I know it’s wrong, I know this is the worst timing ever, but I take a moment to study him. From this close, I can see the faint remains of several scars—around his eye, below his right cheek, and along the jawline in front of his left ear. They are pale and flat and must be from old wounds, unlike the ones in my vision of him dabbing green liquid on a trio of jagged lines scratched into his chest. That is recent, although I still don’t know if it’s past, present, or future.
He’s strong, yes, but vulnerable, too.
Thane looks down at me and catches me studying him. His eyes soften, and my breath catches. Something sparks between us, an energy in the air—invisible, but no less powerful.
As he dips his head, the dizziness hits. My brain swirls and my knees buckle under me. Thane’s strong hands wrap around my arms, otherwise I would collapse to the floor. Then I don’t feel anything. I only see.
The place is gray, dark and dripping. Smoke fills the space, casting everything in a hazy blur.
There are two women—strong, beautiful, and in danger.
One is tall, blond, statuesque. I recognizer her as Sthenno, my one-time therapist who is also Grace’s school counselor. Her pantsuit, the same soft gray one she wore when we saw her dragged into the abyss, is filthy and torn. She stands in her bare feet, wrists shackled to a damp stone wall like something out of a medieval torture chamber. Despite the fear I can sense in her, she stands tall and proud, spine straight and chin held high.
The other woman—older, shorter, but no less elegant—is in worse condition. Her head droops, letting her long gray hair hang down over her face in tangled clumps. Her clothes are shredded, hanging off her frail body like rags of black jersey. She lifts her head, and I can see the resemblance. This must be Euryale, Gretchen’s mentor, Ursula.
The immortal gorgons, our ancient aunts, chained like animals in a dank, dark prison.
As I watch, a beefy bald guy with sweat running off him in rivers steps up to Euryale. He grabs a handful of her hair and yanks up.
Looking at Sthenno, he growls, “Where is she?”
Sthenno’s eyes flash almost imperceptibly, but she doesn’t respond.
“She alone can find the door,” he barks.
The man raises a stick with a leather strip on the end, pulls back, and then cracks it over Euryale’s tattered back. She doesn’t even have the energy to cry out. But Sthenno does. And I do.
“Again,” the sweaty guy says. “Where. Is. She?”
With a roar, Sthenno breaks free of her shackles and surges toward their attacker. Before she closes half the distance, a pair of massive guards grabs her by the arms.
“Get her out of here!” the main guy shouts. “Put her in the impenetrable cell. Maybe that’ll keep her.”
As the guards struggle to drag Sthenno away, sweaty guy turns back to Euryale and lifts the whip.
“No!” I cry out before he can lash her again.
“Greer.” Thane’s voice, calm and reassuring, penetrates my vision. “Greer, come back to me.”
I open my eyes. The vision is gone. No more dungeon, no more gorgons, no more . . .
I shake my head.
“The gorgons,” I whisper, barely able to form the words. “We need to hurry.” I manage to tell him what I saw.
He nods, his dark gray eyes steady on me.
“We will save them,” he insists. “It will take more than lashings and starvation to defeat a gorgon.”
I can’t even try to smile.
I hope he’s right. I hope that vision isn’t happening right now, because it didn’t look like Euryale could last much longer.
I can’t imagine what kind of torture it takes to break down an immortal like that, but she looked as broken as anyone I’ve ever seen. Tears stream down my cheeks—for her and for Gretchen. My sister might put on a tough show, keeping her emotions locked up inside—I know a thing or two about that myself—but this will hurt her.
All I can do is hope we get there in time, and that Gretchen lets her pain loose on whoever has been keeping the gorgons prisoner in that horrible place.
When I tell the group about my vision, the anger rolls off Gretchen in waves—anger, and also fear. Those emotions she keeps hidden away are dangerously close to bursting out.
I don’t blame her.
She turns to Alaia.
“Which way?”
Alaia turns without words and starts walking down the hall. We silently follow. It’s as if everyone comprehends that Gretchen is a lit fuse and we don’t want her wrath exploding on us.
She’s done with stealth. Her boots clomp on the marble floor, echoing off the sparkling surfaces around us. At this point, I don’t think she’d mind inviting a fight, except that it would delay the rescue.
“Is it always so empty?” I ask the golden maiden. “I would have expected Olympus to be bustling with activity.”
“A meeting has been called in the great hall,” she replies. “The gods and their servants are all in attendance.”
“That’s a stroke of luck.”
She glances at me. “We do not wish to be here when the meeting breaks.”
I can only imagine.
We fall back into silence as Alaia leads us down one long, columned hallway before turning down another. Even in our haste, I can still appreciate the breathtaking beauty of the building around us. Every so often we pass a window that opens either to a courtyard on one side or a sprawling green hill on the other. Each time, the pure brilliance of the sunshine and the vibrant blue sky above shocks me.