“No! Come back!” I reach out, trying to hold on to Griffin, but he’s already gone.
My heart breaks again, but not quite so hard. Turning, I swing hate-filled eyes on Perses. He’ll pay for this.
“You deserve Tartarus.” I advance on him, not caring that I’m half his size, not anywhere near as powerful, and not at all immortal. “You dare to pass judgment on my humanity when you have none? You’re a coldhearted monster. You should be the one chained up and getting your liver pecked out. Or starving. Or forever rolling that rock up the hill.” I throw a hand toward Sisyphus. He’s still at it. He always is.
Perses shrugs, like he didn’t just attempt to carve me up and let my soul bleed out with grief.
“You think you’re so clever, so above mankind, but you’re not even smart enough to understand us lowly humans and our mortal hearts.” I glance down at the great, somber valley I’ve seen the bottom of too many times and then laugh right in the Titan’s face. The sound couldn’t be more razor-sharp if my teeth were serrated to points. “You need me to find the spark—that buried ember of magic that will get us both out of here and make your dreams come true. But you drown me in pain. You show me everything I don’t have to live for. You fling me from agony to loss.”
I shake my head at this ancient God who hasn’t roamed the worlds since the creation of human beings. The only people he knows are the ones who got stuck right here in Tartarus, just like him. Probably not the best slice of humanity from which to learn. Zeus supplied him with the essentials about me, but clearly that wasn’t enough. How could it be, when I’ve just at long last understood something essential about myself?
The Elemental Magic I only recently learned was inside me and could never grasp how to use finally leaps to my bidding, ready and eager. It’s all suddenly so clear. I’m not powerful just because of my heritage, or my innate magic, or my stubborn-as-a-donkey will. I’m powerful because there are people in my life who refused to let me be alone, even when I was so desperately convinced that I should be, even when I thought that solitude was what I both needed and deserved.
The steadfast weight of Griffin’s devotion and optimism, of Beta Team’s loyalty and friendship, of my new family’s acceptance and love… All of it slowly bore down on the conflicted scales inside of me until they tipped, and Elpis climbed into the brighter cup. Now, in the endless gray twilight of Tartarus, that brighter side of the balance thunks down hard, once and for all. The magic I’ve needed isn’t about fear. It’s always been about hope.
Even without wings, I suddenly soar. “Listen carefully, you imbecilic, incompetent, worthless fool of a God, because I’m about to give you the secret to dealing with mankind. And you can tell Zeus when you see him next, since he obviously needs the reminder.” I step toward Perses again, getting so close I burn from his primeval magic and heat. Currents of lightning snap and spiral a sizzling path through my blood, no longer dormant or hidden from me. I can have my husband. I can have a family. I can have my kingdom. I can have it all, because despite my flaws, I deserve happiness, and I’ll do my very best to bring it to others as well.
“A crushed spark never ignites,” I tell Perses. “That’s not how you fan the flame.”
I shoot out my hand and smack the Titan right in the sternum just as a lightning bolt rolls down my arm. It doesn’t fracture the air, but it fractures Perses. The immediate crack of thunder shocks my eardrums and makes Prometheus let out a long, low moan. Through smoke and noise, I see the bloody, charred mess of what’s left of the Titan’s barrel chest as he flies backward off the ledge. I catch the look of utter agony on his face and don’t feel a hint of remorse.
A deep, steadying breath anchors inside me my previously elusive power. I take control of the turbulent magic, learning it, taming it, and finally making it my own. The storm settles, but an underlying current of lightning still hums and purrs in my veins, branching out through every part of me and settling like a lazy cat in the sun into all the places where I know I can always find it again.
Grim satisfaction curves my mouth into a hard almost-smile Mother could be proud of. Then, with just a thought, I make the power ignite again and shoot another bolt straight out in front of me. The Elemental Magic only Zeus and I possess leaves a zigzagging path of light across the otherwise monochrome sky. It cuts through the gray and hangs there, waiting. It’s my door.
Now I have to find my wings.
*
I don’t think for a second that this is going to be easy. I don’t feel even a tickle in my chest or a pinch in my shoulder blades, and that can’t be good.
Not to motivate me—I’m pretty Gods damn motivated now—but because I can’t stand the emptiness here for one more second while I try to figure this out, I use my own blood to draw the same archaic magic symbols that Perses used back on to the rock wall. I paint the four sides of the square, focus all my heart and mind on Griffin, and open a window back to him.
He hasn’t moved, but the shadows in the bedroom have grown heavier. There are still no flaming candles. There’s no fire burning in the hearth. He sits in a chair and stares out the open window, his face so bleak and filled with pain that I don’t know if he’s desperately hoping against all hope that I’ll appear, or trying to come to grips with the fact that I won’t. He’s utterly still. Palpably devastated.
“I’m coming,” I tell him, wiping my bloodstained hands on my pants and knowing full well that Griffin can’t hear me. But by Gods, I am.
Wings. No human should have them, but I somehow do. So where are they?
I pace back and forth along the narrow rock ledge, thinking, wishing. I push out with my lungs. Spread my arms. Tense my back. There’s no flutter in my chest. No tickling brush of wings against my ribs. There’s absolutely nothing besides the cold lump of worry that starts to inhabit my breast. It grows with each passing, wingless moment, despite the latent heat now coursing through my veins from the Elemental Magic I’ve found at last.
Multiple elements. I understand now that it’s not just lightning stirring my blood. The ground rumbling under my feet? Fissures snaking up walls, and storms brewing all around me? It was all there—air, earth, the thunderbolt—manifesting for the first times as those scales inside me tipped slowly out of the quagmire of my past, tipped slowly toward believing that I could have—that I deserved—a better life.
I nearly snort out loud. Funny to think that something as intangible as brightness outweighs muck and mud.