Page 49 of Blood of Olympus

Nobody was coming to save me.

No one could right this wrong.

The ones we lived for, left us to burn.

So, fuck them all.

A scream clawed its way out of my throat, searing everything in its path as I thrashed and burned.

My fervid legs twisted in the silken sheets, the fabric melding with my skin.

“Nyssa!” Caelus roared.

But still, I screamed.

I was too hot.

Too-hot-too-hot-too-hot.

Vaguely, I was aware of my body being jostled around, but everything else was overwhelmed by sheer pain and blistering heat.

Make it stop. Make it stop!

Stay with me, Nightshade. I’ll make it stop. I’ll make it stop.

His voice cut through the agony of the pyre, burning me from the inside out. And as its echo started to fade, my vision did too.

The only thought left available to me: if his voice was the last thing I ever heard, then I was okay with that.

CHAPTER 13

Caelus

The love of my life shrieked as her body hit the water. I suppose that’s what happens when you unceremoniously dump someone into a frigid bathtub — especially when they’re feverish.

The effects hit her immediately — likely seconds before passing out — and she blinked and screeched her way through the fog of pain and ice, scraping at the rim of the claw-footed behemoth of a tub.

I gritted my teeth and climbed in after her, wedging my body in behind hers.

Fuck, that’s cold.

That is inherently the point, godling, Lykos snarked. Keep her in. Don't let her out until she feels cold to the touch.

Resolutely, I wrapped my arms around her middle, prepared to withstand the arctic climate for as long as was necessary. I pulled my Nightshade in close until her back met my bare chest, and I waited for her hysteria and violent trembling to subside.

Velira roared outside the window, even more helpless than I.

“I’ve got her,” I said, pausing the dragon’s terror. “She’s cooling, Vel. I’ve got her.”

Seconds, minutes, or maybe even hours later, Nyssa stopped fighting. She simply surrendered to the cold, and to the fortress that was my arms. A minute later, she rasped, “Caelus? I’m o-o-okay. You c-can l-let g-go now.”

Her teeth-rattling speech tore my heart in two, especially after feeling the agony she had endured, secondhand through the magic of our bond. I abhorred doing anything that would cause her to suffer — it writhed against every inch of my haunted soul — but in this case, was the lesser evil. And it was the only thing I could think of, in that haze between wake and sleep, to break her raging fever.

“What happened?” I risked asking.

Her seizing had ebbed into minute trembles and I felt confident enough that she could tolerate a little added warmth. Not wanting to relinquish her for even a second, I meticulously twisted the faucet with my frozen, wrinkled toes, and hot water streamed out of the tap a moment later.

She took longer than my anxiety would have liked to respond. So long, that without a soul-bond to know for certain, I’d have assumed she’d fallen asleep. As it was, her confusion coiled beneath my sternum, interlaced with something different. Something slimy: