Page 164 of Blood of Olympus

“Woah, woah! Easy, Vel. It’s just me,” I said in as soothing a tone as I could muster. “Caelus. Nyssa’s soul-bonded.” I watched as her serpentine pupils dilated, recognising at least that one morsel of speech. “Yes, Nyssa. Your soul-bonded.”

She hissed and snapped half-heartedly, relinquishing that last remnant of pure, instinct-driven beast.

Where is she? she snarled through my mind. Her deep tones, reminiscent of a middle-aged woman, somehow perfectly embodied what I’d imagined she would sound like.

“Aros has her.”

And where is he?

“I don’t know.”

You don’t know?! she roared again, fangs snapping at the sky.

Lykos? A little help here?

A moment later, he responded, Rufus says they’re in your rooms. Aros didn’t want the Queen exposed to scrutiny while in such a vulnerable state.

Good choice, thank you.

“She’s in our rooms, Vel. Aros took her straight there.”

She hissed again, muscles coiled in preparation to fly. Before she departed, however, one enormous gold eye levelled me with a look so intense I feared for the permanence of my still-raised hands had I dared move even an inch.

She is not alright.

“I know,” I whispered back. My heart tore further at the admission. “But she will be.”

See to it that she is or I’ll burn this entire Academy to the ground no matter who stands within it.

I nodded. An immense gust created a dust storm around us as she beat her powerful wings up, up, up, then screeched as she tore through the sky directly to the balcony of the room that had become Nyssa’s sanctuary.

I frowned, turning to Lykos.

“Least she could have done was take me with her,” I grumbled, brushing myself off. “The long way it is, then.”

The long way, indeed.

CHAPTER 39

Nyssa

I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong.

Blindness wasn’t emptiness — it was a sharp, unyielding excessiveness.

It was a constant crackle of visual static no matter how hard I dug the heels of my palms into my eyeballs, or how badly I tried to will my powers to heal me.

But they couldn’t. I was powerless against the wrath of a Titan, and I knew I should heed that deadly warning. Who was I to take on one, let alone a whole host of them? Who knew how many Kronos had once again rallied to his side, promising them complete and total rule of the world they helped create?

Vaguely, I became aware that I was not alone in this place. I could hear voices surrounding me — familiar, perhaps, but altogether too loud and disembodied — speaking about me, over me, but never to me. No. They had given up on that quite quickly. I had no words for them — only screams to drown out the static.

“Somebody needs to sedate her… she’s going to hurt herself…”

Hurt herself… What a wonderful idea. Maybe if I claw my eyes out, the brightness will stop and I can drown in the blessed silence of the dark. Yes, I think I’ll try that.

I lifted a hand out in front of me, disturbed by the odd sensation that I did not really know how far from my face it was. Everything was distorted in the blinding white.

“She’s stopped screaming at least,” someone said as I hooked my index finger about to plunge it into my left eye socket.