“Now,” Cassandra soothes, “direct your thoughts. Seek that which you most need to know.”
Direct my thoughts? That’s easier said than done.
There are many things on my mind right now. It’s tempting to let my mind drift.
But rather than complain, I focus. I have a mission. I start with the oracle. I’ve never seen her, but Gretchen described her. Plus I’ve seen the oracle’s storefront. That gives me a place to start.
I narrow my thoughts onto that spot, onto the oracle I’ve never met, onto . . .
The door. That’s what we really need to know. Everything else just leads to that. The oracle is a means to an end. My sisters and I need to find the door and open it so all this danger goes away—although how you open a door that isn’t a door and isn’t even really a place is beyond me.
Not that I think opening the door is going to magically make everything all better right away. I’m sure there will be plenty of people—and gods and monsters—who will want to keep stirring up trouble. But we’ll be able to handle it with the gorgons, our mother, and our friends at our sides—with Nick and Milo and Thane.
Thane.
Yes, Thane, the woman’s voice says.
Where is he? Why did he leave? After finally revealing the truth about himself, he must have been worried about what we would think of him.
He should never have left. He should have known we wouldn’t hold his past against him—that I wouldn’t judge him for something that was beyond his control. Rather, I judge him for taking control of the situation, for standing up to his keepers to protect Grace. To protect me. I judge him as one of the bravest, most honorable people I’ve ever known. That he didn’t want us to know his secret only means he cares about our opinions.
I need to find Thane, so I can tell him everything is all right.
Then I see him.
He sits on a bench in front of a pond. There are trees all around, and flowers. In the pond, a family of ducks swims to an island of reeds in the middle.
The mist parts, and suddenly I can see Thane’s face. He looks pained. Not in pain—not physical pain, anyway—but aching, angry at himself and afraid of what he might have lost.
I reach out, but my hand goes right through him.
I look around, trying to see where he is. Through the mist and trees I see planes of brick and glass. This could be anywhere in the city.
“Thane,” I call out. “Where are you?”
He looks around, like he can hear me.
I reach for him again, and this time when I do, I’m transported.
I’m back in the dungeon of Olympus, surrounded by that damp dark stone and the persistent drip-drip-drip of moisture from the ceiling. There is nothing around me, nothing but the black stone and the dim glow of torchlight.
I can practically feel the smoke in my lungs.
I start walking, surprised to find I can move around in this vision. Another first.
“I won’t,” I hear Thane say.
Then the snap of leather on flesh.
“Thane!”
I rush toward the source of the sound, around a corner and into a small space with three solid walls and a drain in the center of the floor. Chained at his wrists and ankles, Thane stands in the center of the room, shirtless, with his arms and legs spread wide toward the side walls.
An exquisitely beautiful woman with flaming red hair—literally flaming, as in on fire—stands before him.
“You have a mission, stratiotis,” she says, leaning close to speak next to his ear. “Your goddess will not be pleased if you fail her.”
Thane stands silent.
“You must kill the girls,” she says. “All three of them. You are so commanded.”
“No.”
“You would refuse a direct order?”
The flame-haired woman looks almost gleeful when he says, “I will.”
She holds up her hand, revealing long claws at the ends of her fingers. Then, her dark eyes sparkling, she drags her claws across Thane’s chest. She leaves a ragged trail of three parallel marks on his muscular flesh.
Those marks—I’ve seen them before, in the vision I had in our storage closet of Thane standing before a mirror, applying green liquid to cuts on his chest. This is how he got those wounds.
Has this already happened? Or is it happening now?
“The poison will take time,” the woman tells him. “If you carry out your mission, I might give you the antidote.”
Thane growls in pain.
Then I’m gone, back in the safe house with the scarf over my eyes.
I reach up and yank the scarf off, struggling to keep my panic from rising as my breath huffs out in ragged puffs. Those images, those events . . . I’m terrified for Thane.
But as I stare around the room at my sisters, at my mother, at sweet little Sillus, I can’t tell them. They expected me to seek out a vision of the oracle. They would have been happier with a vision of the door.
I can’t tell them I had a vision of Thane being whipped and poisoned. I don’t know when it happened—or will happen—and I don’t know if we can do anything about it. That helplessness will break Grace’s heart.
“So?” Gretchen prods when my gaze lands on her. “What did you see?”
I shake my head, forcing my breathing back under control. “Nothing.”
Not nothing, the woman says.
Gretchen frowns.
“Nothing?” Grace repeats, looking skeptical.
“No,” I say, wishing I were the sort of girl who believed that crossed fingers counteracted a lie. “Nothing at all.”