Page 97 of Bonds of Hercules
The moment stretched.
“I’m too tired for this,” Augustus said, raking his hand through his long hair. “It’s been long enough since I last leapt—I’m going to deliver the Titans.” He turned and wrenched open a narrow door. “Try not to kill each other before I return.”
He stomped down the stairs.
Chains rattled and there was a muffled screech.
A crack echoed as he leapt away.
Shivering, I climbed out of the bed. My back throbbed with pain as I quickly pulled on a sweat suit that Augustus had laid out on the bedside table.
Nyx hissed as she slithered around my ankles, climbing up my body, and wrapping herself around my stomach.
I pulled the sweatshirt down on top of her.
Crack.
Augustus reappeared in a cloud of smoke. “Are you strong enough to leap the three of us back to the villa?” he asked as he stared at Kharon’s missing ear.
Kharon scoffed. “Clearly.”
I could leap us back.
No one bothered to ask me.
Kharon held out his skeleton-tattooed hand, waiting for both of us to take his arm.
Augustus and I obeyed as the hellhounds stood, their bones clattering as they sat at Kharon’s feet. Fluffy Jr. pushed his muzzle into Kharon’s stomach and looked up at him with wide trusting eyes. Poco climbed up onto Fluffy Jr.’s back for purchase and he laid his little black hand on top of Kharon’s finger.
Crack.
The safe house disappeared.
Smoke filled the villa’s atrium, the muted morning light dancing off gilded walls and decorative olive trees.
I pulled my hand away like his touch was toxic (it was).
The sacrifice Kharon made for me was heinous—it was the most generous, worst thing anyone had ever done for me.
“My carus,” Augustus whispered.
Both of them stepped toward me.
I was drowning in them.Again.
“I’d do it a million times over.” Kharon gestured at the side of my face. “Stop overthinking.”
We weren’t good without words, and we weren’t good with them, or maybe I just wasn’t right for them.
They called me princess. They wanted a good Chthonic girl to coddle and protect.To obey.
“I don’t think we work,” I said, cradling my arms in front of my stomach, a subconscious instinct. “This thing between us … isn’t … healthy.”
The tension stretched to a breaking point.
“Alexis—” Augustus’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet, and the golden rays softened the sharp angles of his face. “I don’t think you understand—there’snogoing back. We’re trying to be better … for you.”
There was a strange pressure around my heart.
