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It sounded like a trap, yet I was struggling to fully conceptualize what a trap was. If I existed in between living and dead, surely going to the underworld meant choosing death. Or did it? I wanted toknow, to understand what it was we were talking about, what I was potentially getting myself into, but it felt like there was a hole in my mind, and no matter how much I reached into it, nothing was coming out.
“Not so long ago, you sat in a room in your home with the woman you love—her name is Grace—communing with the gods.”
Grace. That was a pretty name.
“What is she like? Does she remember me? What was the message?”
Did she miss me? How long had I been in this place? Maybe she’d forgotten me. That was a sad thought. Then again, the idea of someone loving me and missing me while I was… wherever I was, was also a sad thought. What if she was lonely? No, I didn’t like that idea at all.
I didn’t want anyone to suffer for loving me. I was a floating glob of missing memories in a void, I wasn’t worth suffering over.
“What is she like?”the voice mused.“I don’t perceive mortals the way you do, I don’t think I can truly say. However you always called her your Amazing Grace, so I suppose that is howyousee her.”
Grace. Amazing Grace.
“There’s a man you love too, a Keres daimon named Wild. Grace loves you both, and they have been torn apart. She is increasingly alone in the world, facing trial after trial with no reprieve. She has been given an inordinately large burden to bear.”
“What can I do?” I asked immediately, my own feelings of suffocating despair easing in the face of this mysterious woman’s suffering. If I’d loved her once, I couldn’t not help her. That would make me a monster. “Where is Wild? I want to help them both. You still haven’t told me who you are,” I added, realizing that perhaps taking advice from a mysterious disembodied voice wasn’t the best course of action. Or was it?
“I am Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. And you are the last Spirit of Dreams. You are beloved of Grace the Agathos, and she needs you. We all do.”
Beloved of Grace.
“If I go with you, can I help her?”
“Yes. Only you can.”
The baby laughed again, the warm sun beating down on me from wherever it was, even though I felt floaty and disconnected from my body. This in-between was bliss, a perfect state of peace.
But someone I loved was in danger. I didn’t know who Grace was, couldn’t picture her face, couldn’t recall a single thing about her, but I’d loved her once. Before. Back when my mind was whole, filled with dreams.
I couldn’t abandon her now.
“Why were we communing with the gods?”
“They had a message for you: Liberate the treasure held in the deep,
Where no sweet-smelling smoke or prayer can reach,
Bring forth the Second Age of Heroes.”
“I don’t know what that means.” That gaping hole in my mind felt larger than ever.
“I know,”she replied sympathetically.“But you will. This message, this prophecy, was delivered only to the two of you. Will you risk the life of a loved one to see it come true? Or will you accompany me to the underworld and take her burden as your own, knowing that you might never return here?”
Fear. That was what this emotion was, and it was impossible to ignore. But I couldn’t let it stop me from doing the right thing. In fact, there was a sort of reassuring sense of rightness at the idea of intentionally doing what scared me.
“I’ll go with you to the underworld.”
Chapter 5
“Anyoneneedbatteries?”Icalled, wandering through the tent city that had been rapidly forming over the past few days. The sun had returned, the agathos bonds had broken, and somehow, the world seemed to be more unstable than ever. “Water treatment tablets? Matches?”
I stopped at one of the tents, unloading some essential supplies from the crate I was carting around. We didn’t have a lot, but we shared it all. Those who’d ended up here were in the most dire situations, many of whom were city people who’d thought they could drive out to the middle of nowhere and “live off the land” without any real concept of what that entailed.
Shouting broke out at the end of the row, and I stiffened, finishing up with the family I was with and backing toward The Lodge. I steered clear of the fights. Brio was an agathos ofHarmonia, he was best equipped to defuse those situations.
“Mercy,” Harbor called, beckoning me over as I got to the porch steps from his spot a few feet away. I quickly ditched the crate inside the door before jogging over to join him. He was exhausted, we all were, and yet he looked more handsome than ever.
