The mountain climbed steeply upward into a great, twisting, nearly vertical bowl, the spires rising around its circumference like organ pipes.
Selene yelled down to Flint, still fifty yards behind with Philippe, “I’m not sure you can get up this!”
He waved her onward angrily, and Philippe called back, “I’ve got him. Don’t worry!”
She turned back to the rock wall, put one hand on a red marker, and started to haul herself upward. After a moment, Philippe clambered lightly past her with a rope over his shoulder. He hammered a piton into the rock face and looped the rope through it. He threw the end of the line back down to Flint, who attached his handlebar ascender and harness. Then, using only the strength of his massive arms, he began to jerk the handlebar upward, climbing the mountain six inches at a time. He’d removed his thick sweater again, and the wide muscles of his chest and biceps bulged against the fabric of his shirt. His withered legs in their braces hung uselessly below him, swinging as he lurched up the cliff. His strength may no longer be supernatural, Selene marveled, but his tenacity sure is.
For the next half hour, the procession of gods worked its way up the mountain. The spaces between them widened. Maryam took the lead this time, moving stiffly but surely in her armor, carrying her long spear slung across her back. Dennis climbed at his own lethargic pace, occasionally stopping to take a swig from his water bottle or to banter with Esme. Philippe dashed ahead sporadically, affixing the ropes, then waited for Flint to pull himself up.
All the while, the clouds grew thicker, the air colder, and the hum of electricity more pronounced.
Selene, slowed by her father’s awkward weight, dropped back. For the most part, Theo stayed close behind her, helping to stabilize her on the steepest parts of the slope, sometimes scrabbling ahead to help.
While they climbed, he said nothing. But his firm grip on her hand as he helped haul her and her father upward spoke volumes. He was not abandoning her, not yet. For once, it was Selene who couldn’t stay silent. “I’d understand, you know. If you wanted children.”
His eyes flicked to hers and away again. “There are many ways to have children in your life.” He paused for a long breath before he continued. “There’s only one way to have you.” He didn’t elaborate. It wasn’t a promise, just a statement of fact. But it finally gave her the strength to say what she should’ve said long before.
“I’m sorry. For lying. When I fell from your arms that night above the harbor, I didn’t expect to survive. I was willing to die to see you live.” The words came out in a rush. “When I washed ashore, I wanted to go to you. But I’d almost gotten you killed, and I knew Saturn still lived. If you were with me, you weren’t safe. I kept reminding myself of that. I had to, every time I wanted to call or write or just hop on a damn plane and fly across the ocean and back into your arms.” She took a final deep breath. “I’m sorry. I should’ve trusted you.”
Theo said nothing, his gaze inward.
She kept talking, finally speaking aloud the words she’d never even admitted to herself. “I thought we’d be all right eventually. That you’d move on, and I would, too. I was wrong. I never stopped wanting you beside me.” She hesitated for an instant, hoping he’d say that he felt the same way. But he remained silent, his mouth clenched tight as if he didn’t trust himself to speak.
“No matter what happens today,” she finished. “I want you to know that.”
For once, she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. She didn’t think he was angry—maybe just too full of emotion to find the right words. It wasn’t the response she’d wanted, but as she clambered up to join Esme, Maryam, and Dennis just below the summit, then lowered Zeus to the ground, she felt like another weight had lifted from her back. At least I’ve been honest.
Zeus’s head lolled to the side; she checked his pulse. Slow, faint, and getting worse.
She peered up at the mist-shrouded peak a few yards above them. “Scooter? Are you up here? We need to get the pit opened!”
Beside her, Maryam put down her own pack but held tight to her spear. Philippe and Flint appeared. Sweat had glued Flint’s shirt to his body, and he shivered violently. Philippe helped him back into his sweater like an anxious parent.
Scooter popped out from behind one of the rocky spires, still wearing his broken winged cap.
“Hello, darlings!” he called cheerily to his siblings, as if meeting them for brunch at the local bistro. “You made it! And look who’s all set for his retirement plan in Tartarus.” He yanked on a chain, dragging Saturn forward like a feral dog on a leash.
The Titan wore a thick collar fashioned from his own sickle; even now, the divine weapon’s razor-sharp blade dug into Saturn’s neck, forcing him to hold his head thrown back at an unnatural angle. Chains bound the god’s ankles and wrists. Selene recognized their shimmering links—Scooter had made the restraints from the golden net forged by Hephaestus in the distant past. At the height of his power, the Smith had imbued the net with one very specific property: Only those who loved him could rip through it.
Scooter may not have always loved his stepbrother, but he does now, she realized with some surprise, or he couldn’t have torn apart the net to make the chains. She gave Flint a pointed glance: He may be the Trickster, but he’s our Trickster.
Scooter had chosen the fetters wisely: Saturn could never break them. Then again, his greatest power had never been his strength of arms. He was the Wily One, the God of Time, and Selene had not forgotten how his words had the power to suck her into the past. Neither, it seemed, had Scooter. He’d shoved the sickle’s thick wooden handle between Saturn’s teeth, binding it there with more of the Smith’s golden threads. The effect was grotesque. Medieval.
“You broke my net.” Flint growled the words, but he sounded impressed. And touched.
