Goddess in Time (13 page)

Without another word, Troy releases his grip on my arms and surrounds me in a big, tight hug. He pulls me close and I sink into him. I’ve never needed comfort more.

How do I wrap my mind around this? Daughter of the Fates—literal, direct daughter—what kind of cruel joke is that? Petrolas tried to explain it to me, tried to fill in the blanks left in the vague letter from my parents. Parents who aren’t really my parents.

Who are they, then?

He said the Moirae—the Fates—wanted a child of the world, a daughter more human than myth. And so they . . .
created me. I’m a creation.

My breath catches and I make a kind of choking sound. That’s when I feel it—the moisture on my cheeks.

“Shhh,” Troy soothes. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

He has no idea.

I shake my head.

“It won’t be.”

I lean back, trying to pull myself out of the hug. Troy won’t let me go.

“Nothing will ever be okay again,” I say.

He tilts his head down, bringing his forehead so close to mine I can almost feel it. “Tell me.”

“I’m—”

I close my eyes, not able to say the words while looking in his eyes. I can’t stand the thought of seeing his pity or disgust.

It’s a struggle to even say the words.

“I am the daughter of . . . the Fates.”

To his credit, he doesn’t gasp or choke or any other completely reasonable reaction to that piece of news. I open my eyes and find him looking at me with a mix of awe and confusion.

Not exactly what I expected.

“Did you hear me?” I ask. “I’m the daughter—”

“Of the Fates,” he finishes. “Yeah, I heard. That’s . . .”

“Horrible?” I suggest, finally twisting myself out of his hug. “Freaky. Weird. Terrifying.”

“Cool,” he says with a half smile.

I scowl. “It’s not cool.”

He shrugs, as if totally confused by my reaction. “It’s still new. In time you’ll—”

“I’ll what?” I snap. “I’ll come to love them? To embrace my heritage? To get
I Heart Fate
tattooed across my chest?”

“Well, not quite that.”

“Troy, they
made
me,” I explain. “I’m not a normal girl.”

“I think we’ve always known that. I love you anyway.” His cheeks flame, and he starts stammering, “I mean
we
love you. Your friends. We all love you, even though you’re not normal.”

I punch him in the arm. “I have no father. Just three mothers who are in charge of the birth, life, and death of every person on the planet.”

“You really think that’s any weirder than me being the descendant of the god of medicine?” he asks. “Or Phoebe being Nike’s great-granddaughter?”

“Of course it is.”

“It’s not,” he says with a shrug. “Besides, at least you’re not really a descendant of Persephone.”

“No, but I’m—” I stop midsentence as his words sink in. “I’m not, am I?”

I can’t help the smile. Or the laugh that follows.

“You’re right,” I say between laughs. “I’m not! I’m really not.”

The idiot goddess isn’t my ancestor. Anything has to be better than that, right?

We erupt in a fit of laughter for several seconds. I think it’s more of a release than actual humor. I’ve had a lot to process in a short time—I can travel back in time and fix things, I’m adopted, my real parents are the Fates. Is it any wonder my brain needs to take a little vacation for a minute?

But as the laughter dies, my thoughts circle back to the reason I found out the truth, the reason I’m seeking out my ancestor god—gods—in the first place. The humor fades and the anger remains.

“What time is it?” I demand.

Troy checks his watch. “Just after two.”

“I still have time.” I start walking for the front door.

Troy hurries to catch up. “Are you sure? Don’t you want to take a day to process or something?”

“I’ve been waiting ten years,” I say, though the truth is I’ve apparently been waiting my whole life to meet my real parents; I just didn’t know it. “I’m not going to waste another day.”

When I enter the temple this time, I let my anger seep through every pore of my body. I want these witches to know what they’re getting into when they show up. I channel the anger—over so many things—as I call for them.

“Moraie!”
I shout at the empty temple. “I call on you, Fates. I demand your appearance!”

I spin in circles waiting for them to pop in, sneaking up on me like Chronos and Persephone did.

“Fates!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “You are my ancestors. You have to come.”

