Everything but Cronus, Hyperion, and myself.
“More Titans?” I said, my voice unnaturally high. I was a little unnerved by the way no one around us was breathing.
Cronus didn’t look my way—it was as if he was barely listening to me. Obviously he was distracted—you know, freezing time and all. Hyperion reached out and grasped my hand. “There are twelve of us total. We’re the main group so to say, but the others are still powerful. Taking them from the underworld will have … effects. It’s why we didn’t do it before.”
“That’s fucking right, so don’t do it!”
Thanatos’s voice again. I looked around widely, trying to figure out where he was.
Hyperion grimaced. “He’s currently in the underworld projecting his voice.”
“Are we going to lis—?”
I didn’t even get half my sentence out before Hyperion zapped me to some … green forest. Cronus was right beside us, remaining in deep concentration, staring off into the distance. There was a hiker just beyond the path, mid-step, frozen.
My fucking boyfriend froze the entire earth! #ShookButAlso #TurnedOn
“My wife Theia is this way,” Hyperion said, his voice softening. “I instructed our son Helios to bury her here.” He started off down the path, Cronus following us in his current zombie-like fashion.
I looked back at him. “Is he okay?”
“I’m … fine,” Cronus mumbled.
Hyperion nodded. “Just takes a lot of brain power to do what he’s doing.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.” #NotReally #TooHard
“Thanatos is gonna … be pissed,” Cronus muttered.
“He’ll have to get over it. Earth needs the Titans more,” Hyperion said.
“Umm, clue me in here. What does it matter if we resurrect all twelve Titans? How does that affect the underworld?” I struggled to keep up with the speed-walking of the Titans. When Cronus noticed, he scooped me up into his arms and carried me. As long as he was by my side, I’d never have to actually work out and that was something I’d marry a guy over.
“The underworld was a different place when we first arrived,” Hyperion told me.
“Dark. Hell hole,” Cronus ground out.
Hyperion nodded. “Hades used to run things … differently. When we arrived, Hades fled, because he was working with Zeus. Thanatos stepped up, taking over, putting everything back into order. With our power, Thanatos was able to spruce the place up, make it a viable afterlife that people enjoy coming to.”
I frowned. “I guess that's good.”
Hyperion nodded. “No one wants to spend an eternity being chased by Erynomus.”
I frowned in confusion.
“Demon. Eats flesh and souls,” Cronus said roughly. Sweat beaded his brow and I signaled for him to put me down.
“Yeah, let’s not have soul and flesh-eating demons chase after my two moms. That’s a good plan,” I said as Cronus set my feet back onto the earth.
“Here it is.” Hyperion sounded wistful. Clearly he loved his wife … my grandma?
“So will this demon soul eater come back once we call up the Titans?” I queried.
Both of the men shrugged. “Probably, but that’s Thanatos’ problem. Not ours.” Hyperion was focused on the fact that he was about to see his wife again, his voice clipped and unconcerned.
“You fuckers, don’t do this!” Thanatos voice called out from nowhere again.
“Stop. Or I’ll freeze you too,” Cronus warned.
The voice went silent but it felt like his presence was still there.
Hyperion knelt and held out his hand, blasting a little shot of light magic at the dirt at the base of a beautiful tree.
I knelt as well, my knees on the grass. “Why did you bury her here?”
Hyperion gave me a lopsided grin. “We conceived Selene under this very tree.”
#Vomit #TMI #GrandparentsBumpingUglies #GetMyTherapist
“Maybe we don’t need to talk about the tree anymore,” I said with a shudder.
I saw a small smile play on his face, but he was mostly focused on retrieving an old bone from the ground. If you’d have told me six months ago that I’d be digging up old people’s graves I’d have smacked you in the face. And yet here we were.
I looked back up at Cronus, not liking the way he was so out of it. I understood it, but it was disconcerting.
He must have felt my gaze on him. “I’m trying to get a read on where the sins are without restarting time,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “Holding the world, I can’t hold them too, so they’re out there…”
“Maisey and I got this,” Hype assured him.
“We do?” I looked nervously at the bone in his hand, remembering all the times I’d blacked out or thrown up from these little adventures. Sometimes I felt like these Titans had so much more faith in me than I could ever have in myself.
Hype started to mutter an incantation, and blue arcs of magic flared off of his body. I ducked down to keep the magic from touching me, and watched as he stroked the bone tenderly.
Weird. #TryingNotToJudge #DefJudging
“Give me a boost,” he called out to me, and I placed two hands on his back, the sins within stirring as Titan magic swirled inside of me.
“I sense Zeus,” Cronus suddenly said.
I stiffened, feeling sick from the magical drain as Hyperion pulled on everything I had to resurrect his wife. “Umm, could you be more specific? Like is he in another country or a hundred feet away.” I eyed the tree line warily.
Cronus screwed up his face. “He’s … in another … realm.”
Relief crashed through me. Zeus being in another realm was perfect. Now he just had to fucking stay there. Now that we had our plan of waking all the Titans, we didn’t have time to fight that asshole.
“I got this,” Hyperion told me, and I nodded, peeling my hands off him and walking over to Cronus.
“Where are the sins?” I asked him.
His breathing was so slow, almost like he himself was half frozen. For a long moment he didn’t speak and I knew better than to bother him.
Finally his brow furrowed. “Right smack dab in the middle of
