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“Rogue said she was calling in her favor,” Bullet told Riot, glancing at him uncertainly. “Before she…”
“I wasn’t meant to go to the Isles of the Blessed,” Dare said quietly, staring down at Quinn’s face. “Not as alive as I am, in my mortal body, and not as aphylakes. My presence there weakened the protective shield around the island, and Gaia’s leftover scorpions got in. Rogue…”
Rogue didn’t make it.
“Persephone said Rogue died a hero’s death, and that she’d be honored for it in the underworld,” Bullet said. It was strange to see him talking about the gods with such little confidence in his words—he’d always been our main source of knowledge about them. “I know it’s not much consolation.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Riot mused. “Is it awful that Rogue is gone, and Quinn is going to grow up without her mother? Fuck yeah, absolutely it is. But Rogue was neverhappyin this life, necessarily. Maybe she can find her happiness now. Or maybe I’m just being weirdly naïve.”
“No, I’m not sure you are,” Dare replied. “When I went to the underworld to fetch Bullet, I saw my mom. I think she found a peace in the underworld that she never found in this life. She was freed from her daimon instincts for the first time. It’s been… liberating for her.”
Dare looked at Bullet curiously at the same moment I did. Would Bullet still experience daimon instincts? Was he still an Oneiroi now? I supposed we’d have to wait and see if the dreamscape squirreled him away once we fell asleep.
“I can’t believe you went to the underworld,” Riot said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Where were you two?” Dare asked, glancing between him and Wild.
“Thanatos showed up—” Wild began, but Dare’s strangled exclamation cut him off.
“You canspeak? What the fuck? Since when?”
“It’s a recent development,” Wild replied, looking slightly bashful at Bullet’s enquiring expression. “I was, uh, cursed by the God of Death and couldn’t speak for many years.”
“Oh.” Bullet blinked. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
Riot snorted. “No guesses on how or why the curse has lifted?”
“Some fun trick of Thanatos’, I assume,” Wild replied, scowling for a moment before schooling his expression. “He hasn’t told me. The last time I saw him was after Riot and I finished, er, fighting, Thanatos appeared and took me to the Spartoi.”
“Finished fighting, hm?” Riot asked, smirking at just how much Wild had downplayed it. “I bled all over the agathos temple and woke up Arete. She took me to an island of ghosts to trap the Fates and get some answers.”
Dare stared slack-jawed at Riot.
“Is that… like a normal thing to do?” Bullet whispered, leaning in so close that his lips brushed my shoulder. An entirely inappropriate shiver of desire ran down my spine.Later. One step at a time. “Trapping Fates and visiting ghost islands and stuff? There are some things I instinctively seem to know and other things I’m confused about, and I feel like… that’s not normal.”
I leaned a little harder into his side, relishing the solid feel of him against me. “That is definitely not normal. You can probably assume that nothing about our lives is normal.”
“Start at the beginning,” Dare commanded, staring wide-eyed at the bowl of fruit Wild handed him, freshly harvested from the trees that had sprung back to life outside, before splitting the portion between him and Bullet. “Actually, no. Bullet first. Tell us the story of how you freed the gods and became a hero.”
“Youdid that?” I gasped, twisting to stare at him.
Bullet looked adorably shy. “Hecate told me about my friend, Dare, and said that he was going to jump into the pit and that he’d probably die if he did.”
I spared Dare a look that promised we were not done talking aboutthat, and he had the grace to look suitably sheepish.
“And while I didn’t remember him, he sounded like he’d been a really good friend to me, and he loved Grace and she loved him, and I couldn’t just let himdie. And I was already sort of dead, so it really just made more sense for me to go.”
“No, it’s more than that,” I disagreed, a sense of calmness and fulfillment washing over me. This was always the way it was meant to be, we just hadn’t known it at the time.“It was fate—yourfate. My fate. We were both given a prophecy, though, at the time, we thought it was just for me. It was always a toss-up as to which of us would fulfill it, we just didn’t realize it.”
“You split it,” Riot pointed out. “Athena herself said Grace brought forth the Second Age of Heroes. It was for both of you.” He looked at Dare, his grin briefly turning smug. “We’re all heroes, by the way. You better do something cool if you want to join this club.”
Dare snorted. “Obviously, me and Bullet are also heroes. Though I feel exactly the same and I’m in no rush to get to the underworld, so I don’t really understand the hype, honestly.”
Oh, I’d missed them so much.
We all took turns exchanging stories while the Spartoi came and went, bringing us fruit they’d harvested and bringing jugs of water to drink from the stream that had just appeared next to the campsite. There was no question of any of us going to bed—as exhausted as we were, sleep would never come.
Dare adjusted his position, discreetly stretching his back, and I held out my arms with a soft smile.
