Page 214 of Bonds of Hercules
His ankle should have been healing already.
My fingers tingled—I looked down and nearly fell over—a faint glow emitted from them.
“Are you seeing this?” I whispered.
Nyx slithered up my forearm, head resting against my palm. “It’swarm,” she hissed with awe.
We both watched, entranced.
I blinked—the light was gone.
“Do it again,” Nyx demanded.
Scrunching my face, I tried to concentrate, but nothing happened. Sweat beaded across my forehead as I remembered the anglerfish.A hideous deep-sea creature.
“Make it glow,” Nyx ordered.
“I can’t.” My hands (antennas) continued to stare back at me, the skin a normal innocuous hue.
“False. Failure is not an option—believein yourself,” Nyx hissed, scales sliding around my throat as she tightened.
I gasped as I tried to yank Nyx away from my neck. “How … suffocating … helping?”
Nyx constricted violently. “I’m motivating you,” she said calmly.
This was officially the worst pep talk I’d ever received (why was I kinda feeling inspired?).
“Uh—madam?” A short man—a creature with curling horns on his skull—stopped in front of me. “Do you require help?”
I didn’t need a mirror to know my face was turning bright purple.
The man’s eyes widened as I gasped and asphyxiated in front of him, mouth gurgling unattractively.
“Wait,” he said as he looked down at my short exercise toga like he was seeing it for the first time, and his face paled. “You’re one of thepsychoChthonics.”
I smiled at him.
The man turned, running into a siren and tripping over himself in his haste to get away from me—leaving me to die.
Nyx burst into laughter, finally loosening her grip. “Did you see how scared he was of you?”
I held on to the pillar for dear life as I choked. After a while, the imminent sense of certain doom passed, and I chuckled along with her. It was a little funny.
“Is there a reason we just had intense pain around our throats—” Augustus loomed over me, dark eyes flashing.
“What thefuckwas that?” Kharon asked coldly, holding the two glasses of ambrosia that he’d gone to get for us. “Did someone attack you?”
My skin prickled as I remembered howhe’drecently squeezed my throat.
I grabbed both shots and threw the contents back swiftly.
“Whyare you out of breath?” Augustus asked, undeterred. “What was that pain in your neck we just felt? We know it was yours.Explain.”
I tried to shrug casually but ruined it by having a coughing fit that ended in me gagging with my hands on my knees.
Finally, I came up for air. “Nyx and I were just playing.”
Augustus stared at what was most likely a vibrant mark around my neck. “Did she just …strangleyou?” His tone had the deceptive quality that it always did before he absolutely lost it.
