I catch a flash of Zai, who runs closer and stabs his sword into Dex’s leg. But it doesn’t stop him, like he’s not even human.
Then, Dex jerks me closer to his face. “Time to die, Keres.”
Trinica suddenly jumps at Dex from the side. She hits hard enough that he stumbles with all three of us.
Right into Zai’s sword.
I hear the sick slide of it as it enters his body, feel him take the hit. Holding me in the air, Dex sways for a second before all three of us drop to the ground with a hollow thud of glass. I claw his hands away from my neck and scramble back in case he’s still on the rampage.
But he’s already gone.
Zai’s sword must’ve hit something vital, because the life has already drained from Dex’s face, his eyes cloudy.
I turn away on all fours, reaction making my stomach heave. I retch but manage to not vomit.
“Lyra?” Zai’s voice reaches me. He sounds…small.
Controlling myself, I look over my shoulder to find him standing not far away, the Harpe of Perseus now limp in his grip as he stares in dawning horror at Dex. Then he starts shaking his head. Hard. Then harder. And his entire body starts to shake.
I can’t watch him fall apart.
Part of me expects Hades to appear and take me away, like he did when Boone died, but he doesn’t. I lift my head, searching for him, but he’s not even among the other gods and goddesses, who are all seated up on the platform with the spikes with the heads of our dead.
The Olympian gods are, all of them, on their feet. My gaze lands on Athena.
Hades’ blood is still inside me, still part of me. Maybe the rabid wrath that tears me apart at the sight of her is him. I don’t care.
I jump up and point at Dex. “What’d you do? Drug him? Curse him to be more aggressive today?” I scream at her. “Well, he’s dead now, and that is fucking karma, you monster.” Dex was her champion. “You won’t be Queen of the Gods now, will you?”
The four Daemones, still standing at their posts in the four corners of the platform where the gods and goddesses watch, all suddenly extend their wings with sharp, militaristic precision.
That is when Charon appears in front of me and takes me away, kicking and screaming.
95
Cool It
The second we blink back into being, I’m vaguely aware that Charon and I are in Hades’ Olympus home, but not much more than that. Fury is still eating me alive. Fury that Dex killed Meike. Fury that someone got to him and altered him somehow. That we couldn’t stop him. That our hands were forced. Fury that Athena put those heads on spikes. Fury about the entire cursed Crucible.
The emotion burns me, scouring me from the inside like acid and poison, turning me rancid. So much that I’m thrashing in Charon’s arms. “That bitch needs to pay! They all do!”
Charon locks his arms around me in such a way that I can’t move. “Settle,” he says.
“Fuck you.”
Meike.
Gods, the warmest of hearts. Always smiling. All about the adventure.
“Settle, Lyra.” There’s so much command in that one word that despite the rage still pumping through me in hot spurts, I do.
I go dead still.
Charon doesn’t let me go as I stand here breathing loudly through my nose like a bull ready to charge.
“Are you going to start back up if I let go?”
I clench my teeth but, after a beat, shake my head. Once. “I’m calm now.”
He still takes a moment before he loosens his arms a tiny bit. When I don’t start thrashing again, he lets go and steps back. I don’t turn to face him.
I also don’t start raging again.
The anger has abandoned me for something way worse. Grief. For Meike, of course for Meike. For Rafe, Dex’s poor nephew, who will miss the uncle he hero-worships. For Dex’s sister, who lost the brother who was trying to help her through illness. For Zai, who will carry Dex’s death around with him, along with Isabel’s, for the rest of his life. For Trinica, who is comforting him without me.
For me.
“Hades sent you instead of getting me himself.” The words I direct at Charon are not a question.
“He couldn’t come right that moment.”
Couldn’t come? I was fighting for my life, and he couldn’t… What was he doing that was so godsdamned important? “Did he even watch?”
“He was…called away.”
Called away? “By whom?”
