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“I don’t think this is killing them!” he yelled, heaving the heavy branch down on top of the scorpion closest to him. “You’re going to have to follow up with the blades.”
“Got it!” I called back, heading down another step and moving closer to Rogue. Her movements were sluggish, and I wondered if she was also struggling under the not-inconsiderable weight of the sword.
“We can’t win this,” Rogue said suddenly, her words a little slurred. “There’s too many of them. They just keep coming.”
We were both slicing and dicing in earnest, Quinn wailing in my ear, and I hated to admit that I thought Rogue was probably right. I’d lost count of how many I’d decapitated, and yet the flow of scorpions coming out of the forest didn’t seem to be slowing down. Dare had fought his way to us, and the three of us pressed our backs together, Dare facing the building as scorpions scaled the wall from the other side, rushing down toward our little huddle in a wave.
We were going to die here,I thought helplessly. I’d clawed my way back from the brink of death, only to be immediately faced with it all over again. I’d never see Grace or Wild, never see Riot, never meet the people who’d once meant everything to me.
What cruelty was this? Where were the gods now?
I didn’t stop fighting, though. I didn’t let Quinn slip an inch, and I didn’t break our haphazard formation. As pointless, as needlessly cruel, as it all felt, if I was going down, I was taking as many of these scorpions with me as I could.
Suddenly, black horses were descending from the sky—even larger than the ones that had dragged us out of the underworld—pulling a golden chariot with afurious-looking Hades on the back.
“Out!” he growled, pointing a two-pronged scepter I hadn’t noticed in the underworld at the scorpions as he flew over the treetops. While I couldn’tseethe scepter doing anything, the scorpions were dropping dead one by one around us, and I pressed further back against Dare and Rogue, not wanting to get in the way of the invisible death blasts.
“You are notallowedhere,” Hades fumed, leaping down from the chariot in front of us and picking off the remaining scorpions individually. “This island is the domain of theunderworld.”
Oh, he wasbigmad.
“HERMES!” he roared at the sky, his voice so loud that it rattled the trees. “Bring me the Queen of the Underworld. Bring me mywife.”
Dare panted while Rogue slumped to the ground, weakly tugging at Quinn. I crouched down to pass her back to her mom, noticing that Rogue really wasn’t looking so good.
“Hey, are you okay?” I murmured. Why was she so gray? That didn’t seem right. A thick coating of sweat covered her skin, and while she was looking at Quinn on her lap, she seemed to have trouble focusing her eyes.
“I think one of ‘em got me,” Rogue slurred, wobbling enough that I grabbed the back of Quinn’s top in case Rogue lost her grip on her.
“Where?” Dare asked urgently, crouching down on Rogue’s other side. She stretched out one leg, far redder and more swollen than it was meant to be.
“Hades—” I began, ready to beg and plead if I had to.
“Her thread has been cut,” he replied curtly, though his expression was almost sympathetic. “Her time was already at an end, though it should not have come to passhere, in thissafe, sacred place.”
Seconds later, a lopsided shape appeared in the sky, and it took a moment to realize that it waspeople. Or gods, rather. Hermes was in the middle, the wings on his sandals flapping as he carried a goddess in each arm, shooting Hades a smug expression that the King of the Underworld did not return.
“Great,” he mumbled. “My mother-in-law is here.”
The three of them landed in front of us as one of the goddesses—the shorter, curvier one with golden hair that trailed down to the ground—immediately crossed the distance, wrapping her arms around Hades and pressing a kiss to his cheek.Persephone, I assumed.
She looked so happy that it took her a moment to absorb the carnage around us. “What happened here?! Myisland,” she added, outraged.
“Yours, daughter?” Demeter asked. She’d been quiet in Tartarus, content to sit back and let the others do the talking. She was speaking to Persephone but looking at Hades with pure disdain.
“Mine,” Persephone agreed. “Created with the remnants of the power I had as the Goddess of Spring when Gaia locked you all away, but tied to my power as Queen of the Underworld. It is both; it straddles the veil. Itshouldhave been free from Gaia’s machinations. It is nothersoil.”
Hades looked at Dare. “There are rules around who can enter this place, as Thanatos told you. When you attempted to enter, you inadvertently weakened the barrier around it, enough for Gaia’s little monstrosities to pass. She unleashed so many of them across the globe, it may takeyearsto rid the earth of this scourge.” Dare was stricken, staring at Rogue’s injured leg in horror.
“However,” Hades continued. “Without you coming to collect him, the Oneiroi would not have returned to the upperworld—the Fates themselves confirmed it. Ennui would have set in, and he would have stayed in an apathetic sort of discomfort in the underworld for all of time. A waste of potential, really, considering what they have hinted lies ahead.”
Was he trying to comfort us? Because none of us looked particularly comforted.
“And that you fought your way through the remaining barrier, forged by my wife’s own magic, to save those you care for… You have a stronger spine than I thought, Philotes.”
“But you’re saying by coming back, I’ve essentially traded my life for hers,” I rasped. “That’s what it is, isn’t it? I return, Rogue…”
“Dies,” Rogue finished for me, voice weak. “Rogue dies.”
