Page 100 of Flame and Fury

CHAPTER49

WREN

Aphrodite looks like a demon as she slides her blade into my heart. Oddly, it doesn't hurt nearly as much as the minotaur's horn did. Maybe that had rough edges? It was part of a living being after all. My thoughts are unfocused as the burning steel slides into and then out of my body.

It's not skipping through daisies or relaxing in a bath, but I thought dying would hurt more. Maybe my body has gone numb and that's why it simply feels like sinking.

Without the knife holding me up, I crumble to the hard marble of the platform in front of the Shrine of Olympus. I grow weaker in front of the gods, clerics, half of Chicago, hell, a good chunk of the world who are watching on their TVs. I don’t even feel my face slapping against the ground. My eyes refuse to close, and the only thing I see is Atlas. His mouth is open on a scream, his eyes full of panic and pain. I don’t feel the killing wound in my heart, but leaving Atlas hurts more than anything I’ve ever experienced.

I take my last breath and leave my body behind, Atlas’s face the last thing I see before I die.

* * *

The trickleof water flowing nearby has my eyelids flickering open. I don’t remember closing them. I'm on my back staring up at a sky full of stars so bright I've never seen the likes. It's hard to see the stars in Chicago. There's too much smog and the city lights obscure the view. But not here. I see Cassiopeia, the queen who was tossed into the sky upside down so her skirts would fall and embarrass her for eternity. And the hunter, Orion, ready to protect and hunt for his people.

It’s beautiful. With the lull of the nearby water, there’s a peace that soothes me.

“Are you going to lie there all night?” Hades asks.

I jolt up to a sitting position. “Hades?”

“Did you hit your head? I thought you were just stabbed a few times.”

I ignore his rude question and take in my surroundings. The grass under my hands is soft. I'm sitting under the branches of an ancient tree, its trunk wider than the length of a car. Leaves have changed for the fall and are a beautiful golden yellow. The water I heard is from a meandering stream that's bubbling over rocks. The moon is full and so bright I have no trouble seeing what's around me.

But I'm not in Chicago. And I'm definitely not at the Shrine of Olympus. I look down at my stomach, expecting to see a collection of bloody wounds from the minotaur and Aphrodite. What a hag.Only there aren't any injuries, not even the remnants of the brand from Nathaniel. There’s no blood either. I'm still in the black pants and tank top I was wearing earlier, only they aren't riddled with holes and filthy.

“Did you give me a bath?” I frown over at Hades.

He’s sitting on a large boulder that’s shaped faintly like a chair. Hades raises an eyebrow, his stare telling me without words that he thinks I'm an idiot.

“Where am I?” I try a different question since he didn't like my first one.

Hades is sprawled out, looking more relaxed than I've seen him. “You're in my world, Wren.”

His world? The Underworld? Maybe I did hit my head because I don't understand how that's possible. “You have to be dead to come into the Underworld,” I say stupidly.

Hades taps his finger on the arm of his boulder chair. Now that I really look at it, it's not entirely made of rock. There are roots climbing up the back side, forming an arched pergola that extends overhead. I close my eyes and blink a few times. That wasn't there a few moments ago. The longer I watch, the more the seat changes and a throne forms. Moss sprouts on the roots and small vines creep up and twine around them. Flowers bloom until they're dripping over Hades in a canopy of beauty.

“I'm dead.” There's no inflection in my voice because I don't know how to feel. My emotions are so complicated that my mind stops working completely. Then, as if a bolt of electricity jumpstarts my thoughts, everything comes racing in at the same time. If I'm dead, then the responsibility of saving the world from the clerics and the gods is off my shoulders. If I'm dead, maybe I'll see my parents again. I could get to know my mother. I was so young when she died that my memories of her all belong to someone else. I've taken them into myself and made them part of my picture of her. But that picture is cobbled together from the person everyone else knew. None of it is my own.

There's relief in knowing that I don't have to be the hero. I can sink into the Underworld and forget the turmoil of the living.

Atlas.

My heart throbs with a painful thump. Is that even possible? If I'm dead, how can my heart beat? How can it break? If I'm here, that means he's been left behind to take on the mantle of hero. Not that he doesn't already wear it like a second skin. A sob escapes before I clamp my mouth shut. The selfishness of my thoughts slams into me. Greer, Lark, Jasper, Nico, Estella, Drake, Jerry, Nyx. I’ve left them all behind.

I've spent a long time feeling alone in the world. Like I didn't have anyone to share my secrets with, therefore I had to keep myself closed off. Somehow, this group of assholes wiggled their way into my tight circle and flexed until it kept expanding.

When I was masquerading as the Dark Hand, protecting my neighborhood from the clerics, it was a way to flip the middle finger at them. At the gods. I could save my small corner of the world from their violent greed. I never wanted more than that. Now it’s clear that I was afraid.

A bubble of laughter escapes my lips. What was I so afraid of? That I would die? Well, here I fucking am. Having a breakdown while Hades stares at me with amusement.

“Does this happen with everyone who dies? Do they have a retrospective of their life and realize how much stuff they fucked up?”

“Some do. Most people are pissed and want to blame someone for how they lived their shitty lives.” He points to himself, indicating he’s the one they blame. I imagine Hades gets a lot of hate thrown his way. I wonder if he’s patient, or if he shuts them down with a flick of his pinkie. Right now, he's calmly letting me come to grips with my feelings.

“I wasn't done yet,” I whisper, accepting the truth as I close my eyes. What if the amulet didn't do what it was supposed to? What if Nyx can't get the gods back to sleep? That was my job and I've failed so many people.

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