And just like with Lysander, I focused on him, on his core. Closing my eyes I could already see the emerald green orb, existing deep within his soul.
"Stop it, Kaira," he warned, but I wasn't listening to him. "Kaira!"
My fingers stretched out toward the dim emerald green orb, desperate to touch it, to feel it. It wasn't as warm as Lysander's. It wasn't as bright like his either, but there was power here I had never felt before. Power that could consume. Power that could destroy, yet he kept it away from me, fighting me as I dug deeper, seeing through his psyche.
"Stop this insanity. You don't want to know the truth. Not yet!" He was inside my head, inside my mind, but he wasn't stronger than me. I could see it as clear as day—Hades wasn'tstronger than me and the mere knowledge of that made me push him outside of my head.
I dove deeper and deeper, hearing the screams of the souls belonging to him, to the Underworld. I dove deeper still into the emerald orb calling my name, whispering for me to come.
My hand connected with it, digging into the center of his soul, but what I saw wasn't the big secret of what I was. What stared back at me was pain, grief, and an overwhelming urge to disappear, to die.
"No."
There was a severed thread leading from his core, suspended in the dark, carrying the rotting stench of death.
Hades… Hades was dying.
He was slowly disappearing, bit by bit, year by year. And as my right hand wrapped around the lone piece, it slithered around my wrist, squeezing painfully, cutting off my blood supply. A piercing pain shot through my head, slicing me in half, and as I tried pulling back, freeing myself from the pain, I fell backwards into the dark hole.
Darker than anything I had ever seen before, letting it swallow me whole while the thread stayed attached to me, falling into the dark void together with my mind.
21
KAIRA
The tasteof copper exploded in my mouth as the coughing fit erupted from my lungs, making me open my eyes. Darkness surrounded me as my mind scrambled to make sense of what was going on. I couldn't feel my arms or my legs. I couldn't feel anything.
My vision started clearing, making me finally see the broken windshield of a car and the smoke billowing from the hood. But I was frozen. Completely fucking frozen as the pain spread from my stomach, through my chest, suffocating me in its wake.
"K-Kaira," a voice came from my left. A voice I knew all too well.
A voice that taught me how to drive, how to swim, how to stay strong even when kids bullied me, telling me I had every right to defend myself. The voice of my dad. But I couldn't turn toward him. My body wasn't cooperating with my mind.
"I'm s-sorry, baby girl. I'm so sorry," he choked out, coughing next to me. "I am so sorry."
The pressure in my lungs increased, pressing into me, choking me, and as a fresh bout of coughing erupted from me,I realized the coppery taste in my mouth was my blood. I was bleeding, internally.
I was dying.
"I love you, Kaira. I will always love you, no matter what. Both your mom and I loved you."
"D-Dad," I croaked, forcing my throat to work. Forcing my mind to stay awake, but it was almost futile. I couldn't fight the pull of the darkness trickling into the edges of my vision. I couldn't stop my body from shutting down, from destroying itself from the inside out.
A gurgling sound came from my left, from my dad, and then—silence.
A suffocating silence surrounded me.
Mom and Thalia were in the back. I had to check in on them. I had to see if they were alive, if they were awake.
No, I moaned to myself, but I was stuck. Stuck in this fucking seat.
The smoke in front of me flashed orange and a second later, a trickle of flames started spreading over the hood, slowly climbing toward me.
We were all going to die.
My fingers twitched, the only part of my body that still worked, but they were useless if the rest of me couldn't move. I couldn't feel my legs, and even my arms felt like they were barely attached to the rest of my body.
"H-help," I groaned, my voice barely above a whisper, but looking at my surroundings, at where we were, I knew there was no one nearby. We were on one of the side roads, taking a quicker path back home, when my father lost control of the vehicle and… and we were plummeting.
