Her mother reached forward and brushed translucent, pearly fingers against Pandora’s cheek. A ghostly caress. There but not there. And for a moment, it reminded her of Sam, her man of shadow and mist, so alive yet made of air. Her mother was the same, except she was pure and untainted, made of a silver haze that fluttered softly against Pandora’s skin.
She lifted her hand, trying to capture the touch.
But her fingers pushed right through her mother’s palm and landed against her own cheek, dispersing the white wisps. Her mother was barely in this world, more like a fading ember than a flame, and time was running out.
“What am I?” Pandora asked.
That question.
That stupid freaking question.
It plagued her.
“Please, Mom,” she repeated, voice cracking as her shoulders hunched in, desperation a physical weight pressing down on her. “What am I?”
“Pandora,” her mother said, words strained. She curled her smoky hands into fists and shook her head, struggling to open her mouth. Then she gasped, face wincing in pain. “I can’t, Pandora. I want to, believe me, but I’m bound. I was bound in life, and I’m bound in death.”
“Bound by what? Please, tell me,” she pleaded. This was her last hope, her last chance at finding answers. She’d risked so much to get to this moment.
“The oath,” her mother confessed, voice tortured. “We’re all bound by the oath, the titan oath. Oh, Pandora, it’s why I left you. I couldn’t take it anymore. To watch you grow up, to watch you grow inquisitive and smart and independent, all while harboring this secret, letting it churn in my gut like a set of ever-twisting knives ripping me to shreds. I was weak and selfish, and I couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t watch you mature, only to know I’d eventually have to watch you die, to know I’d never be able to explain why.”
“But you can,” she begged, arms falling limp at her sides as the fight left her. Pandora’s gaze roved over her mother’s misty form, searching for something, anything. “You have to.”
“You’re—” her mother started and then instantly stopped as her chest caved in with an invisible blow. She brought her hand to her throat, grabbing at it, suffocating. Her shape weakened, melting back into the curtain of white surrounding them on all sides, fading.
“No, Mom, don’t go,” Pandora cried, reaching out, but her hand passed through her mother’s body, unable to find anything to hold on to.
Regardless, her mother’s shape brightened, becoming more clear.
“I’m here,” she soothed, breathing deep despite being made of little more than air herself. “I’m here like I should have been. Here to tell you that you already have all the answers, you just don’t realize it.”
“What do you mean?”
Her mother shook her head sadly, then looked toward the floor, closing her eyes, unable to meet Pandora’s gaze. “How old are you? Older than sixteen? You must be.”
“Twenty.”
Her mother’s eyes shot open in shock, and she jerked her head up. “Twenty? When? How long ago?”
“About a month, maybe a little more.”
“There’s so little time. You must be so confused—”
“Confused?” Pandora interrupted, voice growing stronger. “Confused? When I was fifteen overhearing that my father was planning to murder me? Yeah, then I was confused. But now I’m angry, really freaking angry. After all this, after risking so much, I still have nothing. You can’t tell me anything. Jax can’t tell me anything. My father just stabbed me, so he’s sure as hell not going to tell me anything. And Sam just dances around everything like—”
“Sam?” her mother cut in sharply, voice a razor. “Who’s Sam?”
Pandora pulled her brows in as a sinking feeling dripped down her throat and landed heavily in the pit of her stomach. “Sam is…I don’t know who Sam is. My friend? My guardian angel? He says we used to be in love, that we’ve lived a thousand lives trying to find our way back to each other. He told me not to come here, not to find you, and maybe he was right, maybe—”
“You can’t listen to him,” her mother shouted roughly, lunging forward to grip Pandora’s cheeks, to force her to listen. But her hands passed right through Pandora’s face, disappearing in a pearly cloud. “You can’t trust him.”
“Why not?” she asked, leaning away. “He’s the only one on my side, the only one trying to help keep me alive.”
“For his own benefit,” her mother murmured, releasing a deep breath.
“How do you know?” Pandora asked, narrowing her eyes. “How do you even know who he is?”
“Because he’s—” But instead of words, only a gasp escaped her lips, an agonized, airy cry as her eyes bulged and her throat pulsed, fighting the words that were choking her. “He’s part of the story,” she said, wheezing. “A very big part.”
“What story?”
“Your story, our story, everyone’s story. You have all the pieces. You know all the players, Pandora. It’s all in your head, somewhere. You just have to put it together. You just have to remember, and then you’ll see. You’ll understand.” She sighed, shaking her head, frustration evident. “Have you started to remember your nightmares?”
Pandora nodded slowly.
“Use them. They’re flashes of your memories, of your past.”
