Chapter Thirty

To his credit, Gregory did not try to stop me from harming the wall. He simply allowed me to vent all my frustrations on the useless mirror. In my head, the wall was shaped like Hector's face. It would have been more satisfactory to hit the real thing.

If only it had been enough.

For so long as I'd known him, Gregory only spoke when it was pertinent that he do so. Even when he showed off all of his big-bad-dragon powers he wasn't full of monologue. Today did not seem to be the day he would make an exception; he said nothing as I calmed down enough to put on a complacent face. I turned slowly, trying to hard to fake normalcy as I approached the training room at the end of the world's longest hallway. Gregory didn't look concerned; he just escorted me into the mirrored dojo.

"None of the portals will accept you until Hades has given you permissions to travel freely through his fortress. It's like the Underworld's idea of a finger-print-scanner." Gregory shrugged. He picked up a staff while he spoke, twirling it in large circles around his body absentmindedly. He didn't look at me. "I only recently had my print reinstated."

"Then how did you get around?"

"Alex."

So much for a bonding moment over meaningful conversations. The small hope I harbored that Gregory and I would ever really be friends died in my chest. He would never be fun, a character flaw which only served to delight him. I know he was deliberately un-fun.

Gregory seemed to speak better through actions. Through teaching, more specifically. He thrived when he was telling me what to do, instructing me in the ancient art of getting my ass kicked. I could tell it in the way he almost smiled, the way he puffed up when I finally got it. I'd even seen him laugh at Alex one time. It didn't last long.

"Gregory?" I wasn't quite sure how to express what I was feeling.

Abandoned, since Hector had left me to go handle my problems for me instead of giving me the option to take care of myself.

Despair, at the situation and my failure at all things Underworld, including but not limited to history, weapons training, and control of the mythical Fury inside of me.

Shame, because I wasn't good enough to be the Fury Hector needed me to be, as shown by my huge lack of control and murderous tendencies.

And immense stupidity, because I trusted people who I should have never trusted in the first place. My brain seemed to be fighting itself over what emotions I should be registering, but any of those were valid emotional responses to my time in the Underworld as a whole.

I think I'm entitled to be upset and a little confused.

The only other person in the room ignored me. I walked to him with deliberate steps and snatched the staff from his hands, which he hadn't stopped twirling in the most innately annoying way.

"Gregory," I spoke louder, only inches from his spinning staff. "Everything is wrong. Everything. Hector wants me to fight in his war but he won't let me fight for myself. I can't remember anything that doesn't involve life before this world. I have Ares' blood on my hands and part of me enjoyed killing him. Jasper might be poisoning me, you don't care if I fulfill this impossible destiny, and Lindsay hates me. The list goes on!"

There may have been a spark of sympathy in his eyes, but his face didn't change. He didn't seem to think any of my issues were a problem. He certainly didn't think they were his problem.

"What am I supposed to do?" The mirrors around me betrayed me—if I thought I could put of a calm face, I was sorely mistaken. All of that abandonment and shame were clearly written on my face like giant, glaring tattoos across my skin. I felt old, so old.

Allowing all of the fear and despair I had hidden from Hector in my apartment, tried to hide from myself, weighed me down. My body sank to the padded floor where I sat and stared at myself in the mirror over and over again.

I just wanted to sleep for days, deep sleep without dreams. Pent up defeat made my heart hurt. My body was beyond the aches and pains that would have slowed me a week ago, but my heart took over and threaded its pain through my blood stream. For the first time I realized just how much physically stronger I had become in such a small scope of time.

Lindsay sauntered into the room. She brought with her the holier-than-thou attitude that wafted around her like bad perfume; I bet she never left home without it. She stopped in front of me to crouch down in my field of vision.

She blocked my view of my sorry self. I just wanted to have a pity party and she wouldn't even allow me that.

"What do you want from me, Lindsay?" I finally stood. My arms crossed over my chest, feet planted shoulder-width a part, scowl on face; I was going for a bad-ass attitude of "you don't want to mess with me".

"Well, now that you've brought it up, I want you to quit. You are wrong for this job. You don't have the power that I do, the control. There is nothing that I could teach you that would make you ready. The leaders of every battalion of Hades' army agree."

"And they think you're such a catch because..." I raised an eyebrow at her.

