81

81

I Promise You

I frown, Hades’ hands still on my face. That can’t be right. Feeling Hades’ emotions like that. Am I hallucinating? More dreams?

Someone in the room coughs. “I’d say that worked remarkably well, Phi,” they say. A low, male voice. Charon, I think. He’s the only one I’ve heard call Hades Phi.

There’s silence.

“Lyra?” Hades says, still close to me. “Can you open your eyes?”

I really don’t want to. My body is drifting away, the exhaustion easing into something more like comfort.

“Please.” Hades never begs, but he’s begging me now.

I force my eyes open, squinting against the light of the single lantern in here, and his face comes into vague focus.

He releases a small breath that probably only I hear. “Thank the Fates. I didn’t want to do this until you woke up.”

“Do”—I have to clear my throat because it’s like talking through gravel—“what?”

He holds up a bronze chalice where I can see. It’s simple, with his symbol of the bident and scepter engraved on it. “I’m trying something dangerous.”

That doesn’t sound good. I frown as his face sways before mine. “What?”

“You’re not getting any better, Lyra. So I gave you some of my blood.”

My lips hitch in an attempt at a smile. Ichor, the golden blood of the gods, famed for its ability to do…just about anything, as humanity tells it. “I’m…a goddess.” Then it hits me what he’s saying, and my eyes widen as much as they can while I’m barely keeping them open. “Oh. That was…why…I’m better now?”

He shakes his head. “No. That was so you can survive the next part. Hopefully.”

Next part? What’s he talking about?

He holds up the cup again.

Oh. Right? What about it?

“Water from Styx.”

I blink as my mind tries to glom onto what I know about that. “Poison,” I whisper.

“That’s why I gave you my blood.”

Now it’s coming together vaguely. Only a few mortals have survived touching the Styx. Achilles was one of them. It made him invincible everywhere except his heel where his mother had held him when she dipped him in the waters, and that part didn’t get wet. That one entirely mortal spot became his only weakness.

Did Achilles survive because he had a deity’s blood in him? His mother was Thetis, a sea nymph. Did that make him enough of a demigod to survive it?

Hades must be desperate.

“I’m…that…bad?” I ask.

He hesitates, then nods.

I search his face. “You…look terrible.”

Hades’ lips crook. “You should see yourself, my star.”

“Wow.” I take a labored breath that shudders through me. It’s getting harder to stay here with him. “Guess you…better…do it…then.”

He doesn’t, though. He hesitates visibly. It’s got to be pretty damned dangerous. “If you die, I’ll take care of you,” he tells me. I get another lightning bolt of emotion from him. I’m sure it’s from him, now. Desperation this time. “I promise.”

He is tearing himself apart with guilt. Can’t have that.

“Seems like…” I lick my cracked lips. “You’re…taking care…of…a lot…of souls…these…days.”

His expression alters, and my heart thumps heavily at the odd combination of exasperation and tenderness on his face. “I hope you’re not rubbing off on me,” he says. “Always running around trying to save other people.”

“Heavens…forbid.” I try to chuckle, but it turns into a cough that racks pain through every part of me. “But…don’t…worry about…mine.”

“What?”

“My soul. I…like it…down here.”

“Fuck,” Hades mutters darkly.

“If you’re going to do it, Phi.” Charon’s voice reaches through the shadows. “Do it now, before the effects of your blood wear off.”

Cool hands lift my shirt. The air is oddly cold against my skin, and I glance down and grunt at the sight—my wound not only hasn’t closed, it’s a pit of black flesh, like acid has eaten its way through me. Like Isabel. Only different. Black spider veins crawl out of the wound into the graying flesh all around it in every direction.

I’m no doctor, but even I know that’s bad.

“This is going to hurt—” Hades doesn’t bother to finish warning me before he pours the contents of the cup over the wound.

Agony and fire. A thousand times worse than the dragon burn. I’ve never screamed so loud in my entire life, the sound torn from my throat, my body bowing off the bed as if it’s trying to escape itself. He doesn’t stop. He’s pouring more and more. Then he rolls me to pour more on the exit wound on my back.

I scream until my voice goes hoarse, and then the darkness reaches up and yanks me down so fast it’s like that wild rush down the river from Hades’ waterfall in Olympus.

“No! Lyra!” I hear Hades shout at me.

But I’m too deep, and in the darkness, for the first time, I find total, true oblivion.