I gritted my teeth, refusing to give up. This wasn’t how this was going to end. And yet, my hands, slick with blood, betrayed me, releasing the trunk and sending me crashing down. My arms swayed in the air as I fell, looking for something to grasp, but there was nothing I could hold onto.
My eyelids slammed shut as I prepared to be swallowed by the crimson heat. If only I could shove this unbearable agony away, I might be able to swim and find something to haul myself up onto.
Instead of sinking under the pool that promised excruciating pain, my back collided against solid ground, the fall knocking out all of the air inside me with a grunt.
The ringing of bells reverberated through the air, mixing with the sound of my ragged breaths.
Charon.
I tilted my head on the wooden boat, filling my lungs with oxygen and gawking at his silhouette. His shape was absorbed by a dark cloak, his hands disappearing within the folds as he gripped the staff. He kept quiet, leading the keel through the waves, gaze pointed ahead.
Charon was prone to silence. He was not known to interrogate, but to let his observations determine a person’s fate in the afterlife.
Remain silent.
My fingertips twitched beside me. I forced myself to stand, wincing as I moved, and stretched a hand behind me to probe the burns on my back. The material of my shirt was melted away but I could feel my skin, still whole. Smooth even. I frowned. My back throbbed with the memory of the blisters, yet my clothes were the only evidence of the searing heat.
I blinked lazily, touching the side of my head where blood still trailed down my face and stole another glance at Charon.
It was time.
With a grimace, my wounded hand held my weight as I stood. Still, Charon didn’t even flinch. He persisted in his frozen posture, not even bothering to give me his attention.
Good. He won’t anticipate it.
Certain my balance wouldn’t falter, I lunged, curling my fingers around the dark staff and then the moment I feared the most slammed into me with a sickening thud.
Everything happened in a frenzied, chaotic blur.
First the image of a man’s throat slicing open—my own hands grasping my neck as I struggled to regain breath. Then an elderly woman taking her last breath. A soldier’s body bursting apart with a deafening blast. A girl suffocating under the water.
Two hundred and thirty-seven deaths, each one a phantom touch, rushed through me faster than a quick breath.
One hundred and sixty men. Seventy-seven women.
Their slowing heartbeats thrummed through my body, a heavy rhythm.
Hopeless toddlers. Old men and women dying alone, staring at a wall. Necks snapped. Skulls crushed. Headshots. Decapitations. Burning alive. Car accidents. Poison. Hypothermia. Starvation.
The last scream wasn’t mine, but it still tore through my throat. When the world snapped back into focus, Charon had vanished, and his staff was now in my hand.
Chapter 26
Shadow
Unable to sleep, Shadow still pondered the moment he saw the burning flames reflecting in Charisma Sinclair’s eyes when she and Eros were undergoing their bonding ritual. He couldn’t forget it; the immense power those flames held, even though they only flickered for the briefest of moments.
While completely consumed by the ritual, the God of Love overlooked that small fact; a detail that Shadow had found to be the only thing of note.
Eros’s gaze was not ignited, and the bonding book contained no instructions regarding a person’s eyes being ablaze during the bonding.
He could recall every word written in that book. Considering he had mastered all the old spells that the gods were thought to have used, he knew for a fact that mortal eyes could never show such flames. But that wasn’t everything he was distressed about.
Shadow was aware of the dire fate awaiting a god bonding with a mortal in extreme scenarios, but it seemed the knowledge didn’t concern Eros as much as it concerned him.
However, Shadow needed to stop reflecting over the information that lived inside his void. He had more important matters to attend to, like watching over his favorite mortal during Hades’ and Artemis’s trial.
He was the only outsider who knew that Charisma’s mission involved not only surviving the trial but also finding the relic, which Zeus had secretly placed within the projection of the Underworld.
