The spiders are still pounding to get into the house.
“Come.” Morpheus takes me by the hand and helps me lie back into my body. Like when he pulled me out, there’s no sensation to it. You would think that it would feel like drawing in or out of something or sinking into quicksand, maybe. But it feels like…nothing. I lie down. I close my eyes, and when I open them again, I’m mortal and Morpheus is gone. So are the spiders.
“Hey.” A hand lands on my shoulder, and I yelp as I jackknife up in bed.
Only to stare into laughing warm brown eyes.
Solid, no longer translucent.
My own go wide as I take him in from head to toe—sitting next to me, living, breathing, not-dead Boone.
“But you were—” My gaze shoots back to him. “Gone. You were dead. I took too long—”
Boone must hear the hysteria rising in my voice because he suddenly swoops me up in a bear hug. “I’m here. I’m here, and you didn’t kill me.”
I didn’t kill him.
The reality of that is starting to penetrate the bone-deep horror of what I’d thought happened. “You’re okay?” I whisper.
He shakes against me like he’s laughing and is keeping it silent to not hurt my feelings. “I’m really okay.”
He lets go of me and takes one of my hands to flatten my palm over his heart, which beats steady and calm. “See. Alive. Not dreaming. Not a ghost. Not dead.”
I realize what we’re doing and tug away from his grasp. “I’m glad I’m not a murderer.”
And in my head, I wince. Because what I should say is I’m glad he’s not dead. It’s what I’m feeling. But I’m still a jumble of confusion about Boone, so the words come out the way they always do with him. Snappy and sarcastic.
Instead of shooting back, though, he just grins at me.
Outside, the fox’s yip sounds frantic. He’s in a hurry. We should be, too. We have to get back to Olympus.
“Come on.”
I drag us both out of the house. The spiders are all gone, except mine, and now the pegasus is standing in the yard.
“Whoa,” Boone whispers.
“Hey,” I say to the winged horse. “Were you too afraid of the spiders to come closer?”
She rears up a little.
Right. Hurry.
After recalling my fox and tarantula into my arm with a murmured thanks, I’m about to do my awkward-attempt-to-drag-myself-on-top-of-a-horse-with-wings thing when two strong hands wrap around my waist and lift me onto her back. Before I can protest or say thank you—I’m still debating which—Boone is up behind me. He slides his arms under mine, his chest pressing against my back.
And I’m trying to ignore all of that when we launch into the skies.
“Tell me what the hells is going on,” Boone immediately demands. “Details, Lyra.”
Because he doesn’t know anything beyond being dragged into something about the Crucible. Well, and that I love him. But the Crucible is still a total mystery to him. I fill him in quickly and succinctly, well aware that he turns more and more grim with every word I say.
“If I could kill the god of death, I would,” he mutters ominously when I finish.
Which is when we burst through the clouds and Olympus comes into view, the sun’s rays barely reaching over the peaks by now.
I feel the way Boone sits up straighter, but it isn’t until we come over the mountaintop that he gets his first good look. “Amazing.” His low voice rumbles against my back, breath tickling my ear. “I’ve never…”
“I know,” I say. “And the Underworld is even more.”
He goes rigid, gripping the pegasus’s mane tighter. “You’ve been to the Underworld?” His voice is laced with more than anger. Concern? I can’t tell. Apparently, my emotional antennae are broken.
I point at the three heads and waterfalls. “I fell in the black river, which leads down to the Underworld. But it’s okay. I’m fine—”
Our pegasus suddenly tilts and spirals down to drop us off on the balcony of Aphrodite’s house. The instant her hooves hit the stone, I breathe a little easier.
We made it.
Before I can say anything, an agonized scream tumbles down the black-and-white hallway and out the open doors to the balcony where we stand. Boone on my heels, I run to the room with the beds and skid to a halt just inside the door.
Aphrodite is sitting beside Dae’s bed, holding his hand, tears streaming down her beautiful cheeks. I didn’t know goddesses or gods could even cry.
Maybe even worse, the four Daemones are standing in the four corners of the room, hands clasped before them, heads bowed and wings lowered so their feathers drag the ground in an attitude of forlorn, profound sadness.
Dae’s mortal body is on the bed, not strapped down, but it’s obvious he’s still asleep, caught in what has to be a nightmare. Several of the other champions fill the room along with their rescued loved ones. All of them, actually, now that I glance around.
Amir is standing farthest away, against the wall, facing out a window in a manner that reminds me of Hades in my bedroom earlier. A tiny woman in a blue sari with rich, deep-brown skin and dark-gray hair worn back and loosely covered is patting Amir’s shoulder with a weathered hand, murmuring softly.
Dae screams again, so hard his chest lifts off the bed.
