Page 94 of Invoking Ruin

There’s an irony in that, but I’m not examining it too closely.

I need to get to her.

No, I need to keep walking.

If I keep walking, she’s going to get herself killed.

The claws dig even deeper, trying to convince me walking away from her is the best idea. I rebel, because it isn’t. Losing her playful grins, her wild, often selfish antics, her sweet, dangerous mouth is the worst idea imaginable.

Her games, her obsessions are the only things keeping this eternity bearable. If I don’t get her back, then it doesn’t matter if she fails or succeeds. My existence will be over.

“Fuck,” I groan.

Cool hands cup my face, tilting it up to the sun. Lethe stares down at me.

“Prize…” Hephaestus growls, but she ignores him.

“Enough of this.” She blows in my face, a stream of chilly white fog filling my nose, my lungs.

The world teeters, fading away into softness and peace. When the mist clears, I’m on my back on the stone walkway, staring up at the enormous chasm tearing the sky apart.

What just happened?

“Better?” Lethe asks. She’s crouched beside me, hands on her knees. “Her magic just wouldn’t let you go. Turns out forgetting her orders works as well as defying them.”

I shake my head and sit up. The icy remnants of her power slither like snakes over my skin, but I ignore the sensation. Atê’s influence is gone, and it’s all that matters.

“Thank you,” I tell her, meaning it.

She smiles. “Are you going after her then?”

As though there’s another option. My reckless, wild goddess is not about to get herself killed, not if I can do anything to stop it.

I push myself to my feet. “She took Hermes’ sandals?” I assume she did, the way she walked on air out of the garden. The sandals had been in the chest. I remember spotting them when she’d been digging inside it in Athens, though I hadn’t known them for what they were then.

Clever, wicked goddess. She’d been prepared for almost anything.

“What is she trying to do up there?” I ask Lethe, not truly expecting an answer.

“She thinks that Nyx is at the center of the tear in the sky, and if she ends Nyx, the crack will close.”

It’s a lot of ifs. If Nyx is there. If she can actually kill Nyx. If the crack isn’t so wide it’s irreparable.

She ran off on a hunch. I’m going to strangle her.

“What makes her so sure?” I ask.

Lethe huffs, the only sign of annoyance I’ve ever seen from the easy-going goddess. “She thinks she understands grandmother.” Lethe shakes her head. “Please. Bring her back. Even if she succeeds… just bring her back.”

“I will.” Or I simply will not return at all. “Where is Pegasus?”

Pegasus is in the center of the garden, pacing. If a horse could look tortured, he does, all of his movements uncharacteristically jerky and graceless. He snorts at me as I approach, his ears going back.

I should have spent more time bonding with the beast. His love for Atê is absolute, but I’m still not much more than a stranger. He saved my life before, but I’m no fool. It had been for Atê’s sake, not my own.

But I need him. “Hey, you’re the one who saved me from Nyx. If you didn’t want me near you, maybe you should have thought of that.”

Pegasus stomps his hooves. Not my best opener. I hold up my hands. I don’t have anything to bribe him with, so I have to hope he understands humanoid gestures. He’s not an ordinary horse, but an immortal beast who has seen empires come and go. I’m betting he’s far cannier than most gods give him credit for.

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