Page 194 of Blood of Olympus

Nothing.

Take me, I prayed. Take me, too! I bellowed to whoever was listening.

Nothing and no one answered me, though I knew that they all heard; knew they could all feel the force of my plea.

“Gladly,” Hyperion finally purred, his filth-covered feet consuming my field of sight.

But I peered past him; stared as Kronos’ monstrous army turned back the way they’d come. Not to retreat, but to swarm the fallen dragon and her rider.

I clawed my way across the ground to reach her, inch by gory inch. My nails filled with dirt, my lungs too, all while Hyperion watched — his laughter the soundtrack of my labour.

The darkness bled, claiming more of my sight, and I hoped it would overtake it so that I could die too. So that I could meet her in the after.

And it did, though not in the way I was expecting. The darkness fled me, rivulets of it exited from the grimy skin of my hands to sink beneath the earth, useless.

Get them off her, I told it. Do not let them desecrate her. Please just let me do this one last thing.

And just before the shadows in my vision overtook me and welcomed me home into the oblivion of their embrace, the ground shuddered and trembled, roaring its defiance.

Even Ephemeron knew to mourn the fallen queen. And deliriously, I watched as its bony fingers tore through the surface — hundreds of them, thousands, perhaps — latching onto those who would destroy her.

Seconds before oblivion claimed me, a haunting, tri-layered voice whispered:

Even gods can break.

Epilogue

NYSSA

Awareness returned in jagged pieces, each sense filtering back in coarsely, one at a time, with the sharp scrape of splintered glass. Even the smallest, simplest question — where the fuck am I? — sent a hot spike of pain searing through my skull. The words detonated behind my eyelids, leaving me gasping for breath in the oppressive whiteness — that relentless, fucking white — of wherever it was that I’d woken up.

Usually, darkness was my most dependable companion. It was my shield, my weapon, and my anchor. Usually, its silky tendrils twined around me like a lover’s caress, eager to forge my every desire, or shatter my every foe.

But no darkness lingered here.

The white was cold. Unyielding. It did not play, it did not protect — nor did it demonstrate any indication it even heard my wordless pleas. It just blanketed me in terror. It suffocated, isolated, and dowsed any resolve I might have once possessed.

But the worst part was not its unwillingness to aid me. No. The worst was that it stripped me of that sense I’d never given any thought to losing. The one I’d come to rely on all too much.

Charon would be so disappointed. My father, too.

I’d let my training slip, and now I was paying the price for that lapse.

I had no inkling of my surroundings, no godly inner compass to guide me home. I knew nothing about this place or the extent of my injuries, save for the acute pain in my abdomen and the distinct, sickly-sweet smell of ichor in the sweltering air.

The throbbing in my head echoed the agitated pace of my heart, each beat pounding through my eardrums so loudly it ricocheted through my skull, compounded by the silence of this place. The more I hyperfixated on it, the faster it thumped, spurred on by my building anxiety.

And no one was here to help me. No one was coming to save me, either.

Because… the only thoughts in my mind were my own. I was cut off from both my soul-bound tethers.

I refused to acknowledge what that might mean for Caelus and Velira. I hoped that it was merely distance that separated us, though some deep part of me whispered that even when realms separated us, I could still feel a tiny sliver of their presence.

A simple feeling that I was not alone. That they were out there.

That I could not feel them now…

No.