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COLD AIR RAISES GOOSEBUMPS on my arms. They spread farther as I walk the first series of steps into Nekros. The entrance is the same dark, endless space I remember. The same in a way I’m not.
Yet the landing is different. Instead of arriving at Charon’s boat along the river Styx, another river waits. The depths are lighter, shallower, and the color of seaweed whereas Styx is all fathomless blue-greens. Pebbles scatter beneath my sandals when I step onto the bank.
Flickering torches line the walls. A steady rush of water echoes in the cavern and the smell of river rock seeps into every crevice.
No boat. No waiting souls. Nothing besides me and the river. Is Hades going to instruct me on his trial?
“There you are,” he says.
I whip around, startled yet not. Of any god, of course he’ll seem to read my mind. A smile twitches my lips but I smother it.
His raised brows say I’m not as successful as I think. But he sighs, running a hand through his hair. He fixes the river behind me with a hard look. “I guess we should begin.”
He deserves better than this. Better than being forced to do Zeus’ bidding.
“We stand before Cocytus, the river of wailing,” he says.
I glance behind me. Wailing? “It’s silent.”
A rustle of stone defies my statement. I wince. “Mostly.”
“You can thank me for that,” he says with a smirk. It dims when seconds tick by.
My brows scrunch together in thought. Why bring me here? What task is there surrounding a wailing river?
I wave my hands. “Well? What am I meant to do?”
He straightens. His face blanks to nothing.
My skin crawls with unease. My shoulders hunch until they rest by my ears. What remains of my simple breakfast of cheese and bread riots within my stomach.
“My trial is to cross this river.”
His gaze darts to each side before pinning me in place. His body fades until he resembles a soul more than a god. Before he’s gone, before the black of his hair fades completely, he speaks. “Beginning now.”
The moment he’s gone hangs tense.
Then the noise begins.
First the groaning of waves against rock, almost as if people are groaning, steadily rising in volume.
Then human shrieks pierce the cavern, echoing back and forth until I’m clutching my ears. Willing my ears not to bleed. The shrieks aren’t a steady, predictable stream of noise, instead ebbing and flowing like the tide.
Just when my shoulders loosen or my hands unclench from around my ears, another shriek rocks the cavern.
“Stop,” I say into the cacophony. But my words are lost to a new level.
Screaming. Wailing.
Endless.
No notes of song. No steady rise and fall. No way to tell where one sound stops and another begins.
I scream against the pain in my ears. My throat aches. A buzzing joins the horrible racket. The noise isn’t from the river but from my ears themselves. My eardrums will burst. My heart thuds painfully fast when I swear a trickle of blood dampens my hands.
Shaking, I move my hands in front of my face. No blood. A trick of this place. A trick of my own fear.
I stumble into the river, expecting the worst. For the noise to increase when I draw closer to the source. To burst my eardrums and leave me wounded. Each step is agony, the movement of my body jostling my eardrums an extra bit more, but I persist until water laps at my ankles.
The cool water against my skin is distracting. The wailing muffles the more I focus on how the water trickles through my toes and soaks the hem of my dress.
How long will the water distract me?
I need help. But who? Charon has knowledge of this place. Desma has keen observation. Hermes has his trickery and winged sandals. But Charon’s face when he lurched around the corner in the palace less than an hour ago—heartbreak. Pure heartbreak.
Desma would be rendered useless the same as me, her eardrums torn to shreds.
“Hermes!” I yell.
The noise resurges along with my voice. Louder. Sounds back to back in an echo. He doesn’t appear.
I scream again, putting my song within his name. My voice doesn’t echo; it can’t. The wailing has grown too great for my song to reach far.
Tears prickle at the corner of my eyes but I dash them away before they fall. I gasp heaving breaths. Wetness coats my hands where they rest against my ears. I pull them away.
Blood. Pain. My eardrums burst. Enough to leave my ears ringing. Dots swarm in my sight. Enough that I can’t take a step forward despite the need to win Hades’ trial.
I stare at the river. My mind focuses for a minute. Then two.
Until a fresh wave of screaming shatters this focus into nothing. The muffled noises are knife-like in my ears.
Cocytus responds to noise, trying to best any noise it encounters. It’s sentient enough to notice my focus. Or perhaps this is Hades’ influence? Or the river itself has a patron god much like Styx?
I lose myself in thought. The noises muffle again.
“Agathe!” a voice calls.
The wails rise into a screeching fury.
I glance up. Hermes waits on the far shore, sandal wings flapping. He bounces back each time he attempts flying over the river. Baring his teeth, he tries stepping into the water itself.
With a shout, he’s thrown back. He lands in a groaning heap on the gravel.
“There’s some kind of barrier,” he says.
The wailing becomes a dull roar. Is it the river’s sentience giving out? But no. Wetness flows down my neck. My head pounds with each wave of fresh pain. It’s my ears; they’re damaged. A blessing.
I gaze into the depths. Inch my foot forward. Slowly so I barely make a sound.
Gritting my teeth, I direct all my frustration into mind-speak. “Ridiculous river.”
Another step. “I’ll punch Hades in his smirking face.”
The noise remains in the background the longer my internal tirade continues. I curse every god I know the name of: Dionysus, Artemis, Athena, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hestia, Persephone, Demeter, and more I haven’t met.
One step. Water laps at my waist. Another and it wets the tips of my hair. Step upon step until it wanes to my calves. To my ankles. Until my feet stir the rocks on the opposite shore.
Two more steps to complete this task.
