“Then he’s going to do something worse than death,” Exie whispered.
I looked down at her. She hadn’t moved from her prone position. Her fingers dragged along the tiled floor, mixing dirt in the pools of her tears.
Something about her posture worried me more than anything else. Her shoulders were curled into her body, her spine heavy on the mattress. She didn’t lift her head to look at me or take her gaze from the floor.
“Exie,” I asked carefully. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer, she didn’t even acknowledge me.
I looked to Sloane, who had started crying again. She shook her head helplessly. Exie was not okay.
“I came to save you,” I whispered, hoping to instill some life back in my broken friends.
“How?” Sloane rasped at the same time Exie said, “You can’t.”
“I can,” I insisted. “I have a plan.”
“What are you going to do?” Sloane scooted toward me, showing the most amount of energy I had seen from her.
“I haven’t figured it all out yet, but I will.” Doubt clouded Sloane’s expression and so I hurried to reassure her. “First, I need to figure out how to transport. You know, like the gods.”
“Ivy!” Sloane hissed. “You have to be a goddess to do that!”
I cleared my throat. “It turns out I kind of am one…”
“What?” Her voice echoed through the hallways.
“Shh!” I quickly filled her in on the story. I told her who my father was and how dominant I could be if I ever unleashed the true nature of my powers. I told her what Nix planned to do with me and what had happened on Olympus before I left with him.
“So you’re going to take him to your island?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I’ll be in control there. I’ll be able to kill him.”
“How?”
I hadn’t gotten that far, but it didn’t matter. I would figure it out. I was desperate. Hehadto die.
“I’ll find a way,” I promised.
Light sparked in her eyes. It was faint and barely there, but I saw it. I saw some piece of her return.
“Exie, I’m going to get you out of here,” I said firmly.
She started to cry again, hiccupping sobs that stabbed at my heart. “I don’t want to go,” she wailed. “I don’t want to go!”
Feeling sick to my stomach, I turned back to Sloane. She didn’t offer an explanation. She turned her head and stared at the wall.
As quickly as the light had flared in her eyes, it extinguished.
I could only pray that I wasn’t too late to save them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
An hour later, I still hadn’t been able to transport. I couldn’t move my body an inch, let alone flash from here to the island.
I knew I had the power in me, but I couldn’t manifest it into tangible action.
I could feel it moving in my blood though, snaking through my arms and legs, wrapping around my heart. The ancient energy sung a song that only I could hear.
