"Try it again," Hecate suggested, voice honeyed. "Do it for me."
Hades did. Nothing answered.
"Good," she said, satisfied as a priest folding a completed rite. "Release him."
Nemesis' arm finished returning to flesh; she took one step back and became still again.
Hades rolled his shoulders as if his body still remembered how to loom even when his divinity didn't. He looked at Helios, then back at Hecate. "Nine years," he said, derision rasping the words. "And you think a collar makes that mean something?"
"No," Hecate replied. "I think I do, darling." Her attention slanted to Helios. "Nine years was the bargain. In exchange for indulging your… housekeeping, you will ensure he cannot set foot on Olympus during that term."
"Of course," Helios said. The answer had no bravado; it was a promise spoken like a list item already checked.
Hades' head turned back toward him, flame thinning to a needle. "You're going to shepherd me, kid? Keep me on a leash of mortal cleverness? That's adorable."
"You'll see," Helios said mildly.
For a heartbeat there was almost quiet: the hush a stage takes when everyone knows the next act is about to begin.
Hecate broke it with a clap as soft as moth wings. Magic uncoiled from her fingers; the chamber seemed to lean in. Violet sigils bloomed under Helios' boots, under Hades' bare ones, connecting them to a geometric star that wasn't there a breath before. The air turned thin and bright, smelling suddenly of snow and hot metal, like the first second inside a forge's mouth.
"Do try to keep your new toy from chewing the furniture," Hecate said. Her gaze slid to Hades with fond contempt. "And do send a postcard when you find somewhere that still forgives you."
Hades' mouth sharpened. "You'll get a telegram when your luck runs out."
"Darling, luck is for people without plans," she said, and with a small twist of her wrist, she tore space open.
The Underworld dissolved.
For an instant they fell through violet—sigils, stars, and the cold perfume of jasmine spinning away like thrown petals. Sound lagged behind sight, then snapped forward: wind, distant gulls, the bronze heartbeat of a city that had taught heroes to shout their names to the sky.
They stood outside the gates of Olympus.
Dawn's light was beginning to pour over everything, gaudy and gold. The gate's titanic doors were worked in reliefs of victories and feasts; the mountain's steps marched upward, white and smug. The air tasted of laurel and sun-warmed stone. After Underworld twilight, it felt obscene.
Hades lifted his hand by reflex as if to shade his eyes. The collar's runes pulsed once, warning. He dropped the hand with an ugly laugh. For the first time Helios could remember, the god looked… small. Not physically—no collar could shrink a presence like his—but in the way a storm looks without wind. Potential throttled. Horizon closed.
"Drink it in," Helios said, tone light. "It's the closest you're getting to freedom for a long time."
Hades' eyes slid sideways, flame guttering to a tight, contemptuous line. "You going to build me a kennel, boy? Put my name on a little brass plate?"
"I was thinking of honoring our previous deal," Helios said. "This world won't miss you. Remember our deal still stands. I will introduce you to Maleficent so you can join her little club."
"Charming." The god rolled his neck against the collar and hissed as the runes nipped. "You can't keep me in this trinket forever."
"Nine years isn't forever," Helios said. "It's long enough to keep you out of my way."
The mountain wind came down cool and clean, tugging at his sleeveless hood and the frayed hem of his jeans. Hades' flame made a sound like paper tearing and then steadied. Far above, the city's bronze bells marked an hour with lazy pride.
Something flickered in the air beside them—violet, then gone. A calling card more than a message, but Helios could almost hear Hecate's voice in the way the scent of jasmine strengthened and faded: "Deliver the terms, keep the bargain, don't bore me."
Helios glanced once at the collar, measuring the way its glow answered Hades' smallest movements. The Hephaestian work was art married to cruelty—exactly the kind of instrument Hecate adored. It would do for the first leg. The rest would be up to him.
"You're quiet," Hades said at last. "Thinking up speeches? Threats? Come on, boy. Give me something to chew."
"No speeches," Helios said, and for a moment his eyes were nothing but winter. "Just logistics."
He lifted his hand, and Equilibrium came to it with a ringing like a struck glass. He didn't raise the blade; he only let Hades see it, the way one shows a leash to a dog that doesn't believe in fences.
"Walk," Helios said.
Hades' grin returned, bloody with pride. "Make me."
The collar's runes brightened as if answering a private conspiracy between metal and law. Hades' flame flared—and stuttered. His knee buckled a fraction. He caught himself and laughed, but the sound had grit in it now.
"All right," he said, teeth flashing. "Lead on, kid."
They moved away from the gates. The mountain fell away behind them. The path ahead belonged to no city and no throne—just sky, and the slit of a dark corridor unspooling like a ribbon from Helios' hand.
As shadow gathered, the god glanced sideways. "You think you've won because you've borrowed that fashion reject demi-goddess' toys and promised her a calendar," he said. "But I'm older than both. And I keep better grudges."
Helios didn't bother to look back. "So do I," he said, and stepped into the dark.
Hades followed, swallowed by the same ribbon of nothing. The corridor's mouth closed with a quiet kiss, leaving Olympus' bright gate brilliant and ignorant in the sun. Far below, a bronze bell counted another idle hour; far beneath that, the Underworld's lanterns resumed their measured glow.
In her throne room, Hecate sat again and crossed one elegant ankle over the other. Nemesis resumed her station in the shadow, the hairline crack in her porcelain mask catching a line of indigo flame. "My lady, as you suspected, that boy stole the item. What would you have me do? Should I give chase and retrieve Zeus' lightning bolt from him?"
"No, it can't do anything to free Hades, so let him keep it. By the way, do you think he'll amuse us?" Hecate asked at last, almost to herself.
Nemesis did not answer. She did not need to.
Hecate smiled anyway. "Yes. I think so too."