Her mother put her hand to her own head, pressing two fingers against her right temple, trying to focus. Pandora had seen other archivists do the same as they searched through the vast collection of memories stored deep in their brains, countless lifetimes stocked on shelves like books in a library, waiting to be pulled to the surface and remembered. Her mother had access to more information than Pandora could ever hope to know, but she was trapped by the titans just as much as Pandora was—so much so that it had killed her.
“It’s happened before,” she murmured, almost to herself as she kept her eyes shut and her focus inward. “A few times in the past, you’ve made it to this age, even a little older. The nightmares, they’ll start to clear. You’ll start to remember. The man you call Sam, he’ll start to come to you. If he’s strong enough to visit you, to speak to you like you said, then the veil must already be so thin. And the titans, have they started to lose strength?”
Pandora opened her mouth to say no and then paused. Stopped. Her palm still clutched the stab wound in her shoulder, and the blood pouring out was still warm. Her wound hadn’t closed, hadn’t sealed the way it should have. And ever since she’d been cured, she’d felt slow, weak. And Jax’s bruises on the road, odd purple marks she’d never seen on his skin before. And the other titans, they’d fallen a little too easily in the escape from the prison.
“Yeah,” she said, shocked, still processing. Everything was connected. Everything. And she was at the center. “Yeah, we’re not healing the way we should. Something’s wrong.”
But her mother nodded as though this was to be expected. “Your power must be more intense.”
Not a question, but Pandora felt compelled to answer as the image of her father’s flashing fangs flew to the forefront of her thoughts. She swallowed. “It is. I can do things, things I never imagined. Things I…” she trailed off, trying to shut her eyes against the vision of the monster she’d created. But it wouldn’t fade.
“Have they made the mark on your skin?” her mother asked, opening her eyes, meeting Pandora’s mounting horror head-on.
Pandora reached back and forced her fingers through her hair, running them over the newly raised skin at her neck, still sore and tender. “Tonight,” she confessed, voice the barest whisper. “Right before I got away.”
“Then you have all the answers already,” her mother said simply, voice even, laced with despair. “You know what you have to do, and you know why.”
“I don’t,” Pandora responded instinctually, but her voice lacked fight, lacked power.
“You do,” her mother urged. “Deep down, you do. You’re just too afraid to face it. And I understand, Pandora. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, can’t imagine how much your soul has survived, how much you have survived. But it’s time to let go, to stop fighting.”
“I can’t,” she whimpered.
“You can,” she murmured softly, lovingly. The voice of a mother to her child, sympathetic and caring, yet forceful, demanding her daughter do what was right. “Do you remember the stories I used to tell you, right before bedtime?”
Pandora shook her head. She’d only been three when her mother had died. Until this night, she hadn’t remembered what her mother had looked like, what she’d sounded like. There was only a golden glow that warmed her heart when she thought of her, nothing tangible, nothing solid, just like the ghost sitting before her.
“Think of the stories, Pandora,” her mother pressed. “The stories about your name. My way of sharing what I could in the only way I knew how. The only way I was allowed, through bedtime stories and myths, through half-truths and veiled messages.”
“My name?” Pandora fought to remember, but her mind was full of blank space. There wasn’t even a spark of familiarity to hold on to. “Pandora Stephanie Scott,” she whispered, trying to fuel an ounce of awareness. “Pandora Stephanie—”
“No.” Her mother jumped forward, reaching out to grab Pandora around the arm, forgetting she was little more than air until her fingers slid clean through. “Not Pandora Stephanie. That’s not the name I gave you. Your name is Pandora Persephone,” she said forcefully.
Persephone? Pandora thought, shaking her head. No. That wasn’t… But how could she have forgotten her own name? Yet the word stirred something in the back of her mind, unbolted a door that had been slammed shut.
“Yes,” her mother said, reading the doubt in her daughter’s eyes. She placed her hand against Pandora’s heart. And though her wispy touch was faint, this time Pandora felt it in her soul, felt her mother’s archivist power spring to life, passing a kernel of history between them. “Pandora Persephone Scott.”
The vault cracked open, and she was transported back, falling through time, to a place she’d forgotten.
“Are you ready for bedtime?” her mother crooned, ushering Pandora up the steps one by one, letting her climb each level by herself. At the top, she scooped Pandora into her arms, then cradled her against her chest as she pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. She carried Pandora into her room and tugged the sheets down before resting her daughter gently on the mattress.
“Read me a story?” Pandora asked as she was tucked beneath her blanket.
“Not tonight,” her mother answered, sinking beside her on the bed and leaning against the headboard. She wrapped her arm around Pandora’s shoulders, cradling her close, and Pandora leaned in, resting her head against her mother’s stomach, trying to listen to her heartbeat. “Tonight I’m going to tell you a story, a story about your name.”
