Page 152 of Blood of Olympus

Nightshade? Caelus’ faint voice slid in.

Busy, was all I sent back.

Hyperion frowned, seemingly torn. Releasing my neck ever so slightly, he asked, “Did I what?”

Air trickled back in, down my damaged windpipe and back out again as I asked the question I’d been dying to ask ever since he picked me up. “Did you visit Poseidon on your way over here?”

Hyperion’s face immediately scrunched. “I have not seen Poseidon in eons.” His brows lowered further, so severely it had to hurt. “What is the meaning of your question?”

I smirked as much as I was able given I was still hanging from his enormous hand. “Oh, nothing. Just that your breath smells like limp fish-dick.”

The insult landed exactly as I’d intended — with Hyperion bellowing, tossing me through the air, and erupting with so much light it could blind someone a mile away.

Volatile and vulnerable. Easily provoked.

I closed my eyes as I hit the ground, using the momentum to roll back into a crouched position. Darkness shot out of my outstretched palms, the inky serpents knowing exactly where to go. Except that when they should have coiled around the Titan’s legs, up his body, and into his nostrils…

They didn’t.

My stomach sank low in my belly, my skin prickling to the point of pain. When I tried to recall the shadows, the zapping sensation intensified — heightened by the delighted chuckle Hyperion set free. My hair stood on end, and ice travelled through my veins.

“You think your shadows can affect me?” he taunted, the epitome of haughtiness. “What is a shadow?”

“Ah!” I cried out as a fist hit my unsuspecting abdomen. Doubling over, I gasped, panic exploding within me at the sudden lack of air. I clawed at the ground, like my fingers thought they could carve oxygen out of the ashes.

Nightshade, where are you?!

“Shadows are but the absence of light. And in case you hadn’t noticed, light is plentiful here. My power renders yours… useless.”

A swift blow to the side of my head punctuated his point, catapulting me through the air and sending me sprawling in the dirt what felt like a hundred yards away.

Nightshade!

Even now, I still stubbornly refused to open my eyes lest Hyperion blind me.

Somewhere in the far-off distance, an explosion sounded, and I hoped it was from us. I hoped we were tearing their army apart, piece by fetid piece.

I don’t know exactly. Apollo does.

I had no way of knowing if a Titan’s power would affect me permanently and I wasn’t about to test that theory out in a very one-sided fight.

And therein lay the truth, and my fear behind it: I had absolutely no idea how I could best Hyperion when my shadows were effectively pointless, Life had no place here, in the destruction of things, and would Death even work against a Titan?

Time to find out.

Spitting a clump of sweet-tasting ichor and one of my molars out onto the dirt, I reached deep down inside myself, calling upon my most dangerous of abilities. Death answered swiftly and heartily — like she’d only been waiting for me to ask.

She cast an invisible net out over our immediate surroundings, capturing the essences of souls in the vicinity. Every living thing caught within it, lit up like a thousand tiny stars in my mind. From the vultures circling overhead awaiting their next meal, to the ants burrowing in their nests below the surface. An owl drifted by, followed swiftly by a dove. A deer lapped the outskirts of my mind, while a wolf snuffed out another life — blacker and colder than the rest.

I assessed them all quickly, looking for the largest, brightest soul among them.

My brows twitched when I found it — when I realised what the Titan had tried to hide from me — but I quickly schooled my expression into one of neutrality so as not to give myself away. I just had to hold out long enough…

The most dazzling soul in the vicinity was not Hyperion as I’d expected, but one belonging to a large violet dragon some leagues away.

Velira.

She lit up like the sun, drowning everything else out, even the Titan of light standing startlingly close to me. Letting me know that I was not, in fact, alone as he’d have me believe — that I was still in Hellespont, in the middle of a furies-damned battle after all.