Hermes had walked the dead down into the Underworld for a thousand years, and now he needed just one of them to speak. Aether's true mother. Find her soul, learn the secret of the boy's terrible power, and maybe buy peace for himself and Sophia. But the dead numbered beyond counting. Each descent past the gates between worlds ate more time than his whole route above. Guess wrong, and he wasted a trip he could not afford. He stood beneath the golden dome of the great library and admitted he had no way to choose. A voice cut the quiet. "You look like a man about to gamble with time he doesn't have." Athena crossed the marble floor, spear in hand, owl-crested breastplate catching the light. She was Zeus's favorite child, born grown and armored from his skull, the sharpest mind on Olympus. She also feuded with half the gods and rarely offered help for free. Hermes tensed. "I don't need a lecture, sister." "Not a lecture. A method." She stopped before him. "You hunt Aether's mother among the dead. So do I. His power frightens even Zeus. I mean to learn where it began." She studied his face. "You mean to as well. We want the same door opened." Hermes leaned on his caduceus, the green snakes shifting along the wood. "There are millions of souls below. I can't ask them one by one. I'd spend a century and still guess wrong." "Then don't guess." From beneath her cloak Athena drew a slender vial. Gold ichor swirled inside it like trapped lightning. "Aether's blood. I took it while he trained. Blood remembers blood. Carry this below, and it will pull toward the soul that made him. No searching. No wasted descents." He reached for it, then stopped. "And your price?" "When you find her, I hear what she says. Every word." Her grey eyes did not blink. "That is the whole of it. Refuse, and you go down blind." Hermes thought of Sophia waiting above, of the wedding no god would bless. He thought of a hundred fruitless trips through the gates. The vial was a key. But it made Athena a partner he could not shake, and whatever secret the mother held, Athena would own it too. He weighed the risk and closed his hand around the glass. "Done," he said. The blood warmed against his palm at once. It tugged, faint but sure, downward, toward the gates and the dark below them. His winged sandals stirred. For the first time he knew which way to walk. Athena stepped back. "Go tonight. Aether's blood cools within a day. After that it forgets him." Hermes fastened his winged cap and turned toward the descent. He had his direction now, and a deadline of one day to reach a soul among millions, with a goddess owed every word she spoke.