This was only the third time he’d ever seen his mother. The first was as a child at a birthday he barely remembered, and the second was when she’d taken his eye.
Figures that the third time would be to punish him for his failure in the Underworld.
Through one of the countless mirrors that served as the ballroom’s walls, Ethan barely glimpsed Themis nodding.
A soft slap of leather against hardwood. He would finally get a taste of his mother’s whip, then. He hadn’t had the chance last time, acquainted instead with the adamantine claw she’d worn on her finger for the occasion.
Ethan drew a breath in through his nose and bowed his head, feeling strangely detached from it all. He knew this would happen the moment Iapetus had been subsumed by the Lethe, when he’d boarded the Andromeda without the Sword of Hades.
Far be it from him to expect any special treatment.
“Halt,” rang out Kronos’ voice, horrible like how Ethan imagined the earth’s crust would scrape against its molten mantle.
“My Lord?” Themis muttered. Kronos snarled, and she bent perfectly at the waist in the next moment. It was too fast for Ethan to register the movement before everything stopped.
His mother’s breath rattled behind him, also caught in the spell that unfurled in the air like a stalk in bloom. But Ethan found himself able to shift on his knees, having to will himself still as Kronos rose from his throne and approached.
The Titan Lord’s voice was still horrible when he next spoke. But there was a tremor under it, one alien to the cadence Ethan had fearfully forced himself to become used to.
“I will oversee the boy’s punishment. His failure was to me alone.”