Most of the newly matured heads lunge in my direction. My heart pounds frantically as I sprint back up the bank. A shelf of mud collapses under my feet, and I pitch forward, losing my knives in the muck. I reach for them, but a wave crashes over me, thumping me into the ground and then dragging me back. I claw at the bank, but it’s slippery and unstable. There’s nothing to hold on to. I slide toward the Hydra and the lake. Bone-deep terror hits me a second before razor-sharp teeth close around my upper arm and shoulder.
Searing pain brings my thoughts to a grinding halt. Griffin’s horrified yell slices through my shock, and his stricken face flashes through my field of vision as the Hydra whips me high into the air above the lake. The creature’s jaws clamp down, and my skin pops like a ripe olive. Blood gushes. Bones crunch.
Blazing heat explodes down my left side. Darkness pulses through my mind. The Hydra shakes me like a dog with a rope, and muscles tear. More bones snap. I don’t scream. I stiffen, trying to hold myself together as the Hydra shakes me apart.
The creature suddenly releases me mid-swing, hurling me toward dry land. My stomach spirals up my throat as ground and sky blur, tumbling over each other in a nauseating rush.
Impact knocks the air from my body. Stuns me completely. There’s a split second of all-consuming agony before I descend into the utter dark.
I awake disoriented, feeling outside of myself. Griffin is hovering over me with my head in his hands. His eyes are wild, his expression beyond horrified. He’s blank-faced with terror.
My eyebrows draw together. I don’t like seeing Griffin scared. It’s not normal.
A thunderclap of pain hits me, and I hiss. It rattles through every bone, every muscle, every inch of my skin. The Hydra attack comes rushing back. Everything throbs so horrifically that I know I’m shattered. There’s no way that I’m not.
Even short and shallow, my breathing sets my rib cage on fire. Jagged bones must scrape my lungs and probably other things inside me. Ribs. Broken.All of them?Left arm… I can’t even feel it. I’m terrified to look because it may not even be there. I try to move my legs. The right one does nothing, but the left one jerks up, jarring me with a whole new round of pain. The movement sets off a flare of heat inside me, and then an agonizing cramp tears through my lower abdomen. I let out a hoarse cry, and my right hand flies to my belly.
Griffin’s face goes bone-white. “Hang on,agapi mou. You have to hang on.”
“I’m sorry,” I gasp out. “I’m so sorry.”
“Stop.” It’s an order, Griffin’s unyielding voice the one that commands armies and wins wars. “You only apologize when you think you’re going to die.”
I shudder in agony. I am going to die. Doesn’t he know that?
I don’t want to leave Griffin so easily, so stupidly, but my eyes still close. I can’t keep them open.
I sense the others around me. I don’t want to leave them, either. Kato—my brother. Flynn. Carver. My family. But I’m being swept along. Pulled away. Something strong is beckoning me. Something nice.
A sharp sting hits my cheek. I open my eyes and meet Griffin’s. He slaps my other cheek. “Wake up! Stay awake.”
Something hot and thick fills my mouth. I gag and then cough, spraying blood onto Griffin’s chin. It’s bright red. No handy immortality there. I don’t see even a hint of the golden ichor hidden in my veins.
Griffin’s eyes turn frantic. “Say your chant. The one for the healing salamander.”
I can’t focus. The sky is spinning. “Need…running…water.”Need a real healer. Need my voice to keep working. Need help.
As gently as he can, Griffin picks me up and then lays me back down next to one of the streams feeding into the Hydra’s lake. He sticks my right hand directly into water that’s warm and stinks faintly of sulfur.
I start chanting. It takes a colossal effort to push the words out, breathe, and not choke on the blood in my mouth. The sounds are easy even if the spell is in the ancient language of the Gods, and Griffin starts saying the incantation along with me, learning it. The others are just shadows in my blurred vision, but I hear them, too, lending volume and clarity to my increasingly slurred words. Magic sparks inside me and my necklace flares to life, but it’s their voices that keep me going until the ten repetitions are done.
Griffin plunges his hand into the water. I close my eyes again. His voice fades, and whatever he was saying doesn’t make sense anymore. I drift on a dark haze. It sucks me down, down, coating me in a pain-numbing balm. I feel so much better here, but something still tells me I don’t want to go where it’s taking me. My lips part to call out for Griffin, but no words form, and no air crosses them again.
A murky, shadowed land rises up to meet me. Or maybe I rise out of it. I glance down. I’m upright, whole, and free of pain. I know what I’ve left behind, but the ache of loss is buffered and indistinct. I turn in a slow circle, gradually accepting what’s happened. I’m still me. I still love Griffin. Time is irrelevant. My thoughts adjust surprisingly fast, my new reality just a flip side of the old.
The trees around me are dark, the land gray, with only a few stumpy hills and rocky outcroppings to break up the colorless monotony. Dense fog swirls around my legs as I begin to walk in the direction calling to me, toward a wide, mist-shrouded river curving in a slow-moving buckle. On the far side of the water, the fog burns off and the silvery surface glints under a brilliant sky.
The opposite shore is breathtaking. I’ve never seen colors so vibrant, grass so thick, or trees so full and high. A golden pathway leads away from the river and into a lush valley that slopes downward and out of sight. The path is empty now, maybe a little lonely, but my feet long to walk it. It leads to all things better and bright.
Across the river, a boat slips into the sparkling water. I need it to carry me across because this side is dreadful. A clawing weight presses on my shoulders. Hopelessness leaves a sour taste in my mouth and coats me in misery. The air smells musty and stale, and tendrils of damp fog cling to my arms, making me shiver.
Unease ripples through me. I turn to see hunched figures emerging from the dark trees and ghastly mist. They shuffle toward me, their heads bowed, their hands held out to beg for an obol. Their despair is an actual stench, and I back toward the river, both crushed and overwhelmed by it.
More shapes uncurl from the gray landscape. As opposed to the first figures, these ones shake the coin they already have in anger and frustration, but the ferryman crossing the river ignores them. Malice radiates off their hollowed frames, some vibrations of cruelty fresher than others. As my steps instinctively draw me closer to the water, I understand their punishment. Everything becomes clear. An eternity here, or however long the ferryman deems necessary, to atone for evil deeds. With a sickening drop of my stomach, I realize I’m on the Plain of Asphodel.
Am I doomed to stay?
I turn back to the river, my heart clenching in fear. The boat makes not a whisper of sound as it plows through the drab reeds and then butts up against the dismal bank. Charon is bathed in night, wearing a somber cloak that floats around his gaunt body in the nonexistent breeze. His deep hood swallows his face, so I see nothing of his features. A long pole juts from the shallows, and he holds it at the top, primed to push off again.With me? Without me?Has my past doomed me to Asphodel?
