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“I do not wish to keep things from you. I just do not know what to burden you with in your grief.”
She hesitated and then said, “I am not angry with you. I was joking, mostly.”
“Mostly,” he said with an incredulous laugh.
She was mostly joking, mostly content, mostly angry. He supposed he had to be okay with that because he was also only telling her mostly everything.
“We’ll talk tonight,” he said. It was the only thing he could promise for now because he needed to figure out what Katerina had to say, and she needed to work.
He held her gaze a moment longer, his stomach tightening. He’d have liked to kiss her, to do something other than stand here like an idiot. But if he started, he wouldn’t stop, so he took a step away and headed down the hallway. He felt her gaze on his back until he turned the corner and found himself in Katerina’s office.
“What is it?” he asked as he closed the door.
Katerina glanced around, as if she were anxious to speak. It was not as if anyone could hear them in her office, but the walls were all glass.
“I had a dream about the ophiotaurus,” she said.
Hades was quiet for a moment and then asked, “And how do dreams work for you?”
All oracles were different. Dreams were said to be the only peek gods and mortals had into the minds of the Fates. Sometimes their dreams foretold the future exactly as it would unfold; sometimes they were warnings for what might come to pass, but the details were still malleable; sometimes they were simply fears. A good oracle could tell the difference, and since Hades knew Katerina was a good oracle, it likely wasn’t just a fear.
“I have never dreamed something that did not come to pass,” she answered.
Hades felt like something heavy had settled in the bottom of his stomach.
“Tell me,” he said.
She shook her head. “This creature, the ophiotaurus. Its death is the catalyst to a battle that rages for years, and by the end, the world will split in two.”
“But what did you see?” he asked.
“Fire in all directions and bodies burning within it,” she said. “There was nothing left of this world as we know it, as if…we had gone back to the dawn of the earth.”
“Did you recognize any of the bodies?” he asked.
He knew she had because she wasn’t giving him the details that mattered, and what mattered was who was in the fire.
“Hades,” she whispered, her eyes glassy with tears.
“Did you see Persephone?” he asked.
She shook her head, and it was like he could breathe again, unlike Katerina, who seemed to have frozen. “I sawyou.”
Hades had never considered how it would feel to face his own death, but he imagined this was as close as he would get—a prophetic dream from an oracle who was never wrong.
“Anyone else?” he asked.
She swallowed. “I…I couldn’t look beyond you. Perhaps other oracles have had similar dreams.”
Hades nodded, his mind scattered.
“So the ophiotaurus is the catalyst to this end?” he asked. “Do you mean to say that whoever slays it has the power to bring about this end?”
“You know how this works, Hades,” she said.
She could only give him the words and the visions. It was up to him to figure out what they meant and how to stop them.
He hated this game.
