Page 263 of Blood of Hercules
And they hated it.
I chuckled brokenly to myself as we graduated from the crucible with all of Sparta staring at us.
No one cheered.
Hades and Persephone ran over to me, while Achilles and Patro knelt with Helen and whispered to her. My mentors looked up and made eye contact, their expressions intense. I looked away.
I wanted to go over and make sure she was okay—but I could barely stand.
Kharon and Augustus stalked behind my parents. Nyx reappeared with an exhausted hiss, and she slithered around my throat.
Villains.
Enemies.
My betrotheds.
The world spun faster.
“What happened to your eye?” Persephone asked as she hurried up to me and tipped my chin back. “It wasn’t like that when you were a baby.”
Kharon and Augustus snapped their heads in my direction.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled numbly, the lie unconvincing.
Then Patro, Kharon, Achilles, and Augustus turned toward Theros with murder on their faces.
I pulled away from my parents. “I have to go.”
They reached for me.
But they were too late.
“Domus,” I whispered brokenly, with one face in my mind.
The world exploded as I leaped away.
Chapter 30
Charlie
Alexis
Everything was dark as I leaped.
“Are you there?” I shouted, my breath a frosty puff as I staggered to my feet and narrowly avoided slamming into a tree trunk.
The Montana forest was dark.
It was the middle of the night, and thick snowflakes fell.
Turning in circles, vision blurring, I desperately tried to orient myself among the frost-covered tree branches.
Half-unconscious, delirious with pain, I stumbled forward with snow crunching beneath my ruined flats.
“Charlie?” I shouted as I ripped through the forest.
Twigs cracked loudly, but I didn’t care that I was waking the nightlife. For the first time in my life, Titans didn’t feel like an overwhelming threat.
