“Fate is not always what we think,” Prometheus offered. “The woman who attacked you sounds like Nemesis. The Moirai have many servants, but she is the fiercest of them. An assassin and enforcer of Fate.”
Pandora had suspected as much, though that thought had induced more questions. “If the timeline always included me coming back to the past, falling in love with you, and having Pyrrha …” She felt an almost imperceptible tightening of his chest beneath her, perhaps anticipating her line of thought. “If time could bend upon itself thus, did it also always include my confrontation with Nemesis?”
“You begin to apprehend the paradoxes of Fate.”
So Pandora had always tried to kill Zeus as a child, and Nemesis had always stopped her? Which meant she was, essentially, impotent to alter the course of Fate … Or could only do so with such a rank deviation that not even the Moirai could anticipate it. But no such course seemed to present itself, and besides, once more looking upon her family, how could she make any choice that would deny her them?
Which left her again trying to survive the turbulent present. “Kronos knew about the Box. I cannot understand how he can know about it, long before its invention. But since he does, and appears to know of me, I cannot imagine he will give over his pursuit of me.” What would the Titan do with the Box, should he claim it?
Prometheus’s silence spoke more than the Titan probably wished, and Pandora pushed herself up on her forearms so as to look into his eyes. “You know something of Kronos, don’t you? Yet you hold it back from me.” She couldn’t quite keep the acid from her tone. She’d dared to think this a problem only with his future self, interacting with her past self. Dared to believe his lingering secrets a mere puzzle for her to unlock, perhaps even one he set for that very purpose. “Who is Kronos? Is he an Oracle as well?”
Another hesitation, and those sapphire eyes flitted over her face. She leaned closer, enclosing his vision, preventing any egress, and thus, she hoped, forcing him to confide in her. “He has seen a great many things, even unto the Time of Nyx, Pandora. Some few of the Titans are older than the rest and are privy to things others might not understand. Perhaps things others cannot understand.”
With a frustrated grunt, she pushed off him and rose, wrapping her peplos about herself. “You have a talent for circumventing the question at hand.”
He leaned on his elbow. “It may behoove those who seek straight answers to remember the World bends in endless curves and folds, and so-called forthright truths only serve to further obfuscate understanding with oversimplification.”
Gah! Such answers made her want to scream. All the more so when she could see the truth in them. “Do not think, dear Prometheus, if I upend a brazier upon your head, it means I don’t love you more than my own life.”
“I am a Firewalker,” he pointed out. “The flames will not harm me.”
“I was shooting for the sheer impact of bronze and coal upon your skull.” She sniffed. No, she would never harm him, exasperating as he might sometimes prove.
Looking at him now, at leisure in their bed, warm and safe, only served to drive home the reminder of what lay ahead for him. Which, in turn, sent her back to her prior conclusion. She could not save him here, in the past. All she could do was use the Box, return to the future, and save him from his torment then.
“I need it back,” she said, the words scouring her insides. She needed to leave this Prometheus, leave their daughter, leave this precious time.
After frowning, Prometheus waved a hand at a satchel he’d dropped by the bedside. Hand shaking—she almost wished he would have said he had lost it—she fished inside until she felt the Box. The damning, impossible, wondrous Box he would build for her and create the sum of their lives from within its depths. She withdrew it and set it upon the foot of their bed, settling down in front of it.
In her crib, little Pyrrha stirred, moaning, feet kicking off her blankets for the thousandth time. As Pandora watched their daughter, an unexpected dry sob wracked her.
Damn the Fates for this!
“You do not have to do this,” Prometheus said.
“Kronos will keep looking for it so long as it remains within his reach.” While true, it was a flimsy excuse, as he would well know. “I cannot leave you in the situation which allowed this to come to me.”
“I am not easy to kill, Pandora.”
Oh, but then, it was not just death he faced in Tartarus, and the look on his face, however much he tried to conceal it, told her even he dreaded the suffering that awaited him.
He rose now, standing naked beside her, hand upon her shoulder. “If it is set correctly, perhaps you can return not so long after you left. That being the case, some few more days here will not make any difference to the future me, save in offering me more memories of this time.”
Ah, an even more beautiful excuse than hers. A while longer.
Another day before she must rip out her own heart.
26
Artemis
207 Golden Age
For seven years, Artemis had fought for Helion, and at last, the war had ended. The peace council had returned from Atlantis and, despite all he had done, they had granted Atlas control of the island in perpetuity, provided distribution of the Ambrosia was overseen by a new hegemony calling themselves the Ouranid League.
Great swathes of Sardeis lay in utter ruin and, rather than attempt to rebuild, Phoebe had moved a few miles further down the coast to found a new city, Phoeba. Though the Ambrosial War had only just ended, already a new acropolis had sprung up
