There’s a hitch in my voice. “What do you mean?”
“Zeus sent you here because you overstepped. You wielded the power you were given for something only the Gods should control, and you did it without a hint of restraint. For his favored one, he apparently considered a temporary stay in Tartarus to be punishment enough.” Perses spits out that revelation in a way that makes me feel like a spoiled child who should have gotten her backside paddled a thousand times over but never did. “But unlike everyone else in Tartarus, Zeus is giving you a second chance. Understand your magic. Finish what you started.”
“Understand your magic?” I glare at him. “The magic I didn’t even know about for years? That I’ve never once made work like it should? That no one will tell me how to use!”
Perses nods.
“Let me make sure I understand this. We’re the only two in Tartarus who can get out of here, and I’m your second chance?” I laugh just like Mother would and revel in it for once. “That’s unfortunate for you.”
Bronze eyes bore into mine, humorless, pitiless, flat as coins. “I’ve waited millennia for this. You will not take it from me. Now wake up, before it’s too late!”
He reaches out, and I dart to the side, expecting him to try to hurl me over the cliff again. He doesn’t. Instead, he draws a symbol against the cliff wall in front of me, repeating the same archaic swoops and lines in a big square pattern until the invisible traces of power meet again in the place where he started.
I frown, watching him. I’m familiar with the magic. Thanos showed me those ancient figures when he tried to teach me some protective ward marks, but I never used open. I only ever tried lock, and since lock never worked like it should, the written counter-spell of open was moot.
Perses drops his hand from the wall, and the rock shudders, ripples, and then stabilizes again with a new view seeming to come from the inside. There are depth and color and sound. Like a window opening to another world, the square in the rock reveals a scene I recognize. It’s the great room in Castle Tarva, the place where we gathered as a family—for what little time we spent there. But it’s different, cozier, and filled with a din that’s indistinct but that speaks of habitation, activity, and warmth.
The scene swoops in to focus on a man in a chair. The ledge seems to lurch beneath my feet, and my eyes fill with tears. Trembling, I step toward the rock wall, closer to the only man who’ll ever make my heart both beat and stall.
“Do you have any idea how much time you’ve wasted?”
Perses’s question comes back to haunt me. Nausea roils in my stomach.
Gray shoots liberally through Griffin’s black hair, the silver threads more heavily concentrated at his temples. His face is thicker. Still handsome and strong, but lacking the sharp angles and hard planes of manhood’s prime and the trials of war. The familiar lines on his face are deeper, like they’ve been cut more permanently into his skin. He looks wiser. Settled. Concentrated on his task.
“You think that’s all you’ve lost?”
My heart drops straight through the gaping hole in my middle. I think I’ve lost a dozen years—or more.
Griffin is seated next to a small but crackling fire. His long legs are stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles. His familiar gray eyes diligently scan the parchment in his hands. He squints a little while reading, which he never used to do. There are more scrolls at his feet, not scattered around like I would no doubt leave them, but stacked tidily next to his chair and placed well away from the fire. When he finishes reading, he neatly rolls up the parchment in his hands, binds it, and then sets it down with the others.
He straightens and lifts his face. His expression lights up at once. He sees me!
I reach for him, and my fingertips bump against hard, cool rock.
“Griffin?” I whisper.
He smiles, warm and welcoming, loving, and my heart expands ten sizes in my chest. But then his eyes shift to follow a dark-haired boy who suddenly comes into view. He prances in front of Griffin, a hobbyhorse between his gangly legs and a wooden sword in his small hand.
The lump of emotion clogging my throat turns into something that starts to strangle me. That child is Griffin’s. There’s no way that he’s not.
The hobbyhorse’s head is made entirely of deftly woven hellipses grass. The long mane bounces and rustles as the boy makes battle sounds, waving his toy sword and preparing to charge.
A young girl springs into the scene from the side and jumps in front of Griffin, as if to protect him from an enemy. Griffin chuckles and encourages her as she deflects the boy’s first blow with her own small sword.
In shock, I stumble back from the vision. The boy looks to be about seven years old and the girl a little younger than that. Her wild, wavy locks are a striking red.
I can’t breathe. And I can’t look away, even though my breaking heart is screaming at me to run from this.
She’s a fierce little thing, and her second thrust with her wooden sword is a ferocious enough jab to put the boy on his guard in earnest. He jumps off the pretend horse, flings the toy aside, and then they both switch to more balanced stances. Laughing and goading each other under Griffin’s watchful gaze, the children bang out a mock battle with fluid moves and actual skill. It’s a fighting dance of play and trust.
I slam my eyes shut. When I open them again, the scene is still there. Utterly crushing. Entirely real.
Footsteps. A woman’s lilting laugh. Sickness heaves through me, shooting acid up my throat. I know what I’ll see next.
Knowing still doesn’t prepare me for the swift and brutal kick in the gut when Bellanca strides into view, and Griffin’s eyes light on her with all the passion, possession, and protection I only ever thought he’d bestow on me. Smiling, she drops into Griffin’s lap like she has every right to be there, and his arms come around her waist like it’s the most natural thing he could do.
My mouth goes as dry as salt. This can’t be happening.
Except it already has. If the boy with the carefully handmade hobbyhorse is anything to judge by, it happened about eight years ago.
My vision wavers, darkening. There’s no air, only a grinding weight on my chest. It presses down, crumbling my heart into dust.
Bellanca leans into Griffin, and he nuzzles her fiery curls. The same satisfied, warmth-filled smile plays around both of their mouths as they watch the children play. Their children.
I try to swallow, but there’s nothing to wash down my grief. There’s not even a scream to drive it out, although I feel it building, silently flaying the inside of my throat.