I grin. My ringing ears abate to a mild ache. I’m chilled from the water seeping through my dress yet elation fills me with warmth.
Just two more steps.
“Hurry!” Hermes says. He stares not at me but something farther back.
A sharp scream tears through the space. I stumble forward a step, jostling larger rocks and feeding into the volume of the scream.
It echoes. Bounces around the space. I fall to my knees a step from the shore.
The rocks tear into my knees. I can’t tell if the wetness against my skin is water or blood. I hiss. Begin to shuffle forward. I press my hands to my ears, willing myself silent.
Something grabs my foot. I fall onto my front when it heaves me backward. Clawing at the gravel, I glance over my shoulder.
A smoking form made of nightmares. Pointed, branching horns atop a massive head. A fathomless sheet of pitch blankness where a face should be. Wicked thorns protrude from too-thin elbows and knees. It crouches low over the river, one clawed hand at my ankle and the other plunged into the water, bracing itself for another pull.
I dig my hands into the gravel. Sand bites beneath my fingernails. Gritting my teeth, I squirm. The claws around my ankle tear into my skin.
“Do something!” I shout at Hermes.
His pale face settles, determination in every furrow. He says something my mangled ears can’t hear beyond the wailing.
His sandals flap once, twice, and he lurches at the barrier. Bounces back. Tries again. This close, faint grooves mar the gravel where the barrier begins. A shadow of what it’s made of—sheer fabric. It ripples with each bounce of his body.
Wait!
Where it joins the gravel—does it stretch all the way into the earth?
“Stop!”
He does. Says something I can’t hear.
I slide backward one great pull at a time until water laps at my shoulders.
“Dig.” I point to the barrier edge. “Dig beneath it!”
He jumps into action. Using his hands as shovels, he digs into the loose gravel. Then the fine layer of sand beneath. He ignores how each tears at his fingers and palms, sending droplets of blood across the stones.
Another pull and I plunge beneath the water. My gills tear open to no avail; this is freshwater. I kick at the creature’s hand on my ankle. Bubbles leak from my lips. I keep my eyes wide open.
Where fish should swim, instead there’s the creature’s spindling toes capped with claws. Shadows dart past its ankles.
Not fish.
No, for these have bodies of men shrouded in trailing black robes. Skin colored green with rot or river, I can’t be sure. And where faces should be is a gaping mouth, nothing more.
They drop their jaws, exposing endless rows of pointed teeth. Scraps of marrow and flesh weave through each set. My heart lurches. A chill settles over my skin.
The creature pulls again. I squirm, bending my knees into the rocky river bottom, and surge for the surface.
I gasp fresh air. Water sluices off my face but my vision remains clouded by water.
The bank is empty. Hermes is gone.
“Help!” I rasp, coughing.
Those rows of teeth, chomping on my legs, my arms, my head—
A muffled shout.
Hermes rockets from a hole beneath the barrier. Sandals flapping, he lunges for my hands grasping at the gravel. My hands touch the shore by only my bruised fingertips. Another pull and I’ll be in the creature’s domain.
He stops, floating above me. Grabs my wrists in a bruising grip, then flutters to the ground. He stands, bracing each foot deep into the shore, and pulls.
For a moment it’s the pain of being torn in two. Each joint pulls, stretches, tears.
But with his final tug, the creature’s smoking arms give out. I slide forward.
A splash. A swell of water at my ankles.
I glance back. Its clawed hand stretches from the water. Reaching. A shark-toothed thing jumps, grasps it with an endless mouth, and then they’re both beneath.
The water settles into placid stillness. I shiver with more than cold.
A touch to each of my scraped elbows. I jump. But it’s only Hermes, mouth moving though I can’t hear. He helps me stand. Supports my weight while I limp away from the water.
The wailing continues, though distant in my bleeding ears.
Why hasn’t it stopped? I won.
I look back. The rear hem of my dress still floats in the river.
Clenching my teeth against the pain in my knees, I stumble forward until the hem stretches along the rocks. Until it leaves the water altogether. All at once, the racket stops. So abrupt my ears ring with the final wail long after it’s gone.
Hades appears between one blink and the next along the back wall of the cavern. The barrier falls with a final ripple, vanishing into the gravel. If not for the wide hole Hermes dug, there would be no proof of it ever being there at all.
I lever myself off of Hermes on trembling legs. With the blood staining my knees, my soaked dress, and the toothy smile on my face, I’m more wild than person.
Hades sighs, rubbing a finger along the bridge of his nose. He can’t hide his smile.
“I see you’ve crossed Cocytus,” he says, overloud so I can hear.
“Yes,” I say. But I barely hear myself. Can barely hear the rise and fall of my voice.
Touching a hand to one ear, I hiss. Pain. Pure pain.
How will I sing?
Hades clears his throat. “We must move on. Poseidon’s trial awaits.”
“How long?” I say, first to Hades, then Hermes.
Neither will return my stare.
I bare my teeth. “How long until they heal?”
Hades clears his throat. I watch his throat bob in a swallow, wanting to punch him until he’s gasping for air.
“I don’t know,” he says. Running a hand through his hair, he blows out a long breath. “Even I must do as Zeus commands.”
Like ruling Nekros while his brother sits on a gilded throne. Like allowing Hermes to take Persephone from his realm with the yearly return of spring no matter how it pains him. Like mangling my ears on Zeus’ command.
“Let’s go,” I say. Anger simmers beneath my skin in a steady flush of heat. My eyes flare brighter until even the water is shades of gray. “I’d like to complete Poseidon’s task before sundown.”