53

53

No Choices Left

Rima drops to her knees beside Meike, quickly checking her over with sharp, professional movements. Right. Neurosurgeon.

I know it’s bad when she whispers to herself, “Merciful goddess.”

A vine comes out of the darkness for her, and Samuel knocks it back, giving a hiss of pain at the contact.

Rima looks from him to me. “Meike’s not going to make it if she doesn’t get help now.”

“Godsdamn.” I think Dex is the one who says it behind me.

Neve stomps on another vine. “If we stay here, we’re all dead.”

Meike’s breathing is getting noticeably worse. Her body is reacting to the poison, and we’re out of options.

Samuel could carry her, but we need to move fast, and he can haul the most vodka. Which we all need now. Not to win—to survive. Jackie’s already flown away, or I’d enlist her help. But even if Zai flew Meike out of here, it wouldn’t fix her condition. Not until the rest of us cross the finish line and end the Labor.

I squeeze my eyes closed. I can’t let her die here.

Fuck me.

I think I’m the only one who can help her. If I use a pearl.

“Damn,” I whisper.

I’m predicting another round with Hades when I return to Olympus. Charon warned me not to do this, but I don’t hesitate. “I can get Meike out of here.”

Sorry, Hades.

“How?” Trinica asks.

“You’ll see. But…” I pause. “I’m not sure I can take even one with me. I don’t—”

Amir taps me on the shoulder. “Take Meike. We’ll get through.”

I look directly at Dex. “They’ll need to use your vodka if—”

“Go,” he snaps. He’s clearly not happy about it, but it means I can leave them with him.

I look back to find Zai staring at me, earnest and urgent.

“Zai—”

“Go,” he says. “I have extras in the top drawer in my room.”

EpiPens, he means. I nod and slip a pearl out of the zippered pocket in my vest.

The Daemones’ roars blast through the cavern, and I swear the sound alone shakes the ground. They’re coming for me. I know they are.

I shove the pearl in my mouth and grab Meike. The last thing I see as I swallow the pearl is the enraged faces of the Daemones flying at me out of the darkness.

Immediately, it’s like someone throws a lasso around my waist and drags me through time and space in a wind tunnel that blows so hard I can’t open my eyes to see and so loud I can’t hear. I hold on to Meike with a bruising grip, terrified the wind is going to claw her out of my hands.

Meike has almost slipped from my hold when the wind abruptly stops whipping around us. I open my eyes to find I’m kneeling in the middle of Zai’s room in Hades’ Olympus house.

Meike’s head lolls to the side, her breath rasping in and out, lips turning blue.

“Shit.”

I run to the drawer and find the medicine right on top. Having watched Zai do it to me, I’m back to Meike and plunging the end against her leg, then holding…and waiting.

I watch her chest, her face, for any sign that it’s working. Finally, when my panic is at a fever pitch, she takes a long breath.

And so do I.

“Lyra,” a voice snarls above me.

I jerk my gaze up to find Hades towering overhead, his face a storm of rage.

“I—”

Shock ricochets through me a second time when he drops to one knee by my side. “We don’t have time. They’re coming for you.”

He yanks me up against his chest, both arms wrapped around me, and we disappear.

When we reappear, I find myself standing on the shore of the River Styx, still wrapped in Hades’ arms. Before I can absorb that or the fact that Charon is here, too, Hades lets go and frames my face with his hands, leaning down so we’re eye to eye.

“It’s not going to take the Daemones long to track us.” The way he’s talking is not like the Hades I know at all. He’s…worried. I mean scared-for-me kind of worried. I can see it in the tension around his eyes and feel it in the touch of his hands. Even his speech is clipped and rushed. And I wish I had time to let myself feel what it’s like for someone to be scared for me.

I swallow hard. Charon warned me. “They’re coming for me?”

Because I used the pearl.

Hades nods.

If he looks like this… “Is it going to be bad?” I ask.

Hades searches my eyes almost frantically, then leans down and places his lips to mine in the softest, sweetest kiss that feels like heaven and an apology at once. Maybe even more powerful than our earlier kisses because it feels like he means it this time.

He stills against me, his head coming up. He looks over my head at Charon. I can’t see what passes between the friends, but I know a question was silently asked and answered, because Hades nods.

Then his gaze is back on mine, eyes black as onyx, and the look in them sends my already thundering heart to a whole new speed. “Hades—”

Anything I would have said gets trapped in my throat as he feathers his thumb over my cheek, then winces. “I shouldn’t have brought you here, my star.”

Everything about me goes dead still, even my heart, which was just on overdrive and now has stalled. What does he mean? Brought me to the Underworld or…the Crucible?

I’m so lost right now. It feels like he’s saying goodbye. Is the Daemones’ punishment going to be that bad? I can’t even make myself ask the question again.

“I should have found another way,” he says. “I shouldn’t have listened to…” He swallows hard. Then determination steals over his features. “I’m not going to let them take you.”

He shoves me toward Charon, who catches me just as the horrendous sounds of four Daemones rip through the cavern, bouncing over the walls and the ceiling.

The Daemones appear in midair before us, massive black wings sending the waters of the Styx eddying under them as four sets of fury-filled eyes land on me.

“Lyra Keres,” they say in unison. “Come with—”

Hades shoves his hands in front of him, his wrists held together. “I offer myself in Lyra’s place.”

“What? No—” Charon yanks me back when I try to run to Hades.

“I broke the rules,” Hades says without looking my way. “Take me.”

With battle cries to wake the dead, they fly at him. So fast. So violent.

“Don’t do this,” I yell. “It’s my fault—” I reach a hand out like I can get to him, stop them somehow.

They take him by the arms. When they jerk him off his feet, flying him away from me, Hades finally looks straight at me again.

“Please,” I say. Beg. “Don’t—”

“It’s already done.”

And then they’re gone.