Аполлион

Aiden closed his eyes briefly. When they reopened, they were a soft gray. “I have to say, it was kind of nice to shut those damn voices up, if just for once.”

Stepping forward, I placed my hand on his arm and squeezed. “Are you okay?”

“I am.” He bent his head, placing his lips on my forehead. “Let me grab the bag and then we’ll enter the church together. Okay?”

I nodded, waiting outside the foundation. Aiden returned with the bag and knelt. Reaching in, he pulled out a dark, shapeless material and offered it to me. Another followed as I took mine.

“A cloak?” I slipped it over my head. “Where you’d get two of these?”

Aiden stood, throwing the backpack onto his back. “You’d be surprised by what Solos’ father has stashed away in his cabins. I actually picked these up when we were in Athens. Figured we might need them.”

“You’re so smart and organized.”

Laughing, he pulled his on and then reached over, grasping the edges of my hood. He tugged it up. “We have to hide that pretty face of yours.”

I flushed. “Same for you.”

“I have a pretty face?” Aiden pulled up his own hood, which cast his face in shadows. “I’d like to go with handsome instead of pretty.”

“Handsome” wasn’t a strong enough word, but I nodded. He extended his hand, and I took it, comforted by the steady, warm grasp.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Together, we moved down the line of the fallen stones and found the opening. Together, we stepped through where a door had once stood. There were no more warnings or wards. We moved through the patches of crumbling cement and overgrown weeds.

We waited.

After about ten seconds, a fissure of energy coursed down my spine. Aiden felt it too, for his hand tightened around mine. Anxious energy built in my stomach, forming tight balls of dread and even a little bit of excitement.

Hopefully, my visit to the Underworld would be different this time.

Toward the back of the foundation, the air rippled, reminding me of heat rolling off of hot pavement in the summer. The veil that separated the truth from the mortal world simply slipped away.

“Do you see it?” I asked.

Aiden squeezed my hand. “Yes.”

The wrought-iron gate encased in titanium was huge, latching into something neither of us could see. Instead of bars, there were two-pronged spears decorated with images of black bulls and ewes. Where the two gates joined, a replica of the invisible helmet was engraved into the iron. The musty scent grew stronger.

With his free hand, Aiden pushed the gate open. It swung backward, making no sound, revealing nothing but darkness—not the kind associated with night, but a black void. A portal. And together, hand and hand, we stepped through the gates to the Underworld.

CHAPTER 21

I almost expected that, when we stepped into the void, we’d fall flat on our faces. But the ground remained under our feet as we continued into the darkness, which eventually gave way to fog as thick as soup.

Glancing over my shoulder, I sought to find the gate before the fog swallowed us whole, but it was gone and the fog was even heavier. I gripped Aiden’s hand as tendrils seeped between us, wrapping a different kind of cloak around us. I couldn’t even see Aiden… or two feet in front of me. A pang of panic unfurled in my chest.

“I’m right here.” Aiden’s deep voice parted the veil and he squeezed my hand. “Just keep hold.”

I briefly considered using the air element to dispel some of the fog, but if the fog was supposed to be here, that could be potentially bad news if it suddenly up and disappeared.

The further we moved into the fog, the more unnerving it became to be so blind. And then there was a sound other than my own pounding heart—a shuffling type of sound, like feet and cloth dragging all around us, and a low hum, like a soft, never-ending gasp of a moan, and I didn’t even want to know what it was. Following the path of Aiden’s arm, I stepped closer to him, so close that I was surprised I didn’t trip him up.

After several minutes of nothing but blindly walking through fog and that terrible dragging and moaning sound, the fog started to break apart until the path was revealed before us.

I sucked in a breath, unable to stop from clutching his arm. What little part of the Underworld I’d seen before hadn’t prepared me.

The fog gave way to a sky that was the color of the fading sun, a cross between red and orange. But from what I could tell, there was no sun. And all around us were people, moving about aimlessly. Dressed in bland, tattered clothing, they shuffled to and fro. Many stayed silent; some moaned quietly, while others muttered under their breath from behind their own cloaks, but all had their gazes trained to the ground. They were young and old, from the smallest child to the most aged crone.

This… this holding place continued as far as the eye could see, to the cusp of the hills Apollo had spoken of. I didn’t understand what this place really was. It wasn’t limbo—that much I knew—as I had been there before.