Scooter’s grin broadened. “Yup.”
“And we noticed your other handiwork on the way up.” Flint still looked skeptical, but Selene could tell he wanted to trust his brother. “Interesting plumbing job.”
“Not bad, right? All part of the plan.”
Flint grunted. “A plan you’ve been working on for a very long time.”
Scooter laughed and put a hand to his heart. “I swear I did it all in the last few days after Father told me his proposal. I’ve turned the whole mountain into an instrument to help us open Tartarus. In just a few minutes, we’ll be tossing Grandpa in like a Skee-Ball at the state fair.” He kicked the bound Titan with surprising force, eliciting a strangled grunt. “I know, it doesn’t seem possible,” he went on with a wave of his hand. “But some of us are still quite supernatural.”
The first drops of rain spat from the sky. Thunder rolled overhead as the clouds darkened to slate, obscuring everything but the shelf of rock on which they rested and the narrow summit above.
A feeble voice spoke, barely audible beneath the storm’s growl. “Hermes has always been loyal.” Zeus’s eyes had finally opened; he stared at Maryam through his newly repaired glasses, seeing his daughter for the first time. His wrinkled mouth puckered with distress. “He did not abandon us all.”
Maryam stared back at him, silent but unbowed.
“I brought her,” Selene jumped in. “According to the prophecy, her spear’s the only thing that can defeat the giants in case more than just pneuma comes out of Tartarus.”
Zeus coughed hoarsely, curling on his side like a slug sprinkled with salt. But he found the strength to say, “We don’t need this … Christian. We have plenty of other gods here.”
As if heeding his summons, the rest of the Athanatoi emerged, one by one, from behind the jagged stone pillars on the summit. First Persephone—called Cora—with her dyed-blond hair and sagging skin, looking like she hadn’t slept in days. Selene recognized the woman at her side: her mother, Demeter. The Goddess of Grain looked about the same age as her own daughter, elderly but still tall and imposing. She wore her gray hair wrapped around her head in intricate braids. Millennia spent in the fields had turned her skin copper-brown. She wore a thick woolen poncho woven in geometric designs of green and gold and seemed completely unfazed by the weather. She’s been living in Peru, Selene remembered. Olympus must seem a mere hill compared to the Andes. With eyes the color of new wheat, Demeter looked down at her nieces and nephews with more curiosity than affection. She had only ever loved her daughter.
Hestia, Zeus’s eldest sibling, wore snow pants and a large hooded parka. A bit extreme for Greece in June—even this high on the mountain—but the Goddess of the Hearth had lived in Tunisia for years; she’d be woefully unprepared for the cold. Selene had heard her aunt was close to death. Indeed, the old woman was hunched so far over her cane that she seemed half her sister’s size. The fur-trimmed hood hid her face, but a long wisp of hair had come loose, whipping around her head like a tendril of fog, impossibly long, so fine and white that it was nearly invisible.
Hestia’s brother Poseidon supported her by the elbow. The blue-haired god had a white mane now. A beard as long as Zeus’s, twined with seashells, covered much of a face as craggy as a barnacled hull. All the Athanatoi tried to retain some of their attributes, but most had abandoned their old costumes for the sake of blending in. Poseidon must’ve lived far from the eyes of men, because he wore a fishnet cloak, a horsehair scarf, and a sharkskin tunic that made him look like an aging Inuit hunter. He held his whalebone trident before him, the prongs tilting to the side as if he couldn’t quite support its weight.
June stood a few steps away from her immortal siblings, bundled in a sensible fleece vest and pom-pommed hat. The sight of Flint on the slope below did nothing to erase the vexation stiffening her features. When she shifted her regard to her frail ex-husband, her puckered frown hardened to a slit-eyed scowl.
“Your mother looks pissed,” Selene murmured to Flint.
“She’s never trusted her husband, remember?” He didn’t remind her that he’d never trusted Zeus either.
On her other side, Theo cast them a surprised look. “That’s Hera, Zeus’s wife?”
“Yeah. But don’t remind her,” Selene replied. “Aunt June thinks she’s married to a hot Italian boy. Long story.”
She bent and hoisted her father into her arms like a babe before scrambling the last few yards to the top of the summit. Theo helped her lower him back to the ground, propping the old man’s back against an outcropping that sheltered him from the worst of the wind and rain.
Zeus could barely sit upright, yet his rheumy eyes were bright with excitement as Scooter dragged over a large duffel and opened it before him. He patted his son on the shoulder. “Thank you, my Giver of Good Things.” He pulled Athena’s aegis over his shoulders with shaking hands, then dragged out the heavy metal lightning bolt.
He could barely lift his own weapon, much less wield it.
June rested her fists on her hips and barked at her ex-husband, “If you can barely stand, how the heck are you going to open Tartarus?”
“I’m not going to.” A smile cracked Zeus’s chapped lips despite his ex-wife’s nagging. “Only one man on this mountain can do that.” He stared out—not at his children, but past them. Selene twisted around.
Theo pointed dumbly at his own chest.
Zeus held out his lightning bolt to the professor as another crash of thunder split the sky. “The storm is here, Makarites. Now bend it to your will.”