“Water from Styx.”
I blink as my mind tries to glom onto what I know about that. “Poison,” I whisper.
“That’s why I gave you my blood.”
Now it’s coming together vaguely. Only a few mortals have survived touching the Styx. Achilles was one of them. It made him invincible everywhere except his heel where his mother had held him when she dipped him in the waters, and that part didn’t get wet. That one entirely mortal spot became his only weakness.
Did Achilles survive because he had a deity’s blood in him? His mother was Thetis, a sea nymph. Did that make him enough of a demigod to survive it?
Hades must be desperate.
“I’m…that…bad?” I ask.
He hesitates, then nods.
I search his face. “You…look terrible.”
Hades’ lips crook. “You should see yourself, my star.”
“Wow.” I take a labored breath that shudders through me. It’s getting harder to stay here with him. “Guess you…better…do it…then.”
He doesn’t, though. He hesitates visibly. It’s got to be pretty damned dangerous. “If you die, I’ll take care of you,” he tells me. I get another lightning bolt of emotion from him. I’m sure it’s from him, now. Desperation this time. “I promise.”
He is tearing himself apart with guilt. Can’t have that.
“Seems like…” I lick my cracked lips. “You’re…taking care…of…a lot…of souls…these…days.”
His expression alters, and my heart thumps heavily at the odd combination of exasperation and tenderness on his face. “I hope you’re not rubbing off on me,” he says. “Always running around trying to save other people.”
“Heavens…forbid.” I try to chuckle, but it turns into a cough that racks pain through every part of me. “But…don’t…worry about…mine.”
“What?”
“My soul. I…like it…down here.”
“Fuck,” Hades mutters darkly.
“If you’re going to do it, Phi.” Charon’s voice reaches through the shadows. “Do it now, before the effects of your blood wear off.”
Cool hands lift my shirt. The air is oddly cold against my skin, and I glance down and grunt at the sight—my wound not only hasn’t closed, it’s a pit of black flesh, like acid has eaten its way through me. Like Isabel. Only different. Black spider veins crawl out of the wound into the graying flesh all around it in every direction.
I’m no doctor, but even I know that’s bad.
“This is going to hurt—” Hades doesn’t bother to finish warning me before he pours the contents of the cup over the wound.
Agony and fire. A thousand times worse than the dragon burn. I’ve never screamed so loud in my entire life, the sound torn from my throat, my body bowing off the bed as if it’s trying to escape itself. He doesn’t stop. He’s pouring more and more. Then he rolls me to pour more on the exit wound on my back.
I scream until my voice goes hoarse, and then the darkness reaches up and yanks me down so fast it’s like that wild rush down the river from Hades’ waterfall in Olympus.
“No! Lyra!” I hear Hades shout at me.
But I’m too deep, and in the darkness, for the first time, I find total, true oblivion.
82
His Star
When I open my eyes next, my head isn’t muzzy anymore, and while I’m stiff and achy from lying here so long, I feel no other pain. Also, they’ve removed most of the tubes that were stuck in me, so that’s better, too. Charon sits at my bedside instead of Hades, reading a romance novel. I smile. I didn’t peg him as the type.
“Good book?” I croak.
He lowers it and grins at me, and I blink. Gods really are extraordinarily beautiful.
“I’ve been debating if we should call you Sleeping Beauty or Snow White.”
I guess the River Styx did its work, and Hades’ blood kept me alive. Barely, it felt like.
It took several more days, or…however long. I’m not exactly keeping track of time. I only remember patchy pieces, but at least most of them didn’t involve pain or fever or even delirium. Just exhaustion as my body mended.
“Weren’t both of those fairy tales a sleeping death?”
“Hence the debate.” He puts his book on the table beside his chair. “Given how pale you are and the raven-black hair, I’m leaning toward Snow White.”
“Hephaestus could be the huntsman.”
Charon laughs at that. “And Aphrodite the evil queen?”
