Page 196 of Blood of Olympus

Just as I’d resigned myself to one last, momentous battle, footsteps echoed nearby. They thumped with the casual surety of someone who believes they have all the time in the world — and all the power in it, too.

A door whooshed open, clanging with a solid thump against another stone wall, stirring dust and debris on the floor in its wake.

It stuck to the back of my throat on my next inhale, igniting a series of wicked coughs so loud and wracking that I didn’t hear the footsteps continue into the room.

A quick snap assaulted my ears as someone grunted, altogether too close.

I recoiled — away from the sound, and the smell… a scent not unfamiliar.

Whiskey. And something sweeter.

Not honey, but ichor.

The scent of someone with blood on his hands and enough liquor to drown it in.

Ares.

“Well, well, well,” he drawled, his voice dropping as he crouched before me. “Look how the mighty have fallen.”

That last, quiet word triggered a series of violent flashbacks — violet scales, a blood-covered sword, an airborne battle, a demon of smoke, a shriek of agony… and then… then — a long freefall toward a tumultuous battlefield.

My eyes snapped shut and I pressed myself as far back as the wall would allow. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to flee — but I couldn’t.

“Ah, so you do remember,” Ares mused. “We wondered.”

“We?” I managed to rasp out.

His face split into an audible grin, his lips sliding past his teeth with a slick ssk, like I’d just walked into a well-laid trap.

“We,” Kronos’ low timbre taunted from across the room.

Hera — for the tittering, high-pitched snickers could not be mistaken for anyone else — giggled madly from the same direction.

Kronos took one, two, three slow strides forward to join Ares at my feet.

“You have something that I want,” he declared, slowly. Without preamble.

“We’ve established that. Whatever it is,” I began, feigning nonchalance in the hopes that I might end up believing myself. “Tyche must not favour you.”

“Oh? And why is that, Deathbringer?”

“Because you’re shit outta luck,” I said with a shrug.

Hera gasped so loudly it sent another painful spear through my skull. Time had not changed her, then.

Ares growled. But Kronos?

Kronos laughed.

Deep and thunderous, like the rattling of a mountain during a landslide.

“It truly astounds me,” he got out between chuckles, “that even one as powerful as yourself has not learned the most valuable lesson our kind can uncover.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I spat.

“We are more alike than you think,” he purred. “Both of us conquerors. Realm-breakers.” He lifted a hand and held my chin captive in it, to the point where it hurt⁠—

Not yet, Nyss, I told myself. Save your fight for later. You’ll need it.