Zeus smiled, his skin glowing.
Callused fingers wrapped around both my biceps.
“Domus,” Patro whispered, and we leaped away.
White-hot pain flared along every one of my nerves. Smoke filled my lungs. Darkness tore me to shreds, reality morphed into a?—
The agony stopped, and the hands released me.
I dropped to my knees, smoke billowing around me.
“Welcome home,” Patro said cruelly.
I did the next best thing to dying—I fainted.
Chapter 6
Healing
Alexis
“Take the drugs,” Patro ordered for the millionth time.
He glared down at where I was sprawled lifelessly on the bed, imitating a corpse.
A sheet was draped across my torso, preserving my nonexistent modesty (I still couldn’t believe I’d stood half-naked in front of a stadium full of people), and a wood ceiling towered at least three stories above me.
I didn’t know rooms could be so tall?
I was lying on the biggest bed I’d ever seen in my life. It had a masculine black headboard and a fluffy white comforter that felt like silk. Nyx was asleep under one of the pillows.
The bed was decadent, a luxury I’d never experienced.
It was also covered in my crusty dried blood.
“No w-way,” I said forcefully because there was no chance in hell I would be knocked out around strangers.For all I knew, they could try to harvest my organs.
No one’s taking my kidney. Especially not for free. I could get at least ten food vouchers for it.
Patro raked his hands through his disheveled hair. “You’re beingimpossible.”
I tried to shrug, but the movement made me ache.
Instead, I hummed softly (manically).
The adrenaline they’d dosed me with had worn off as soon as we’d leaped away from the coliseum, so when the doctors had finally arrived, I’d been writhing in pain.
The last few hours had been a blur of torture.
“Hold her still,” said the Spartan doctor who looked like a middle-aged man but was likely hundreds of years old. The fish of the House of Hermes was embroidered on his breast pocket, and a snowy owl perched on his shoulder. “Don’t let her move.”
Achilles grabbed my legs and held me down.
The urge to scream at him to release me bubbled up my throat—I forced it down and hummed louder.
Patro tentatively grabbed either side of my waist, like he didn’t want to touch me.
The feeling was mutual.
