Page 160 of The Games Gods Play
Boone.
It’s real. It wasn’t a nightmare. He’s dead. Tears leak out of my still-closed eyes even while I’m trying to hold them back. “No, no, no.” The words are slurred, and I try to curl up into a ball.
But those hands are at my shoulders again and won’t let me. “Don’t move, love. You’ll tear your stitches, and you’re all wrapped up in wires.”
Wires. Stitches. Because I got hurt.
I remember now. The blood. The pain. Hades in a panic.
I force my eyes open and find a bleary view of the underside of a heavily stubbled jaw. “You…need…a shave.”
“What did she say?” another voice in the room asks.
I frown and reach up to tickle his chin. “Do…gods…shave?”
Hades lowers his head to inspect me, brows practically meeting over his eyes, and I stare back in misery. “She’s delirious.”
“Says who?” I demand. Or try to.
Gray eyes crinkle at the corners, and he shakes his head. “If gods could be killed, you’d be the death of me, my star.”
“I like it when you call me that.” Did I say that out loud?
The frown is back. I guess I did. “She’s definitely delirious,” he says.
Am I? I actually feel better. Just the sight of him helps. I sink into my pillow and keep my gaze trained on his face. And then the memories come following on the heels of the weight of exhaustion. “We can…save him?” I mumble.
That was real, wasn’t it? If I win, Hades can save Boone?
He lets go of my shoulders, taking my hand in his and pressing his lips to my knuckles. But he doesn’t quite look at me. “Sure. But first, we need you to get better.”
Why does that sound off?
Sleep is dragging me back under again, heavier and heavier and heavier. “We need…to save…Boone.”
Hades’ face blurs out, and I go under.
“No!” I scream as I watch him drop.
The fall takes forever.
Boone’s horrified eyes never leave my face, even when he hits the spikes.
“Boone!” I shout again.
“Lyra!” Hades is calling me, pulling me back to him.
Hades, who has been here with me every time I come out of the nightmare into a different one. Hades, who hasn’t left my side.
I stop thrashing in my sleep, still breathing hard, but the worst is over. I don’t know how many times I’ve relived it now. It feels like a thousand. And, gods, I feel like shit.
“Boone is dead,” I manage to whisper around a throat as dry as the Mojave Desert.
“I’m right here, Lyra-Loo-Hoo,” Boone says from somewhere close by.
I whimper at the sound of that voice saying that name. My heart tumbles over itself. I’m dreaming. Hallucinating. Or Morpheus is playing a cruel trick, taunting me.
“I’m real,” Boone says. “Don’t be a coward. Open your eyes and find out.”
