Page 71 of Becoming Monsterous

"Oh, but it is." Morpheus's anger is barely restrained. "The fucking bastard. I should have known."

It's a coffin made of glass.

With a pale sleeping woman inside it.

Only the woman isn't justanywoman. I can tell that somehow. Her skin radiates with power, and she's been laid to rest in golden armor, her thick, long, hair a rich red and her Roman nose regal.

I step up to the glass coffin and drag my fingers across its surface. There's no dust or dirt on it anywhere—it's been cleaned often.

Now that I'm close, the wall sconce illuminates her even more clearly. So I can see the marks up and down her arms and neck, scars both old and new.

Those scars, along with the empty glass bottle resting on top of her coffin, next to a knife and a long plastic tube, tell a story.

I pick up the glass bottle, take its cork out, and sniff the inside.

A wave of copper greets my nostrils.

"He was bleeding her," Morpheus says in disgust. He puts a hand on the top of the coffin and leans down to look in the goddess's eyes, his voice choked with emotion. "Our goddess of war, Athena. The leader of our victories until the day she fell in battle. I thought she was dead, or maybe gone to the god realms, but..."

"He drank her blood to stay alive." Setting the bottle down, I feel my stomach churn. "I can't believe it."

"I can." Morpheus moves to the head of the coffin and drags his fingers up and down near her head. "Help me open this and get her out."

Together, we look for a way to open up the coffin, but it's frustratingly difficult work. It's somehow all glass all around, resting on a thick wooden table carved to fit its exact dimensions. There's no seam anywhere to be found.

Frustrated, we debate breaking the glass—which would risk injuring her—and are just about to go get help when the sconce catches my attention.

"Wait. Let me try something..."

Reaching up, I pull the sconce away from the wall.

Like a lever, it tilts down towards us, then stops at a forty-five degree angle.

At the same time, the lid of the coffin parts and it creaks open.

"Athena." Morpheus immediately reaches for her forehead, closing his eyes. "I can wake her from dreaming..."

He trails off for a long, torturous moment.

Watching her, I notice something odd. So I reach out my fingers and hover them just above her mouth.

She breathes—barely.

But there's something missing. Something that makes her less...alive.

It takes me a long moment to realize that thesomethingis the aura of love.

Everyone has one. Even though I can't see my triumvirate's connections to me, I can see how they love others. And everyone around me, even Percy, has some kind of love, even just love for themselves.

There's nothing around Athena. No glow at all.

Almost as if she isn't alive anymore. Just... breathing.

Morpheus jerks his fingers away from her forehead. Blinking his eyes open, he takes a deep, shuddering breath.

"Her spirit is gone," he tells me, his voice full of grief. "He must've tortured her here for so long that she decided to just... ascend and leave her body behind. So he kept her heart beating and her lungs working just to drain her blood."

We contemplate the horror for a long moment, and I reconsider leaving Percy alive.

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