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Now, as we moved toward Hades’s palace, I grew overwhelmed by sorrow and guilt. Tightness coiled around my chest and limbs, and my heart ached. A wave of self-loathing filled me, leaving me unable to concentrate on anything else. This horrible place, filled with darkness and despair and the stench of decay, was what I’d doomed my brother to for all eternity.
It made sense why he remained so upset with us, why he couldn’t drop his grudge. I would’ve done so much worse had I been in his shoes.
What had we done? Could some of the shit going on with X also be partially Zeus’s and my fault too? Forcing our brother down here until he snapped?
Apollo and Ares stared at the place with wide eyes, convincing me they shared my sentiments.
“I think the Fates are here to greet us,” Elyse cautioned when three women appeared at the grand double doors.
“Agreed,” I said, recognizing the three witches, and clenching my jaw. Nothing good ever came from being told riddles about the future.
As we approached, it became clear that only one of them could see. The other two were completely blind, wearing blindfolds over their eyes. The Fates shared one eye, taking turns to look at the past, the present, and the future.
Elyse shivered against me, and I noted that Apollo and Ares let me step forward first.
“We’ve been expecting you,” said the first Fate, the one with the eye.
Of course. They’d known we were coming.
“And we have a message for you,” continued another with a croaky voice.
“Only when you accept your flaws are you strong enough to overcome them,” the third instructed.
Ares groaned. “We’re not here for some fortune cookie bullshit. We’re here for the human girl.”
“Oh, we know why you’re here.” They spoke in unison, which was downright creepy.
“None of us know if you’ll ever escape,” one of the blind Fates said.
Elyse glanced at me, fear clear on her face, and I felt it in my gut. Apollo marched on her other side, taking her hand in his, standing guard. Letting fear into my thoughts would be the quickest way to fail.
“Come on,” I ordered. “We’ll get out of here as soon as we find what we’ve come for.”
“We just hope that what you came for is what you find,” one of them said.
They always talked in riddles, and everything they said carried a deeper meaning, I just had to work out what they meant. But if this was the company Hades had to keep and the more I saw of the Underworld, the worse I felt about what I’d done to him.
