“Did you know that you were going to come here to kill Cronus and Rhea?”
He shook his head, looked around, and went to pick up a dagger. I raised my hand to stop the griffin nearby from killing him. He placed the tip of the dagger in the sand and began writing, becoming more and more frustrated with himself when he wrote the word shadow and seemingly couldn’t stop until he’d written falls.
“We’re going to get nothing out of him,” I said, standing. “I’d like to say I feel sorry for you, but I don’t. Like all of your kind, you came here to murder.”
One of the griffins took a step toward the prisoner, who sprang to his feet and sprinted into the lake. He continued wading deeper and deeper, until he was up to his waist before he dove in, resurfacing a dozen feet further up the shore. He looked back at me and cupped his hands in the water, taking a long drink. He did the same a second and third time, before he visibly aged in front of us.
“The water won’t kill him,” Cerberus said. “Just age him. He’s only prolonging it.”
“His armor,” I said. “It’s from Shadow Falls. It’s identical to what the guards there wear.”
“I noticed,” Selene said. “That’s not great news.”
The female griffin who had stepped back earlier tested the weight of her spear and then launched it toward the prisoner. It caught him in the chest, flinging him back into the lake with a huge splash. She flicked her wings, taking off from the beach, and used the massive claws on her feet to grab hold of the prisoner, picking him up from the water and dropping him back onto the beach. No one moved toward the prisoner as she reclaimed her spear, turned, and walked away without a word.
“He deserved that,” Zamek said. “The griffins don’t mess about, do they?”
I didn’t think a reply was particularly necessary. “We need to go back to the Earth realm. We need to figure out how Abaddon and these attackers got here, and we need to go to Shadow Falls.”
“You’re not seriously entertaining the idea that Galahad is behind all of this?” Cerberus asked. “We’ve had our issues over the years, but he’s not the type.”
“He did once get you to kill people for him by lying to you,” Sky reminded me. “He’s not always been the trustful, honest guy people seem to think he is.”
She had a point. “I know, but I still can’t believe that Galahad would be behind everything that’s happening. It just doesn’t seem like his style. And he would have to know that using my name as the person in charge of it all would just make it personal between us. The last time I saw him we left as friends. I’d like to believe that’s still the case. Even so, Arthur asked me to go see Galahad because of rumors about some kind of Shadow Falls attack. I still don’t think they’re involved, and this cabal has used the name of an innocent person to get what they want, but we still need to see Galahad.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Selene said.
“I’ll join you, if I may?” Lucifer asked. “Abaddon’s involvement makes it necessary.”
“Speaking of which, where’s Hyperion? We came here to talk to him about Abaddon.”
“He’s in the villa,” Selene said. “I’d tread carefully with him. I don’t think he’s in the best of mental places at the moment.”
I promised not to piss off the exceptionally powerful dragon-kin and made my way back to the villa, walking past several groups of griffins and Cerberus’s people, who were still helping tend to the injured or deal with the dead. I got the feeling that Tartarus was going to feel the blow of this attack for a lot longer than it took for the physical injuries to heal.
I found Hyperion in the same place where Cronus had been crucified, although the old Titan’s body had been removed. Hyperion stood before the wall where his friend had died and stared at it. I waited at the doorway, unsure of the best approach. We hadn’t exactly had the best of relationships, especially when I’d believed that he’d been the one behind Selene’s marriage to Ares’s son, Deimos, a man for whom the phrase “creepy little bag of dicks” was probably invented.
“I did not think he could be killed,” Hyperion said without turning toward me. “Rhea, either, for that matter. I thought they would be as close to immortal as possible. I think for the first time ever, I wish I were human. I’m not sure I want to live another thousand years without Cronus and Rhea.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You fought Cronus. He was genuinely shocked at how close you came to defeating him. Even in his weakened state, he said that you were a worthy foe. Do you think you can kill Abaddon?”
There was no point in being anything but 100 percent honest. “I have no idea.”
Hyperion turned toward me, his eyes filled with tears that slowly cascaded down his face. He made no move to wipe them aside; he’d long since stopped caring about what anyone else might think of his show of sorrow. “I think that’s the right answer. You’re . . . courting, is that the right word? Courting my daughter, Selene?”
The rapid change of conversation threw me a little. “We’re in a relationship again, yes.”
“Do you love her?”
I nodded.
“I know she loves you, but I also know that Helios is involved in what’s happening here. You fought him, didn’t you? You’re going to have to kill him if you have any hope of stopping him.”
“I know.”
“Are you prepared to be the murderer of my son, and Selene’s brother?”
“I’m prepared to stop Helios from murdering more innocent people. If I have to take his life to do it, I will. I left him alive in the past because I love Selene and I wanted to give Helios a chance to consider his actions. That punishment, that incarceration, made him worse, not better. He tried to kill a friend of mine. He tried to, at the very least, incapacitate Selene. He came here to help Abaddon, and he’ll come for me again, sooner or later, and then he’ll die. I’m done giving him chances.”
“And Atlas?”
“We were going to have to fight sooner or later.”
“Your list of enemies grows larger by the day, it seems.”
“Hera and her people, Helios, Baldr, Siris, Abaddon, Atlas, probably a few other people I’ve forgotten about. Yeah, I like to collect them. Everyone needs a hobby.”
“And you believe you can beat them all?”
I shook my head. “Not even slightly. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to fuck their day up by trying, though.”
Hyperion laughed. “You sound like Zeus. He had a habit of enjoying the misery he caused his enemies. I guess Cronus and Rhea will never get the justice they wanted for his death. And yes, Zeus is dead—we all know it, so don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
“I had no intention of doing that. No one really knows what happened to him. Except Hera, and she’s not exactly forthcoming about whatever awful stuff she decided to do.”