She closed her eyes and gave up.
“Sing,” Nix snarled.
“No,” I said with more confidence. I wiped the backs of my hands over my eyes and felt more confident than ever. I met his glare with one of my own and decided that before this day was over, I would have his blood on my hands. “I willneversing for you. You’ll have to kill me first.”
He screamed a sound that was less than god, less than even human. His muscles bulged as he finished squeezing the life out of Exie and finally broke her neck.
When he dropped her on the ground, her body crumpled lifelessly. I had willingly given her up, but I hated myself as soon as it happened. I should have fought harder for her. I should have made her live and showed her how to get over Nix. There were a million different things I could have done.
I stared at her with horror as my mind tried to accept that she was dead… that she was gone.
But then the strangest thing happened.
As her body lay on the ground, bent at awkward angles and no longer breathing, a warm, tropical breeze rushed through the room. There were no windows here, no drafts that I had felt since I’d walked in, but as soon as Exie’s life drained from her body, a lovely, comforting gush of wind wrapped around my skin before rattling the bars on the cell door and soaring down the hallway.
My friend was finally free.
“You did that!” Nix’s voice had gone hoarse with anger.
I tilted my chin and accepted the truth. “Yes, I did.” Only I didn’t feel bad about it anymore.
I felt relieved and grateful to have known her. I felt a little jealous and more than sorrow. But most of all I felt peace.
Peace for her and peace for me.
“You’ve run out of time, Ivy,” Nix continued. “You will sing for me or I will make you suffer in ways you didn’t know were possible. I will make you hurt until you beg me to let you sing, until you never stop singing!”
I absorbed his words and I knew without a doubt that he was serious. I had almost sung just seconds ago. If Exie hadn’t…
I didn’t think. I just ran.
In his fit of rage, he’d left the door open, so I used it to my advantage.
Without looking back or at Sloane or thinking where I was going, I just took off.
His screams of fury followed me down the hall as I moved faster than I ever had in my life. My feet slapped the tile as I rushed by all of the cells that still held women in them. I took stairs up and down, trying to make my way out of the maze of his house.
I could feel him right behind me. I only just barely managed to keep the lead. His fingertips brushed my back a few times, but I started to realize he was just slower in the full height of his godhood.
His body was too big to move agilely and so I had the smallest advantage.
My lungs burned and my breath wheezed by the time I reached the main level of the house that would take me outside.
I nearly crashed into a wall when the large picture windows revealed the tropical panoramic view and the bloodshed happening on the beach.
I thought we were still alone, but the truth was the war from Olympus had been brought to this door. Hermes flashed into view and then out again as he delivered more of Zeus’ army. Gigantes covered the beach and Nix’s property. I wasn’t sure how they’d gotten here or if they were already here, but they wielded guns and swords alike. The two Furies dropped from the sky with swords ablaze and bloodlust in their eyes.
It was mayhem outside and I finally realized exactly what I would have done if I would have sang.
All of these people would have been enslaved to me. I would have kick-started Nix’s plans to take over the world.
I pushed a sliding glass door open and ended up on a balcony. I caught a glimpse of Ryder on the beach. The god-killer swung in his skilled hands with deadly precision, but the man he fought had been born and bred for war.
Ares held a fiery sword in one hand and a shield almost as big as him in the other. He handled both with the precision that only a god, who had spent his immortal life at war, could.
My stomach flipped and nausea surged through me. Ryder couldn’t win against someone so skilled and malicious.
There was no way.
