Page 3 of Blood of Olympus

“Forget the ink,” he huffed as my anticipation rose — until I realised he was striding towards the open balcony instead. At the last moment, his path diverted and he faced an empty obsidian wall, clad in nothing but his tight, black undergarments.

I bit my lip, truly unable to help myself — it was a spectacular view.

“Nyssa!” Caelus snapped his fingers in my direction, laughing when I blinked sheepishly up at him. “Will that do?”

I frowned. “Will what do?”

Wordlessly, he gestured to the once-blank wall — now covered in a sizzling scrawl. The fresh lines smouldered as I approached, brows rising; the air now tarnished with an acrid scent.

Caelus had burned the Fates’ eerie song into the black stone. Dread sank its claws into my skin as I studied the words. It leached the warmth from my blood with every letter, turning my entire body cold as ice.

“This word is supposed to be ‘slaughtered,’” I murmured, tapping the last word of the song.

“Right — that makes more sense.” He slashed through the script with one lightning-tipped finger, then seared its replacement beside it. “I wondered how one was going to be laundered.”

His bewilderment was adorable — scrunched nose, pursed lips, and brows drawn. So endearing that I wished the memory of the expression could be carved into my mind as permanently as the lyrics were now carved into my wall.

I couldn’t help the giggle that flitted past my teeth, nor the moan that followed when Caelus immediately reached for my face, drawing me in for the most tender of kisses.

“Sorry,” he breathed against my lips. “I needed to see if your laughter tasted as sweet as it sounds.”

A tiny bubble of laughter escaped me again — and again, his lips smothered it against mine.

“It does.” A sweet — albeit hungry — grin twisted his face.

The tether between us swelled. His joy thrummed inside my chest, warming me — golden and light, like a warm summer day. I had almost forgotten what it felt like: joy… and pleasure.

It seemed I wasn’t the only one because Caelus spoke again. “Nightshade,” he groaned the nickname out between clenched teeth. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed that sound. How much I’ve missed your happiness, light, like a bubble in my chest.” He pressed a light kiss to my forehead. “And your kiss.” His lips grazed my nose. “And how our bond hums when we touch.”

I sighed, leaning into his embrace. But the thing about bubbles is that they inevitably burst.

The smile fell from my face — slowly, then all at once — when I remembered why we hadn’t kissed, or danced, or found any small semblance of joy in the last week.

Sensing the shift, Caelus remained motionless. Wordless. Then his arms reined me in, providing a solace I didn’t know I had. A solace I knew I didn’t deserve.

I had no idea how long we stood there for, cocooned in our shared grief, but it was long enough for Velira, my bonded dragon, to fly home from wherever it was she’d been hunting.

Long enough for her to snake her serpentine head into the room and rekindle the hearth with nothing more than a soft exhale.

Long enough for my mind to play tricks — cruel, vicious tricks that sounded like whispers from the person I mourned most.

“You are not a tomb.”

CHAPTER 2

Nyssa

Even gods can break. And this is how.

At least, that’s what I told myself the Fates meant when I conjured Charon’s lilting whisper for the third time in the week he’d been gone.

I’m finally breaking. I’m actually going mad.

Why else would I be tormented by these familiar undertones? Why else would my fractured mind evoke these whispered complaints during the realm’s dreariest council meeting? It was definitely something Charon would have said, were he still able to speak.

But Charon couldn’t whisper anymore.

He couldn’t speak, or complain, or toss jokes in the air just to see how they’d land. He couldn’t play card games, or make pancakey messes, or spin me around the hallways, dancing the melancholy away.