Struggling to her feet, she felt rather than saw a presence above her. She looked up to behold a towering ghost staring down at her with rage-filled eyes. He still bore the dolphin-encrusted breastplate, splattered with blood and ichor. A scream died on her lips, escaping only as a whimper.
The dead Titan tried to speak, revealing the wretched hole in the back of his mouth. Had a spear done that?
Pyrrha forced herself into composure. Showing terror to the dead oft seemed to increase both their power over her and their fury at her. Strength was needed here, whatever ran through her heart. “Y-you’re Okeanus, yes?” Tethys’s dead husband, slain during Kronos’s assault upon Thebes fifteen years ago, when Pyrrha was but an infant.
The Titan’s visage calmed a hair. Perhaps she imagined it. But now, his gaze settled intently upon her face.
“Did Kronos do that to you?” she asked.
The Titan rasped something incoherent and Pyrrha could only grimace.
“I want to help you, but I don’t know how. If you help me, though, I’ll try. I want to find out what happened to my mother that day. Can you tell if you saw—”
A scream that pierced into the Penumbra rang out from across the river, and Okeanus—if it was he—looked sharply in that direction, as did Pyrrha. She couldn’t make out aught through the shadows and the mist, but that had been very distinct? Some connection to the lampad? Next, she heard more screams, grunts, and the sounds of crashing. There were woods on that side of the river, too, and somewhere in there someone was fighting.
Fighting with such fury it punctuated the Penumbra with echoes of the passion.
Sudden rage seized Okeanus and he grabbed Pyrrha, heaving her off the ground with a rasping snarl.
“Wait!” she shrieked, her legs kicking in the empty air beneath her. Even in death, the Titan had strength far greater than hers, and she was powerless in his grasp. She tried to blink away the Sight, but it wouldn’t fade. In contact with the ghost, her soul remained trapped on the edge of the Underworld.
The Titan leaned in, opening that hideous mouth too wide just in front of her face almost like he intended to bite off her nose. Had the sounds of another battle like the one that had slain him triggered his rage? Pyrrha barely had time to form the thought before the ghost slammed her down into the umbral sands. The impact knocked all coherence from her.
Next she knew, she was flailing around beneath dark currents, water shooting up her nose. Twisting, Pyrrha managed the surface, sputtering and gagging. She cast herself upon the riverbank and coughed up a torrent of choking fluid. Spasms seized her and she fell upon her elbows.
“Pyrrha!” someone was calling. “Pyrrha!”
A rowboat scraped in the sand, and someone hopped out to stand beside her. Strong arms hefted her upward and patted her back.
Blinking through her tears, she saw Poseidon. As though she were a child, he hefted her up then set her into the bottom of the boat. Pyrrha contented herself to close her eyes a moment to catch her breath.
Papa had warned her, she remembered. He had warned her long ago the dead were angry and dangerous, unpredictable.
“Leave the dead be and remain tethered in this world.”
Ha. But so little tied her to the world of the living … Still, inexplicable rage had seized Okeanus, and he might well have forced her to join him permanently. Had he tried to drown her? Had the presence of his son across the Veil stayed his hand? She had too few answers about the dead and what drove them. Or maybe it was madness that compelled Okeanus, even as madness had driven the ghost she had once told about his brother. Trying to ascribe logic to their actions was a path fraught with futility.
“What in the depths of the Underworld happened to you?” Poseidon demanded. The Titan had begun to row them out, away from the falls and into the sea, where the roaring falls would not swallow his words.
Ah. ‘Depths of the Underworld’ was far more apt than she was inclined to admit to him, wasn’t it? She had plumbed deep recesses beyond the Mortal Realm and almost died for it. And she was no closer to answers about either the Underworld or her mother. Would that lampad have aided her, had she managed to find the spirit?
“I, uh …” She blinked and groaned.
Poseidon brushed her sodden hair from her face. “Are you all right?”
“What were you even doing here?” she asked.
He frowned, looking somewhat abashed. “Well … Sometimes I come here at night. This is where I feel close to my father.”
Gaia’s breadth! Pyrrha almost laughed at that. If only he knew how close his father had been this night. Closer than he would have liked, she suspected. The living oft thought they wanted to reconnect with the dead. So few of them would actually have liked to hear the dead were wandering around in their midst.
With his thumb, he traced the line of her jaw.
“What are you doing?” she asked, as he leaned in uncomfortably close.
“You’ve grown quite beautiful, you know that.”
Had she?
“Hair like fire …”
Pyrrha caught his hand and pushed it away. “Thank you.” He was really too close now.
His other hand tangled in the folds of her peplos. “Well, I know what would make you feel better and take your mind off all your troubles.”
Scoffing, she pushed him back. “What, you help me catch my breath so I open my legs to you? A real comfort to me, huh? Get off me!”
The sudden fury that overtook his face looked so much like the rage
