Page 95 of Blood of Olympus

“Two days, maybe three!” Arch called back. His voice was laden with the heft of his task, straining as they worked to fix my mistake.

I never intended to cause such destruction — but for my storm-wielder to live, I’d gladly do it all over again.

Even knowing what it truly cost in the end.

“Just a little longer, Nyss, we’re coming to help,” he said as though I’d conjured him by will alone. For a moment, I wondered if I’d gone mad again. But then a mop of unruly blonde hair entered my periphery.

“Do I finally get to meet the ‘we’?” I grunted, faltering under the strain.

A flash of teeth. “You do. Because this isn’t sustainable. You can’t continue, lest you end up like us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nightshade?” Caelus’ alarm spiked my heart rate, as his thumb brushed the skin above my lip.

I dared not take my eyes off the shades, but it was impossible to miss the flash of gold as his hand withdrew.

“Stop,” he murmured. “You have to stop.”

“I can’t,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Please, stop.” His words had turned into a plea.

“Golden, I can’t. They need to finish⁠—”

“And they shall, my darling girl,” an unfamiliar voice promised from somewhere in the darkness. Her tinkling tones were reminiscent of dew drops on green leaves as spring begins to grace the land.

I ventured a glance at the newcomer, and almost fell to my knees as I looked upon her.

Standing with one ghostly hand perched on my shoulder, and the other held tightly in the grasp of someone I knew well… was my mother.

Somehow, Persephone — the goddess of Spring — had come.

With honeyed tresses just like her mother… and eyes the exact same shade of green as my own — drinking up every inch of my face.

“Mother?” I whispered as tears tracked freely down my face. “Father?” I asked as my gaze flicked between them.

Hades gifted me with a rare soft smile.

“How are you here?”

They exchanged a look loaded with a wealth of unspoken words.

“We’re here because of you,” my mother said.

“And because Charon was relentless,” my father added, shooting him a glorified eye roll. “He begged us to come. Warned us that if we didn’t…”

“You’d join us sooner that we ever intended,” Persephone finished.

The ease with which they interlaced their sentences sent a sharp pang of something through my heart. Whether it was happiness that they’d found each other, anguish that they’d both left me, or a bittersweet combination of both, was something I would have to analyse through recollection.

The shades pressed again, taking advantage of my momentary lapse in concentration.

I raised my arms higher, crying out wordlessly as I threw my waning power back at them, halting them once more. Ichor gushed freely out of my nose now, coating my leathers in the most bewitching of warpaints.

“Nightshade, please.” Caelus grasped my face in both hands, demanding as much of my attention as I could spare. “Please. I’m begging you — don’t leave me. Not yet.”

Anguish tore me in two.