A thought tickles at the back of my mind, like a memory of something I never knew. Something that tells me what I need to say to call them here.

I clench my jaw, snort out a sharp breath, and say, “I call on you . . . Mothers.”

In a flash, three women stand before me. They are varying ages—one is young and beautiful, not more than a few years older than me, another is middle-aged, and the third is so ancient she is gnarled and hunched like a hideous gargoyle. They have no eyes except for the one cupped in the palm of the ancient one.

She holds out her hand, surveying me with the creepy eyeball.

“I want to see,” the young one says, reaching for the eye.

The ancient one holds it out of her reach. “She is pretty,” she says. She holds the eye up near the side of my head. “But her hair is odd.”

I fight the urge to knock her hand away.

“My hair is fine,” I growl.

Short, spiky blond might not have been normal back in the ancient day, but it’s acceptable now. Even if it’s not, I don’t care.

The young one steps closer and grabs the eyeball, studying me just like the old one did.

“Oooh, she has my nose,” the young one says. She lifts her empty hand to her own nose. “At least, I think she does.”

All the while, the middle-aged one stands silent, almost like she’s watching me with empty eyes. Her lips spread into a faint smile. She looks the most like a mother, the most like my own mother—or at least the mom I’ve always believed was my mother.

The middle-aged one doesn’t say a word, just stands there smiling, like she’s taking it all in.

“I called you for a reason, Mothers,” I say, choking over the last word. “I need to travel back in time.”

“Impossible,” the ancient one says.

The young one quips, “That’s illegal.”

Only the middle-aged one asks, “Why?”

I focus on her, since she seems like the reasonable one.

“I think you know why,” I say.

She shakes her head. “You cannot change the past.”

I am so tired of people telling me that. What’s the point of
chronoportation
if not to change the past? Illegal or not, it’s a power for a reason.

My barely controlled anger explodes. “It isn’t fair!” I shout. “What happened to my parents—biological or not, they’re the only parents I have ever known—isn’t fair. They don’t deserve their punishment and neither do Griffin’s parents.”

“The judgment of Olympus . . .” the old one begins.

“Is fallible,” I bark. “They make mistakes. And that was a
mistake.”

“There are procedures,” the young one offers. “You can appeal the decision.”

“I have.” I really want to punch something. “They turned me down.”

As if the gods want to admit they made a mistake. As if Hera will let them rescind the order that banished my parents and smoted Griffin’s. If the gods are good at anything, they have mad grudge skills. Hera better than most. She’ll never let it go.

When the Fates look like they want to keep arguing, I pull out the secret weapon.

“You owe me,” I say, my voice weaker than I would like. “You owe my parents. They have raised me, taken care of me,
loved
me. You abandoned me, and they took me in.”

“We did not—” The youngest starts to say something, but the middle-aged one stops her.

“You are right,” she says. “We owe you a great deal.” To her sisters, she says, “Let us conference.”

I stand there, feeling awkward and scared while they debate my request. Fervent whispers and hushed argument fill the temple. Finally, after what feels like forever, they turn back to face me.

“We are agreed,” the middle-aged one says.

The young one says, “We will give you the coin.”

“You may go back,” the old one says, pulling a piece of gold out of thin air. This one is stamped with the image of Chronos’s youthful face. “To see the right of things.”

Finally.

Without hesitation, I reach forward and take the coin.

B
efore my fingers even touch the metal, there is a bright flash and I’m standing in a familiar hallway. I’m on Mount Olympus and it feels different than when I was here a few days ago. It feels . . . old.

I glance up at the big gilded clock that hangs above the mosaic at the far end of the hall. It’s a few minutes after two. Just a short time before the moment that changed everything.

Is it possible? Am I really here, ten years ago? Can I really prevent myself from screwing up so many lives?

Until this instant I never stopped to think about how I would do it, how I would stop things. I just thought I’d . . . you know, stop them. But can I walk up to my seven-year-old self and say, “Hey, this is a bad idea. Quit it”?

Will it break my brain?

A door at the other end of the hall swings open, and suddenly I don’t have time for strategy. I spin around just as little Nicole and Griffin slip out of the storage closet—a bottle of ambrosia clutched in my tiny hands, a golden cup in his—and scurry down the hall. Giggling and laughing at the prospect of the fun they’re about to have.

I’m frozen, watching the last moments of innocent joy I ever remember feeling. After this, everything changed. Life could never be fun again. I got a harsh reality lesson at a very young age. I’m witnessing—rewitnessing—the most important moment in my life.

It’s a little overwhelming.

Instinct takes over and I press my back up against the cool marble wall, trying to make myself invisible as they pass by.

It works. They don’t notice me, and soon they’re rounding the corner and making fast for the nursery.

“Crap.” I ball my hands into fists. “I came here to stop us. Not to cower and hide.”

Pushing away from my hiding spot, I race after them—me—us. I follow the hallway, winding around corner after corner. Over the clomping sound of my combat boots on the marble floor, I can hear their—my—our—laughter, always a turn ahead of me.

Finally, I come around the last bend, skidding to a stop in the hallway that leads to the nursery. Little Nicole and Griffin are standing outside the door, arguing over who is going to get to feed the ambrosia to Hera’s son.

I’d forgotten that part.

Memory resurfaces as I watch my younger self make a pouty face at Griffin as he snatches the bottle from her hand. With a smirk, he turns and reaches for the door handle.

“No!” I shout, sprinting the distance to the nursery door.

They don’t react.

Even as I’m racing full-out, I can sense that something is wrong. There is something . . . unreal about what I’m experiencing. I get to the door right as it closes behind young Nicole and Griffin.

“There’s still time,” I gasp, reaching for the closing door. “I can still—”

My fingers glide right through the golden handle.

“What the—?”

I try to grab the handle, the door itself, anything, but my hand moves through the surfaces as if they’re nothing more than illusion.

In a last-ditch effort, I step fully through the door, no longer shocked to find myself standing the nursery just as Griffin is about to deliver the immortality-killing dose.

“NO!” I scream.

Tears streak down my cheeks as I watch my young self cheer Griffin on as he feeds the drops of golden liquid to the baby.

Footsteps echo in the hall outside the nursery.

I know what’s coming—
who’s
coming. Hera and her entourage are on their way to check on the baby, and they’re going to find him drained of his immortality, with me and Griffin standing over the crib.

I can’t watch.

As the queen enters the room, I walk through a side wall, into an unused chamber.

My first response is disbelief. After everything I’ve been through, everything my friends and I have
worked hard to achieve, I can’t believe it amounted to nothing. I visited Olympus, Poseidon’s palace, and Hades. I confronted the god of time, the queen of the underworld, and finally the Fates themselves. All those challenges, all those successes
can’t
have been for nothing.

My second response is anger. Wrath. Pure, unadulterated fury. I met every requirement. I overcame every obstacle. I’ve earned the right to fix things. I’ve earned the right to be something more than a pawn in some twisted game.

I let out a primal scream, putting all of my fury and frustration into the release.

But the release doesn’t come. The fury doesn’t release, and I feel like a bottle of soda ready to explode as soon as someone loosens the cap.

There is only one way to relieve the pressure.

“Moirae!”
I scream. “You tricked me! Your own daughter, you cheated me like the gods have been cheating humans for millennia! How dare you? Cowards!”

I just want to yell. I just want them to know how betrayed I feel—about everything. I know they can hear me, even in the future.

I don’t expect them to show up.

When the three sisters shimmer into the spot in front of me, they don’t look the least bit embarrassed. They should be ashamed or contrite or at least look guilty as Hades for sending me on a goose chase to the past.

But no, they look completely undisturbed.

“You tricked me,” I accuse.

“It was no trick,” the middle-aged one says.

“We told you it was illegal,” the young one adds.

“Impossible,” the old one corrects. “We told you it was impossible.”

“Impossible,” the young one agrees.

“It’s not!” I insist. “It can’t be.”

Why else would it be illegal? Why else would they and Chronos have given me such dire warnings about changing the past unless it was
possible
for me to do so? Why bother? It doesn’t make any sense.