Page 26 of Crown of Olympus
“Thank you, Apollo,” she said. The god dipped his head slightly, sweat dripping to the sand at his feet. We needed to get out of here, and hope we were the last to make it through.
Nyssa shot me one last, unreadable look before stepping into the darkness and disappearing. The portal vanished a heartbeat later. Hermes made a sound of disgust, staring at the patch of sand as though it were now tainted.
“Are we the last to arrive?” I asked sharply. His face snapped to mine, surprise flitting across his greasy features.
“No. Your mother is the last. If she does not make it by sunset, Apollo’s trial will be complete, and she will have been eliminated.”
Apollo eyed me closely, assessing my reaction. I simply shrugged, and replied casually, “Then may the Fates give her their blessing.”
Hermes paused momentarily, squinting, before giving a quick nod.
“Grasp my forearm. You may feel ill afterward,” he warned. Hermes raised his other hand and made a pinching motion with his fingers. In an instant, the realm snapped together, and we stood in the Parthenon’s atrium, alone.
“Where is everyone else?”
“Oh, they’ve all gone home for the evening. You’ll be pleased to know that some of them fared worse than you did,” he said with a smirk, evidently delighted that they had suffered while he had sat on his arrogant ass, drinking wine, as we burned alive.
I turned on my heel, ignoring the god of thieves, and strode purposefully towards the exit.
“Son of Zeus?” he called sweetly. “You might be needing this.”
I turned just in time to catch a strangely familiar silver dagger hurling through the air.
“How did you?—”
“God of thieves. You’d do well to remember how stealthy I can be.”
There was a thinly veiled threat in that. But I had no idea what the primal meant by it.
Only time would tell.
CHAPTER 9
Nyssa
I spentthe next week training like my life depended on it — because it just might. Weapons training, dance training, footwork drills, and every other spare second buried in the palace library researching. I needed to understand my adversaries, and to do that, I needed to understand their patron god or goddess. If I had any hope of passing the rest of their trials, I’d need to discern who they were, why they had come to be that way, and how their mind might perceive their place in the realm.
For instance, Ares — primal god of war and violence — was prone to fury and brute strength. His trial would be physical in nature, I was certain of it.
In the day’s remaining hours, I was called to sentence souls on the Isle of Judgement — a mixed batch of lower Olympians and demigods caught between mortality and immortality. It was never easy, sentencing someone. But it was my duty to ensure they entered an afterlife worthy of the life they had lived, however briefly.
There had been little to no opportunity to speak with Charon. We’d been pulled in different directions by our godlyduties. So, when it came time to prepare for the second trial, I found myself full of doubt, anxious about the looming day.
Why was I even doing this?
For a crown? I didn’t need it.
For the good of the realms? I was determined not to destroy them, anyway.
To prove them all wrong? That a daughter of Hades could rise above them all? Absolutely. My father would be thrilled to learn I’d overpowered all of those shiny Olympians.
My arm had healed fully, thanks to divine powers, and a golden-eyed god who had whispered quiet warnings into my mind.
Something dwells within you. While it slumbers, you endure. When it wakes, so, too, will all else.
Cryptic and entirely unhelpful. I pushed his words to the back of my mind and readied myself for the second trial. I had an hour before I needed to be at the Parthenon, and I intended to use every second of it wisely.
The black stone ceiling above me had been carved into constellations, those that adorned the Underworld’s sky. I had been staring at it for hours, unable to sleep, counting each individual star. All one thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-four of them.
