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Zeus continued to breathe heavily for a long moment, hands flexing at his sides before he finally made a furious noise of assent.
“Fine.Fine. The threat is irrelevant. We won’t forget our obligations. We never did.”
The force field keeping us in the cavern suddenly vanished. A pressure that had been so constant that I didn’t realize how suffocating it was lifted, and I scrunched my eyes shut as Zeus began to glow like he was housing the sun itself within his body.
“Time for you to go,” one of them said, their heavy hands landing on my shoulders and pushing me out of the cavern. “You are alive enough that seeing a god in their true form would kill you. We are not in control of ourselves right now—it’s been so long since we’ve been able to access our divine forms that it’s impossible to rein in.”
Hermes, I recognized his voice. He groaned as though he was experiencing something intensely pleasurable and it gave me all the uncomfy feels.
“Where are we going? Where’s Tartarus?”
“Youare going back to the underworld. Tartarus has gone back to his hidey-hole.” Hermes sighed blissfully again, tightening his grip on my shoulders and steering me forward so I couldn’t see him. “I’m a little out of practice with my wings, so don’t panic if we flop around a bit in midair. Promise I won’t drop you.”
That was very unreassuring.
“Can’t I go back to the upperworld? I want to see if the people who loved me still remember me.”
Hermes froze for a moment, his grip on my shoulders keeping me in place.
“Wow, that may be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“So, you will take me back?” I asked hopefully. His hands felt like they were growing, encompassing more of my shoulders. The rock cavern around us was glowing slightly too, and I guessed he was illuminating the place.
“Patience, little halfling. As I said, we’re not fully in control of our divine forms right now. I won’t make the best second first impression with mortals if I show up and kill them all with my blinding greatness. Give me a minute.”
“That doesn’t sound ideal,” I agreed, stumbling over the rocky path a little as we approached the bottom of the pit.
“Besides, you wouldn’t want to miss your party. Be a good boy and don’t eat or drink anything, or you’ll be stuck in the underworld forever,” he said in a sing-song voice.
What a strange fellow.
“What party?”
Hermes suddenly leaped into the air, hooking an arm around my middle and dragging me up with him as though I weighed nothing. We flew through the tunnels Tartarus had carried me through at least a hundred times faster than the pace I’d run through the underworld at. The fiery flames of the Phlegethon poured through the pit on every side, but Hermes flew directly up the middle, avoiding the magma. What felt like an eternity later—but still faster than it had taken me to get down to Tartarus—we emerged in the underworld, flying above the pit.
I was so disoriented from the speed at which we’d moved, it took my brain a minute to catch up.
“I’ll deposit you at the palace. I’m assuming Hades and Persephone are able to hold their forms, so you should be safe there. Actually, Persephone will probably want me to take her straight to her mother after all this time,” Hermes mused. “It won’t be much of a celebration if Hades is in charge of it, I’m afraid—unless he hasdrasticallychanged in the time we’ve been imprisoned. You deserve better than what you’ll get, probably.”
“A celebration? Are we celebrating you?”
Hermes chuckled. “We’re celebratingyou.”
I wasn’t sure I’d done anything worthy of celebration. I’d just been in the right place at the right time, and I’d made a decision that I could onlyhopewas the right one.
“You did it, the Spirit of Dreams,” Hermes replied, slightly more somber now. “You liberated the Olympians. This is your hero’s welcome.”
Chapter 27
TheSpartoi—usuallysodeferentialand respectful when it came to me—were in too much of an uproar to notice me fighting my way through their messy ranks, Riot at my side, to get to Wild.
I’d only caught glimpses of the action through the wall of bodies, and Riot trying to hold me back, but I knew Wild had struck the fatal blow.
I was proud and a little shaky in equal measure.
“Are they happy?” Riot shouted over the din. “I can’t tell.”
“Me neither,” I admitted, slightly uneasy. The Spartoi had seemed very hesitant to attack the dragon. On reflection, they seemed to find it hard to evenlookat the dragon. They weren’t swarming Wild, though. Just slamming their weapons on their shields and stomping their feet on the ground so hard that the earth vibrated beneath us.
