Danny lay so still.
Why was she so still? His fearless woman wouldn’t fall so easily. Not by anything short of her favored goddess’s smiting.
And Athena would never fell such a devout woman of justice.
“Get up,” he whispered.
He laughed at how eerie his voice sounded. Then laughed more at Danny lying in the grass.
How ridiculous this was. To make such a spectacle at the end.
They’d won. Ridley was gone. Nic was gone. Their life would be peaceful.
How could she just lie there when they could finally begin the rest of forever together?
“Danny—” His step forward met with a complete lack of strength. His kneecaps hit the dirt, an impact that should’ve hurt, but the only thing Percy felt was numb.
Not just numb—hollowed.
And the truth of the lifeless figure before him filled the space like nails to the eye.
“No.” To any goddess listening, he added, “God damn you, NO!”
He stared down at his hands and the gun clutched tightly in his right one. He’d made a promise to come back to her. It had been the most important promise he’d ever made. She’d known that.
But he couldn’t fulfill that promise, not if she was...
His Danny, his heart, his soul, the very meaning to his treacherous life, was dead.
With her gone, there was nothing left for him.
As if sensing his utter defeat, Ridley’s man reemerged from the treeline, his frame small, but his hood dark and forbidding. The man’s face didn’t matter. The approaching figure could be Satan’s own malformed henchman with milky-white glazed eyes and blood-dripped claws for hands, and Percy wouldn’t have fled.
Hell already held him, but not his soul.
That was lost with her, and with her gone, the Devil himself had no bargaining tool.
He watched the slow trek of the hooded figure, his broken mind seeking out any lingering threads ofher. Her spiced smell still lingering in the air, her soft breathing, even his approachingexecutioner had a similar way of lengthening his strides when in a hurry.
Percy’s mind fought for focus, narrowing in on the man’s lean legs and subtle gait. The figure didn’t walk just ‘similarly.’ He walked exactly like Danny.
Percy found his feet, the pins and needles sensation a welcome pain as he propelled himself forward.
The hood fell, revealing the figure’s face, and Percy let out a strangled cry.
He closed the distance and pulled her tightly to his chest, not caring if this was real.
“Danny.” He didn’t brush the tears from his cheeks, wouldn’t break the contact long enough to do anything that would keep her from filling his arms. “Danny.” He murmured her name again and again. A prayer or a chant, her name on his lips slowly brought his consciousness back to his mind and life back to his body.
He pressed his face into her hair. “You’re alive.”
Her fingers wound in his curls and held tightly. “We both are.”
“But I saw you fall.”I saw you die.
“Not me.” She leaned back to give him a smug smile. “You saw my double.”
“Double?” His eyes widened. He glanced back at the body lying on the ground and then back with understanding. “You pulled a ‘Frenchman’s Switch’?”
