“Thank you,” she said. “It’s not easy to ask for help. Can we head back now? I do want to train some more.”
Something tugged at Nico’s heart—like a small magnet pulling his attention south.It’s not easy to ask for help.
It had never been easy for Nico, either, but maybe it was time to treat himself with the same honesty he gave to others. He looked across the valley, toward the glittering domes and spires of Temple Hill.
“Actually, would you mind heading back alone?” he asked Savannah. “Tell Will I needed to speak with someone.”
Hazel could tell the Court of the Dead was working overtime to fulfill their plan of breaking the Mist. By sunrise the next morning, the official count inside Pirithous’s trap was 249 living beings.
She wasn’t sure how the Mist was supposed to “break,” exactly. She’d never heard of such a thing happening before. But now that she’d become more attuned to the Mist’s currents, she could sense them moving swifter and stronger around their prison, accumulating like scar tissue trying to cover a wound. That probably wasn’t a good sign.
For the moment, Hazel had other problems to focus on. She was hungry. She was freezing. And then there was the little issue of running out of air to breathe. Hazel was no scientist. She had no idea how to run the variables to figure out when their oxygen might be depleted, but she knew they were no closer to finding an escape than they were yesterday.
Last night Hazel had eventually fallen asleep under a huge sycamore tree. She’d dreamed about the judgment she’d received in the Underworld so very long ago. She did not like being judged. Being misunderstood. Being shamed. But she also held on to a gnawing doubt that maybe Pirithous had a point—maybe shehadbelonged in Asphodel. As much as she’d tried to be worthy of a second chance since returning to the upper world, she’d never quite lost the sense that she’d cheated the system when Nico rescued her.
Regardless, that did not justify what the Court of the Dead was doing to all these mythics who just wanted to live a different kind of life. And it did not lessen her desire to smack Pirithous in the face with her spatha.
She spent the morning helping Asterion, Arielle, and Quinoa, who were doing their best to keep all the newcomers informed in order to prevent mass hysteria.
She met self-identified monsters, like a Cyclops named Julian, who had been kidnapped in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for daring to operate a fusion taco food truck. She learned that Stymphalian birds not only grouped themselves into flocks but also shared the same name within the flock and communicated as a single organism. The birds here were named Gregory. They’d been exiled from the rest of their species because, unlike most Stymphalian birds, Gregory enjoyed loud noises. They were particularly fond of Norwegian death metal.
She met many other mythics who had just been trying to make a living in the human world. She got a chance to speak briefly to Morpho, the telkhine Etsy entrepreneur who had been “executed” as Hazel and her friends arrived at the courthouse. Asterion even introduced her to a centaur named Nessus who was apparently famous for killing Hercules through trickery.
Nessus did not seem crafty or murderous to Hazel, at least not anymore. He blushed when Asterion told the Hercules story.
“I’m sorry I ever did that,” Nessus said. “I just like making custom birdhouses. I have a workshop in Vermont. You should visit sometime!”
Asterion smiled like a proud father. “I will trade you some of my soon-to-be-patented hand-knitted underwear!”
“If we ever get out of here,” Quinoa said under his breath.
“When,”Hazel corrected him.
Hazel tried to cling to that optimism, but as more and more mythics materialized in the park, her distress grew. The edible foliage was disappearing. Water was still running through the fountains, but the basins were getting mucky and polluted. The giant crab wasn’t helping. Asterion had been forced to break up a fight over a bag of peanuts between some fauns and a strix—a flesh-eating owl-like creature who spat milk. Hazel wonderedwhythe strix spat milk, and where that milk had come from, but she decided that some things were better left unknown.
“This just feels socruel,” Arielle said as she helped a freshly arrived dracaena to her feet. “How can Pirithous think it’s just and fair?”
Asterion grunted. “He has aptly named his court, Arielle. It is a court of the dead. Their hearts no longer beat like ours. These judges have no real recollection of what it was like to be alive in this world—howhardit is.”
Hazel knew Asterion had a point, but she wanted to argue that being dead was no excuse for being callous. She’d been dead. She’d gotten over it. And she’d never stopped feeling.
“They want us to remain the same forever,” she said. “They don’t understand that every living thing has the capacity to change.”
Arielle nodded. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? If we try to do something different from what we were destined to do at birth, they punish us for it.”
“You are indeed correct.” Asterion sighed. “I am going to do another walk around the park. For some reason, my presence seems to dissuade fights from breaking out.”
“I’ll come with.” Quinoa flapped his wings. “Probably time to do another head count!”
While Arielle counseled the new dracaena, Hazel headed east to check on the harpies, two of whom had injured themselves last night testing Pirithous’s claim that their prison had a ceiling. Turns out it did, in fact, have a ceiling.
The harpies’ chosen leader, Rhodope, sat atop a cypress tree, scowling down as Hazel approached.
“What do you want, demigod?” Rhodope asked, ruffling her gorgeous orange feathers.
Hazel put her hands up in a placating gesture. “Just checking in. How are your injured?”
“Still injured,” Rhodope snapped. “Have you found a way out?”