“My name?” she asked, excited.
“Yes, your name,” her mother answered, wrinkling her nose and smiling down at her little girl. “You were named after two very important women, two women who have had their stories told for a thousand years, across a thousand different cultures.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” her mother gushed, tickling her belly until Pandora laughed. “Can you tell me your first name?”
“Pandora.”
“Can you spell it for Mommy?”
“P-A-N…N…”
“What’s your favorite animal?”
“Dog!” Pandora cried and then suddenly remembered. “P-A-N-D-O-R-A. Pandora!”
“Good job, sweetie,” her mother whispered, running her fingers through Pandora’s hair, gently brushing the golden strands. “I’m going to tell you the story of a woman named Pandora, the true story of the woman you—” She cut off, coughing painfully, as though the words were caught in her throat.
“Are you okay, Mommy?”
“Yes, honey.” She sighed, eyes sad for a moment. “Don’t worry about me.” She took a deep breath, settling into the bed a little more, holding Pandora a little closer. “Now, this woman, she was a beautiful woman, kind and gentle, but she was also curious.”
“Curious?” Pandora asked.
Her mother grinned. “Yes, curious. She always wanted to know all sorts of things. She always asked questions. Always asked why.”
“Like me!”
“Yes, just like you,” her mother said softly, swallowing. “And that is a very good thing, to be curious, especially because this woman was being tricked.”
Pandora gasped, shocked. “How, Mommy?”
“She had fallen in love with a man, a man she believed to be caring and loving, but that was only the side he chose to show her. He was also jealous and deceitful and without mercy. And he was cunning, so cunning he could hide this other part of himself, almost as though he were two different people. One person with her and one person with other people.”
“That’s not nice,” Pandora interjected.
“No, honey, it wasn’t. But not everyone in the world is nice, like this woman had been taught to believe. But she trusted him, so when he asked if she would marry him, she said yes. And they were happy together for a long time. But like I said, this woman was curious. And every day her husband would disappear, would venture to faraway lands and faraway places. And she began to ask what he was doing and where he was going and why he was leaving her alone so often. And the more questions she asked, the more he tried to please her with gifts and flowers and kind words. But it was not enough. So one day she did the very thing she’d promised him she wouldn’t—she opened the door and followed him. And she saw what she had never seen before, the ugly side of her husband, the side he kept locked away. She saw the terrible things he did—”
“What things?” Pandora whispered, frightened.
“The worst sort of nightmares, Pandora. He was a monster who made monsters and released them into the world, all sorts of evil creatures, of frightening beasts.”
“I’m scared, Mommy.”
“Don’t be scared, sweetie, because Pandora fights him.”
“She does?”
“Yes,” her mother murmured fiercely. “She couldn’t chase away all the frightening monsters her husband had unleashed upon the world, but she knew her husband, and she knew she could stop him because she had power too, just like him. She was strong and selfless and brave.”
“What did she do?”
“She locked him up,” her mother responded, voice hoarse. “There’s a place the myths call Tartarus. It’s a jail buried deep underground, a place that humans used to think trapped the titans.”
“Trapped us?” Pandora asked, shocked.
“Yes, they think the titans are big, scary monsters locked in a prison called Tartarus.”
“That’s silly. We’re here.”
“We are. Humans don’t know as much as they think they do, Pandora. And over the years, without archivists like me, their legends have become twisted and turned. But the truth is the titans were born at Tartarus, created to guard the prison.”
“Pandora’s prison?”
“Yes,” her mother answered, fervent. “That is the true Pandora’s box. It’s the prison where she locked up her husband so his evilness could be contained, so it would never again be unleashed upon the world. And she made herself the k—”
Her mother convulsed, hunching over as a cough ripped through her throat.
“Mommy!”
She shook her head, rubbing her throat as her eyes glistened. “I’m all right. I’m okay, sweetie. I meant to say, Pandora is the only one who can open her box, but she doesn’t want to. She wants to keep it sealed tight. So, the titans protect her wishes, and they help fight the evil her husband was able to set free upon the world.”
“My name is Pandora,” Pandora whispered, voice trembling. “Can I open it?”
Her mother didn’t answer. Instead, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. And then she swallowed, squeezing Pandora a little too tight, so tight it was hard to breathe. But that passed in a moment.
“Can you tell me your middle name, Pandora?”
“Pers-pony?” Pandora mumbled, fumbling over the sound, unable to move her young lips in quite the right way.
“Close, sweetie. Persephone, another strong lady.”
“What did she do, Mommy?”
