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“Explain.”
“Well...” I backed away, following Hestia’s gaze. “What do you see when you look in someone’s eyes?”
“Their eyes.”
“No— I mean, yes,” I corrected, tossing my head. “Of course you see their eyes, but what do their eyes hold?”
“They hold... a reflection of you.”
“Exactly. I went around stabbing eyeballs for nothing. It’s not about what’s in Hestia’s, Athena’s, and Zeus’s eyes. It’s about what they’re looking at.”
“What are they looking at?” Urgency filled her voice. “What is it, my savior, my champion. Find it. Free me!”
I winced at her shout but didn’t let it throw me off. “Okay, Hestia is looking at Apollo’s lyre, I think. Athena is looking at Hephaestus’s hammer, and Zeus is looking at Hera’s... ear?”
“Her diadem, silly girl. It is one of her symbols. The mark of a queen.”
I bobbed my head, stepping back into the middle of the atrium. “Okay, it’s the lyre, hammer, and diadem. What now? Do I have to get up there and touch them? Is there some ord—?”
I pitched forward, my body heaved off the floor and dropped none too gently on my hands and knees. Crying out, the sound was lost under the rumbling, creaky groaning of the stones beneath me. My eyes bugged as they fell away.
Scurrying back, I stared as the stones holding up the spot where I was standing crumbled and dropped, escaping into a pit that grew bigger and bigger.
“Oh my gods,” I breathed, crawling to the rim of the pit. Carefully, I looked down.
Darkness. Nothing but darkness—
“Except...” I squinted. “Is that water? Is the entrance to your prison an oversized well?”
“I suspect that’s Lethe water, girl. You must swim through it to get to me. Hermes,” she spat. “Always the clever one.”
“That’s why no one can remember their own name before they even get to you.” I flicked up. “The protections on this are clever. A passphrase that won’t come up in casual conversation. A Lethe bath. No other markings or indications that this place or those statues are important. No wonder no one found you for thousands of years.”
“Jump.”
“Slow down. I’m no use to you either if I wind up another clueless, babbling idiot, wandering around and asking every twig and rock if it’s my mommy. It’s only your guess that my past can’t be taken from me. If you’re wrong, we won’t get another chance.”
Mom won’t get another chance.
“That is not the case. You have an advantage my allies did not have. Me,” she stated. “I am in your ear. That Lethe water will not work on jewelry. I will tell you who you are and remind you of your purpose, should you forget.
That was so not happening, I didn’t have the words to express it. The last fucking thing I was going to do was let a cruel,vengeful, mother-abducting goddess whostillwouldn’t tell me the truth of why she was imprisoned, fill in the blanks on my personality, mission, and purpose.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not getting into all the reasons why that’s not an option because”—I reached down into the pit—“we have another problem.”
“What is it now?” she snapped.
“Don’t get mad at me.” I pushed, then pushed harder. “Why didn’t you tell me there was some kind of invisible barrier above this thing? Is there more to the prophecy that you left out? How do I get past this?”
“What did you say?”
“I said how do I get past this barrier?” Swinging my legs above, I hammered my heels against the unseen force. It was like kicking a wall. “Fuck’s sake, what’s the point of this? Why reveal the hole and the Lethe trap if you can’t even get in it? Might as well not have a passphrase to open it at all.”
“Arggh!”
I jerked, crying out and clamping my hands over my ringing ears. “What the fuck was that for!”
“There should be no barrier. It does not belong there! Every time,” she cried to herself. “So close. My freedom. So close.”
