, Grace. Did you see any kind of pathway? The walls were smooth. If youjumpin there, which was the only way down, you’ll die. You may be marked by the gods, but as far as I know, you’re still mortal.”
“Maybe that’s a requirement,” I whispered, vocalizing the terrible thought that I’d done my best to repress. “Maybe I have to die to get down there.”
“Grace, no—”
“But Bullet always talked about me living a long, happy life,” I pushed on, needing Dare to understand. “He talked about my future, our future. So if I have to die in some way… Well, it can’t be a permanent death. There are stories of mortals leaving the underworld. I’ve left there myself.”
“Not after dying, you haven’t. Do you really think Gaia would give you a safe, easy path to fulfill the prophecy she hates? She’s literally the villain, Grace.”
Villain.
The word triggered the memory of a chilly fall morning in Devil’s Den, next to a calm, sparkling pond. I could almost feel the coffee cup between my hands, warming my fingers, as Bullet told me stories of gods and goddesses, his pale blonde hair glowing gold in the orange light. Grief sliced through my chest like a knife, and I desperately held onto the memory of his amethyst eyes, filled with mischief, and the slight twist of his lips when he was planning something.
What if I never saw him again? What if I forgot what he looked like someday? I had no photos of him, nothing to remind me.
“Grace?” Dare said softly, pulling me back to the present. “Where’d you go?”
I shook my head, shoving the wave of grief away. Not now. I’d bawled my eyes out until I was catatonic the day the sun had reappeared. I didn’t have the luxury of repeating that experience.
“Bullet told me once that there are no heroes and villains among gods.” Dare twisted to face me, waiting patiently for me to gather my thoughts. “They don’t think like we do. They don’t experience fear the way we do, they never feel the crush of time running out. I’m not sure any of them are good or bad, so much as selfish.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better about the whole pit thing, you know.”
I managed a feeble laugh, resting my head on Dare’s shoulder. “Me neither. But Bullet always said to do what scares me, and I can’t imagine anything more frightening than this.”
Chapter 3
Todayhadfeltlikea week.
Foster had heated water for us, and Grace and I had taken turns bathing, while the others scrounged up food and set up places to sleep. Despite being packed in here like sardines, they’d insisted Grace and I keep the upstairs room where we’d been staying. Perks of being the Prophêtis, undoubtedly. If she’d been more clearheaded, Grace would have probably objected, but she had plenty of other things on her mind.
I sat on the edge of the bed, a towel wrapped around my waist, and dropped my head into my hands.
We’d been so fixated on lifting the darkness, maybe even getting some semblance of the technology Gaia had wiped out back, that we hadn’t entirely thought about what would come after. What the effects of days of darkness would be, howseverethey’d be. Without light and in freezing temperatures, the plant life had mostly died. No food meant the animals must be dying off in droves too, though, in the darkness, I hadn’t seen it for myself.
How were we supposed to recover from this? Not just those I knew personally, but the planet as a whole?
How had we—our little group—gotten to this point? It was a question I asked myself regularly, and every time the tone of it grew more desperate in my head. There had been five of us, a whole team, and now it was just Grace and me.
As much as I hated the idea of staying here, so close to where the giant weird monster thing guarding the pit was, I’d been quietly hopeful that Wild and Riot would track us here at some point. But it had been forty-eight hours, and there was still no sign of them.
They had to be alive, didn’t they? The memory of Riot’s blood-stained sweater haunted me.
The bonds were broken and Grace couldn’t feel us the way she could before, but surely she’d know if they’d died on some kind of spiritual level. The fact that she was still semi-able to function made me think that that wasn’t the case.
Grace knocked softly on the door frame before letting herself in, huddled up in a thick robe Eirene had given her to use days ago, damp hair hanging straight down her back.
“Hey,” she said quietly, closing the door behind her and leaning back against it.
