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His hand snapped up and grasped my wrist, tearing out a scream. “Why?” His brilliant green eyes beseeched me, dragging me into a well of pain that froze me in my tracks.
What’s wrong with him? His wrist is already starting to heal. He can’t be in that much pain, so why... why does it look like he’s...
Crying.
“After everything,” he rasped. “After last night. Why would you throw us away? We love each other. I’d have given you everything—anything. I’d have—”
“Enough, you freak!” I ripped away. “There is no us. You don’t love me, and I don’t love you. I’ll give you your stupid curse back as soon as I’m done with it. Fuck’s sake.”
I ran out of the room and into the hall as doors opened, and curious heads stuck out. His shouts followed me.
“Wait,” he called. “Come back! Please, don’t do this. Don’t—”
The noise of the Titan wing faded as I hit the bottom step and raced off. I wasn’t stopping, and I wasn’t going back. This was it. I was finally going to save Mom.
I ran all the way to the atrium. Lungs burning, I skidded across the floor, coming to a stop. I listened—nearly impossible to do with my heart thumping in my ears, but after a beat, I knew no one was following me.
“Go on, child. Say the passphrase. Free me. FREE ME!”
“No need to shout,” I barked back, but made my way to the foot of Zeus’s statue anyway. “Lyre, hammer, diadem.”
The world opened up beneath my feet, revealing the entrance to the prison. I stepped up to the mouth of the well, and stopped.
“Well?” Selene waited. “What are you doing? Touch the curse to the barrier. Go on.”
“I—I—I can’t d-do this...”
“Of course you can. Put the curse on the barrier.”
“No, I...” Tears spilled over my lids. “I can’t... save her. I couldn’t save her that night, what the fuck has changed now! I’m ranked bottom of the useless class. Do you understand that? I’m the most useless of all the useless! I can’t fight. I can’t answer the basic questions about this world. How am I supposed to get through traps put there by actual, all-powerful gods?
“I’m going to fail, and Mom’s going to be stuck down there forever, and I can’t—”
“Aella, stop.”
It was the use of my first name that stopped me. Notgirlorchild, but Aella.
“I will tell you a truth now, and you will be thankful of my graciousness,” she said, tone as imperious as ever. “I will tell you... that I am a mother.”
“You are?”
“Yes. To many children, as it is. But when I was taken and imprisoned, there was still time before the scatter for my children to come for me. To save me. They did not.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you are indeed all the things that are going through your head right now. Weak, ignorant, cowardly—”
My lips trembled with each arrow of an insult, my head sinking lower as they pierced my heart.
“But,” she hissed, forcing the word out of her. “You’re here. You’ve crossed worlds. You’ve gone farther for your mother than my own children ever thought to do for me. Yes, you are weak, and you’re stupid, and you know you will likely fail... and none of that got in your way.
“You don’t give up, child of fate, and that counts for far more than you think.”
I was silent for a stretch. “I’m pretty sure that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Did it work? Will you now stop wasting time?”
I chuckled at the snap. Selene was most definitely not the goddess of kind, cuddly things, but she was right. I hadn’t given up. I wasn’t going to do it now.
