Page 46 of Blood of Olympus

A huff of a laugh clawed its way up my throat and out my mouth before I could stop it. Sharp and manic, it came out wrong. Pitched a little too high and paced a little too faced; too brittle to be joy, too sudden to be sane. As if my body had mistaken panic for humour.

The situation I’d found myself in was nothing short of ridiculous — and more giggles bubbled their way up. Every attempt to stop it only fed to the absurdity, and the laughter burst free anew.

“Maybe she has lost her mind,” Charon muttered.

I howled in response.

“Maybe we both have,” Caelus murmured back, his poor, golden face tilted on its side, completely and utterly bewildered. He pulled back to throw his breeches on, surreptitiously tucking his half-wilted cock inside them, before draping his tunic over my head as the tear-inducing laughter subsided.

I swung my legs off the bed, wiping tears from my eyes, and confronted the fact that I wasn’t mad — I really had been hearing my best friend all week.

“What happened, Char? Why are you here?”

It was disconcerting to see the open balcony and Velira’s piercing gaze through the face of my dead best friend, but here we were.

Charon sighed, running his hand through his now-flaxen hair and crouched before me. Though his eyes were insubstantial and troubled, they were still the same pale blue — still conveyed everything his words did not.

“What did you do to the arches, Nyss?” he asked softly.

I jolted, taken aback. “Nothing… at least not directly.”

He waited patiently for me to explain, so I allowed myself a steadying breath and launched into it. “That happened after I sent you through to the Elysian Fields. First, they fractured… then, they crumbled.”

He pursed his ghostly lips. “So,” he said, switching his gaze to Caelus. “Fate didn’t like the fact that she brought you back.”

“It seems not.”

“Nyssa, you have to come to the arches,” he implored. “I don’t know how else to say this, but… the dead aren’t staying dead.”

I quirked one ebony brow. “Given the fact that you’re here, I’m very much aware of that fact.”

“Er, right.” He blushed, as much as any shade could. “Hephaestus is doing his best to fix the gateways, but…”

“But what?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

“But you’ll have to see for yourself… and Nyss?”

“What is it?”

“It’s really nice to be able to talk to you again.” He smiled and that godsdamned dimple I’d missed so much it hurt, appeared in his left cheek. Right where it was supposed to be.

CHAPTER 11

Caelus

The first thing that hit me when we shadowstepped to the Isle of Judgement was the chaos and cacophony of death.

The second was an errant shade. It passed through my skull with an icy wail, in a much too violating way, causing a violent shudder. And while I couldn’t see the shade in question, I could hear it. Feel it. Smell it.

Something within me had been inextricably altered when I died and came back again. My soul had brushed up against that veil between life and death, ensnaring something — or perhaps ensnared by something else — as Nyssa dragged it back down into my broken body.

Maybe I didn’t fully come back. Maybe I was doomed to walk both sides of that intangible veil. My gaze flicked over to Nyssa’s profile — maybe she was doomed in exactly the same way.

I now knew that shades felt cold — painfully, achingly glacial. They smelled of frost on an early winter morning; crisp, clean, and so icy that inhaling burned your sinuses. And Furies, they were loud — keening and wailing — singing the last songs of their mortal existences.

Hephaestus and Archimedes carefully set the repaired keystone in place at the top of the first arch. They were seemingly unbothered by the riot of tortured souls raging around them; unaware that we were wading through the remnants of vociferant, displaced souls.

Solely a death god thing, then — noted. Lykos, what the fuck is wrong with me?