“She was a daughter of light, of spring and summer, of flowers and sunshine and eternal day. And she loved her life, her world of fire and warmth and heat. But one day, a man showed her a different world, his world. He was the ruler of a dark realm, a world of shadows and nighttime, a world untouched by the sun. Some called it the underworld because it was an empty place. He was lonely, and in her, he thought he had found someone who might understand. Because she was lonely too.”
“She was?”
“Yes, and that’s why when he showed her his world, she fell in love with him, with how different everything looked through his eyes. And he loved her, loved her so much that he gave her a little bit of his world, a little bit of his power, to bind them together. But there was a problem.”
“What?”
“He was a jealous man, resentful and envious. And because he lived in the dark, he didn’t understand the light. He wanted to destroy it. He wanted everyone to be with him in his world. But she had seen both worlds, and she understood that one wasn’t better than the other. They were just different. But he wouldn’t listen. And because she still loved the sunshine and the flowers and summer, she knew she had to stop him, even if she loved him. So when he stepped into the world of light, trying to flood it with his darkness, she trapped him in the middle of the two worlds, in a place that was both and neither at the same time, in the folds between. And she became the ruler of both worlds, of the light and the darkness, queen of the world and the underworld. So for all eternity, she cycles between them, passing from light to dark back to light, over and over again, only catching brief glimpses of her love as she crosses the boundary from one world to the next. But she keeps going, sacrificing her own heart, because she knows that if she stops, he will be free, and he will try to flood our world with his darkness.”
“I don’t like these stories, Mommy,” Pandora said, gazing up at her mother’s face, cold despite the covers wrapped around her.
“Me neither, sweetie,” her mother said, brushing a tear from her cheek before it had the chance to fall and land on Pandora’s forehead. “But they’re important, and you must remember them. So I’ll tell them to you again, as many times as it takes for you to understand, for you to see.”
“See what?”
Her mother shook her head, changing the subject. “One last game?”
Pandora nodded.
Her mother took her by the hand, held Pandora’s palm up, and brushed her fingers over her skin, moving in a pattern. “What am I drawing, Pandora? Can you guess the shape?”
Pandora watched her mother’s fingers spin and move, but she couldn’t see, couldn’t understand. “No, Mommy.”
Pandora yawned, eyes growing heavy, and her mother saw. She folded Pandora’s fingers over her palm and kissed them gently, then eased from the bed. She tucked Pandora in again before kneeling to kiss her brow.
“That’s okay. You did wonderfully. We can try again tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.” She nodded, already falling asleep.
Pandora blinked, eyes clearing as the vision passed, as the memory faded away and the real world returned—the world of white smoke and ghosts and the mother who’d left her alone, who’d stopped trying to save her daughter. Until now.
“You told me the stories once a week for six months,” Pandora whispered hoarsely.
“I did, and then it became too much. I wasn’t strong enough.”
“You weren’t strong enough to do what needed to be done,” Pandora murmured, smirking at her father’s words. Oh, how they plagued her. “You weren’t strong enough to fight for your daughter, and you weren’t strong enough to kill her either. So you stopped. You just…stopped everything.”
Her mother’s wispy frame caved in. “I couldn’t, Pandora. I loved you so much. I still do. I couldn’t become like your father, and I couldn’t—I just couldn’t.”
“You ran,” Pandora said, not bitter but understanding. “You ran just like I did. Only your way was a little more permanent.”
“You never did guess the shape I was drawing on your palm,” her mother stated, gaze intense. “Guess now, Pandora.”
“Huh?” she asked, brows coming together.
Her mother gestured, so Pandora held out her hand. Pearly-white fingers traced softly against her skin, spinning in circles, flattening out to a line, then jutting to the side in a ridged rectangle. Over and over her mother moved.
Pandora lifted her free hand.
She stretched her fingers back, to the skin at the base of her neck, and moved them over the scarred tissue below her hairline, the mark she’d been branded with what felt like hours ago. But only minutes had passed. And those minutes had changed everything.
“It’s a key,” Pandora said, eyes widening with sudden understanding. “A key!”
Her mother nodded, unable to speak.
She shook her head. Pandora’s box. Pandora’s story. Persephone’s balancing act. The woman who’d been blinded by love. The man who’d tricked her. The vision of holding Sam within a fire, of keeping him trapped in the flames, of keeping him contained. Her sacrifice, over and over again. The darkness sinking into her father’s skin. His teeth flashing in the eerie blue light. The brand on her neck—a key. The titan tattoo—twelve starbursts all connected, forming a lock. Jax’s eyes on that night four years ago, so pained, so trapped, because he knew. He understood.
She was the key.
The key to a prison that could never be opened.
To a person who could never be set free.
Everything flooded together. Merging and molding, weaving into a picture that was slowly becoming sharper and sharper in her mind.
And then her world exploded.
Literally.