“Skata.” Understanding dawned when Lachesis’s words suddenly converged with Rhen’s and Nysa’s still circling in Talisa’s head. “You brought her back to tempt him again, didn’t you?”
“We brought her soul back.” The Fate met her gaze head-on. “Not her body. Her body was long gone by that point. You know reincarnation is possible. We don’t like to use it, but in this situation, we felt it was warranted.”
Warranted… Warranted was just a fancy way of saying the Fates didn’t give a fuck about the consequences.
Her jaw tightened. “What happened?”
“We chose another nymph. One who was as beautiful and innocent as the first, waited until she was of age, then put her in his path once more.”
“And let me guess. He wasn’t interested.”
“Oh no. He was very interested. He recognized her almost immediately. Not by her body but by her eyes. His focus immediately shifted from the task his father had sent him on to her. A little too quickly. Whereas before he had been naïve, almost innocent in his feelings for her, this time he was obsessed with keeping her close. She noticed it, too. Their relationship was very one-sided. He became… possessive. That worried us, but we hoped he would relax as they spent more time together. And he did. Gradually.”
She moved away from the bed, floating around the room, studying items on the bookshelves, almost as if suddenly avoiding Talisa’s gaze. And as Talisa turned to look after her, she remembered the way Zagreus had watched her in that club. The way he’d stared into her eyes when she’d walked up to him. As if he’d recognized her. As if he’d known her.
Holy shit… “Did she… Did she remember him?”
“No. We didn’t want her to. For our plan to work, he had to turn to the light by his own choosing, not because she was leading him. We were not sure what would happen, but slowly, as he spent more time with her, the darkness began to fade. And she softened to him as well. It wasn’t love by any means, but there was definite attraction. A shared interest. And it gave us hope.”
Lachesis turned her head but didn’t meet Talisa’s gaze. “Until his lust for power drew him away from her once again.”
“Skata.”
The Fate sighed. “He again went on a killing spree after her second death. And Hades again drew him back to the Underworld for torture and punishment. Hades grew stronger while Zagreus grew darker. During it all, Zeus and the other gods remained unchecked. When Zagreus was finally released back into the mortal realm many long years later, he was a mere shadow of his former self. But the world was also a much darker place. And we were desperate. So we tried again.”
Holy hell… A protective urge welled inside Talisa, one that made her grip Zagreus’s hand tighter. “You sent her back a third time?”
Lachesis turned to face her and softly, she said, “We actually sent her back three more times. The third time he quickly bound their souls so he could find her more easily should she be killed again. And she was. Each of her subsequent lives began and ended worse than the one before.”
Dear gods… Talisa had known the Fates were hated by many but she’d never understood why. Now she did. They didn’t look at souls as individuals but as pawns they could move around a chess board. “How could you? How could you do that to him? To her?”
“I know it sounds very cruel,” Lachesis said in a soft voice, “but we honestly thought we were helping. After the fifth time, though…” She floated to the side of the bed once more and looked down at Zagreus still sleeping. “After we watched him capture and imprison her with no warmth between them, after she died yet again, we realized he had become so dark, so destructive, that we had pushed him to the brink. There was no light left in him at all, and we were to blame. So we gave up on him.”
She shifted her gaze to Talisa. “We turned all our hopes on the Argonauts instead—on the descendants of the ancient heroes. That they could locate the Orb of Krónos and its elements; that they would be strong enough to battle the gods, thereby restoring balance to the cosmos once more. And they have not let us down. Your father and his kin have proven their worth.”
Talisa should feel pride but all she knew was anger. “But not Zagreus, right? He’s not worthy of pride. You set him up to fail, and he did, so you just abandoned him, which is why you won’t help him now.”
A ghost of a smile curled the Fate’s lips. “You are so like your father, paidí.”
That was the last thing Talisa wanted to hear.
“We did not interfere with him again, it’s true. But we did not abandon him. Not completely. We’ve watched him from afar for over five hundred years, which is how we knew he continued to search for her, expecting she would be reincarnated again. It’s also how we knew he’d aligned himself with a female from your realm some twenty-eight years ago with her own secret agenda for revenge.”
Talisa’s stomach tightened as she stared at the Fate.
Cynna. Lachesis was talking about Cynna and the time Cynna had spent as Zagreus’s mistress in his Yucatan lair.
Lachesis clasped her hands behind her back once more and floated to the window. “He knew right away the Argolean female wasn’t his mono mia. And he didn’t love her. Not a bit. She was nothing but a distraction from the bitter emptiness inside him. But by that point, he was so dark… He did some truly evil things during that time—things that shocked even us, including imprisoning and torturing innocents for information on his mono mia—and we were certain he was lost to the darkness for good. But then, one day… he surprised us.”
Talisa’s heart stuttered because she knew this story, too. She’d heard it from the female at the center of it herself. “He let Cynna go.”
“Yes.” Lachesis met her gaze. “That light we thought was gone flickered inside him. It was sudden. And brief. And had we not been watching, we might have missed it. But the day he realized Cynna truly loved Niko… The day Zagreus decided to release her instead of hold on to her as he’d tried to hold on to his mate all those times… We realized he wasn’t completely lost.”
Talisa’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
“We weren’t convinced he could be saved—not based on one good deed—but we were intrigued. By releasing Cynna and Niko, he betrayed his father, thereby sacrificing himself to more punishment at Hades’s hand. Hades destroyed his lair and dragged him back to the Underworld, but this time, it did not have the desired effect Hades hoped for. Zagreus accepted his punishment. His torture did not strengthen Hades’s powers in any way. So Hades turned him over to us.”
“To the Fates?”
“Yes.” Lachesis’s lips curled. “Serving us is a fate worse than Tartarus for the gods. Zagreus—or Ziggy as my sisters like to call him—served us in our realm for twenty-five years. And it was there that we saw he wasn’t a lost cause after all. There was still light inside him. Not only enough light to counteract the Underworld darkness, but to change this war once and for all.”
Talisa’s heart picked up speed.
“We decided to give him one last chance to fulfill his destiny. We let him go, and he came here.”