Footsteps light as air carried her and her smug reflection to the far sad of the dojo where Lindsay knocked on the glass. "This," knock, knock, knock, "is how they know. Do you think that the army follows a new Hades without assurances of his secret weapon, the Fury of prophecy?"

A light flicked on on the other side of the mirror to reveal in the two-way glass a handful of hulking forms, watching. Waiting for the trained animal in the cage to perform a daring feat.

"You've been watching me." Every fall, every attempt, every fail. Every time Gregory knocked me down. Each blow from Alex I was unable to block.

A sound rumbled from Gregory's throat. "There is no need for this, Lindsay."

The men on the other side of the glass, all men, stared stoically into the dojo. The tallest of the five had a bull's head on his stocky shoulders mere inches above the other onlookers' heads, each more grotesque than the last, each with expectation and doubt written across their beastly faces. Bull, reptile, lion; these were not men.

On that day in the hall, when the door appeared and the voices were silenced by the sound of my knuckles, my fleeting hope, against the wood, the Underworld was trying to prepare me. The voices I heard were not people who could save me; they belonged to people who would sooner cast me aside in favor of Lindsay, the more obedient beast.

"There is every need—" Lindsay protested against Gregory's comment. They argued; I tuned them out.

Hector had let them watch me fail, over and over. Gregory and Alex had known and not warned me. Even Lindsay waited this long to let me in on the secret.

Betrayal certainly is a knife that digs deep.

"We need to be prepared; all of us. They," she gestured at the mirror-window, "need to know what they're getting into and who they are following in battle. They cannot fight beside, unprepared, and trust you inability to produce the Fury we've been waiting for not to get them killed.

"The Underworld is full of rumors that more gods have been replaced than we knew, that the sheer willpower of the Olympians is faltering; the gods themselves are fearful. That puts us in a dangerous situation: if they," she pointed to the ceiling, "think that we have the Nectar, they will stop at nothing to regain it. And you won't be able to stop them when they come."

"Do you know why they're so frightened?" I stared at her, daring her to know the truth. I would cut her betrayal—all of their betrayals—with my own.

"Rumor has it that Ares, god of war, has died and been replaced with some hothead fool. Not that Ares wasn't always a fool, but one could hope for improvement."

How had they replaced hm so quickly?

For the first time I took into consideration that maybe they didn't know and that's why nobody would talk to me about him. It never even crossed my mind that they wouldn't take advantage of my pain and use it as punishment.

Gregory, Lindsay and I stood in a triangle reflected on every wall that revealed a different emotion on the different walls. His face lit with frustration at our non-progress; hers laughing and assuming and oblivious; and mine with dull anger. When I first arrived in this new world, I would have wanted to break each and every one of those reflections. I would have wanted to fight more, to hit something until I felt better. But I had grown just a little since then, had learned a little something from these people.

"I killed Ares." There was no hint of pride in my voice. I was only speaking the truth—it was nothing to boast about. I couldn't even grin triumphantly at the shock and disbelief that floated across her face.

The beast-men in the other room stirred undiscerningly before the light flickered out and the mirror was once more reflective. I no longer cared what they saw or what they felt about it. I killed Ares. Saying it out loud hammered it home. The words rattled around in my head, guilt squeezing its way into my chest and hunkering down for a nice, long stay.

Lindsay sputtered. "You lie. How could you—"

"It was easy," I spat, the guilt making me bitter. "He broke quickly; I barely touched him at all. So for all of your efforts to make me believe that I would never be able to fill your shoes, to force me to give up and let you take my place, I still became this gloriously terrible Fury that everyone has been expecting. I hope you're happy."

"I don't believe you. Hades would have told me."

Because the two of you are so close. Give me a break. You are food; the wicked witch made Hansel and Gretel feel special and loved too before putting them into cages for fattening.

I dropped onto the mat, determined to just sit there and be miserable. The floor had been a welcome surface after many drills in the room but never more desirable than at that moment. If Hector were there, I might pretend to be okay. There was no reason to put on a show for Gregory and Lindsay.

"Hades is preoccupied at the moment: he's off to find Jasper and make him give up his secret Fury food recipe. I'm sorry that you didn't rank important enough for an explanation before his quest began." I sighed, not really feeling the sass I tried to throw at her. "No, actually I'm not sorry."

"Then neither am I; I know what Jasper has been feeding you."