Jennifer Armentrout: Apollyon

I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was, or maybe I’d just hit my limit, because I wanted out—I wanted to die . There was no pride in this. There was no purpose. My soul fragmented and I broke wide open.

Ares grabbed hold of my broken arm, dragging me to the center of the room, over broken glass and dead fish and the blood of those who’d already died in here. That fresh burst of pain seemed like nothing in comparison to everything else, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ares pick up a dagger.

He knelt over me, lips curled back. There was a blade in his hand, and this was about to get much, much worse. “Say the words.”

I was shattered and I was weak. He had won, and I wanted to die, but I couldn’t, and there was no way—I screamed as the first strike of the blade sank deep.

With another sharp slice, my vision flashed amber momentarily and then reverted, but something…something was different. A foreign sensation wiggled around the broken bones and severed muscles. It wasn’t from me, but it was a part of me. It was cold and it felt like steel and it was fury, dark and endless.

It wasn’t from me, because what little part of me that was left had curled up in a ball and was waiting and praying for this to be over. It had given up, cowering away from more pain like an abused dog. It wanted this to be over. It wanted to taste the peacefulness of death.

But that fury built and, as Ares bent over me holding the red-tipped dagger, I knew that the anger was filtering through the connection between me and the First.

It was Seth.

Was he angry that I hadn’t gone with Ares? Or was it because I was so weak that I wished for death? Or was it something else, something deeper than which side we stood on, because Seth… Seth had to feel this now. He had to know, and that last little shred of my being refused to believe that he would condone this. I suffered, and so he suffered.

The god laughed coldly. “I wonder, if you cut the head off the Apollyon, does it grow back? Guess we could find out, huh? You’d like that.”

Part of me died right then, maybe not a physical death, but on some mental, some emotional level I was good as dead. When all of this was over, I wouldn’t be the same.

Wood and metal splintered, and I knew the door had finally been breached. As the god brought the dagger down, a body crashed into him. The blade impaled the floor harmlessly beside my neck. Before I could take my next painful breath, the three of them moved above me, engaging in a sick, macabre dance of sorts. Ares. Aiden. Marcus. They moved too fast for me to track. The three of them were too close together.

Light exploded, casting the room in white light as bright as the sun. The presence of another god filled the room, and I was blinded. I tried to take my next breath and wheezed. Wet warmth spread along the left side of my body, pooling across the floor like red rain. My blood? Someone else’s? Gods… gods didn’t bleed like us.

There was an inhuman roar and Ares spun around, his attention on whatever was behind me. In an instant, the god of war threw out his arms. A shockwave rolled through the destroyed room. Shattered wood and broken furniture flew into the air, along with prone, lifeless bodies… and Marcus and Aiden.

Red rain seemed to pour from the ceiling now.

My name was called, but it sounded so far away. I struggled to sit up, to see Aiden and Marcus, to know that they were okay, but I couldn’t move and I couldn’t breathe. Hands landed on me, but my skin felt detached. There was screaming in the background, and I wanted them to shut up— to just shut up . My entire body felt slippery as I was lifted, my head flopping loosely to the side.

Where were they—where were Aiden and Marcus?

The mounting horror took over the pain and it mixed with Seth’s rage. The marks spread across my skin and the cord hummed violently. There were voices, so many voices, and one came through so clear, and I didn’t know if it was spoken out loud or in my thoughts.

“Let go, Alex.”

Then there was nothing.

There was nothing, and then the pain came back, starting with the cracked bones in my toes and then crawling up my shattered calves and knees, licking over my pulverized pelvis in waves of white-hot, fiery pain. When the fire reached my head, I tried to scream, but my jaw wouldn’t unhinge. The scream tore through me still, silent but full of rage that tasted of the blood that pooled in my mouth.

Death… oh gods, I begged for death over and over in my mind. A relentless, steady stream to whatever god was listening to take this away, because the pain was splitting the seams of my sanity.

But the pain didn’t lessen. It burned. It remained. It continued to rot me from the inside until I willed my eyes open.

My vision didn’t focus as first. What I saw was a hazy blur of blue, but when my sight cleared, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.

Maybe I’d already gone insane.

I was staring at a sky—the brightest blue I’d ever seen. Like the deepest ocean water, untouched and pure. No sky was that color. And I’d been in the Dean’s office, where Ares… where he…

I couldn’t think of that. I couldn’t think of anything.

The air smelled of jasmine, like… like the pool in the Underworld, when I’d been with Aiden.

Aiden…

Oh gods, I didn’t know what’d happened to him, if Ares had hurt him or Marcus. I didn’t know where I was, or how I had gotten here. All I knew was pain. It was in every fiber of muscle, every splintered bone and burst vessel, but that… that wasn’t true. There was one thing that I did know.

The cord—the connection between Seth and me—it was gone.

There was no humming. No rage. No outside presence mingling with mine. Oh gods, I was nothing now but pain.

“Alexandria.”

I didn’t realize my eyes were closed again until I forced them to reopen at the sound of the vaguely familiar voice. At first, I didn’t see him, or anything other than that beautiful, unreal sky.

A shadow fell over me and then a form appeared, blocking out the sky. Seconds later, the man pieced together. Tall and broad and a head full of honey-colored hair, the man had the face of an angel.

Oh for the love of gods, I couldn’t catch a freaking break.

Thanatos.

The god’s lips tipped up a little on one side, as if he knew what I was thinking, and I wondered then if I was actually dead, if someone had lied about the whole Apollyon-death thing, because I was staring at the god of peaceful death.

Then again, my death, if that was what this really was, had been anything but peaceful. Had he come to answer my prayers? To take this pain away?

Easing down, Thanatos tipped his head to the side as he leaned over me. “Can you hear me?”

I tried to open my mouth but couldn’t.

“Blink if you can,” he said with surprising gentleness.

I blinked.

“We may have been foes in the past, but I am not here to harm you now. I’m watching over you until Apollo can return with his son, Asclepius.”

Apollo? His son? Confusion swamped me and I dragged in a deeper breath I immediately regretted. Pain arced across my chest.

Thanatos moved to place his hand on my forehead, but stopped short. “It’s okay. You’re in Olympus.”

Olympus? How in the world was that okay?

“Well, just outside of Olympus, if you want to get technical.” He glanced over his shoulder, sighing softly. “What you did by standing up to Ares? Not many would—no mortal, demigod and surely not even the Apollyon. You could’ve submitted to him. You would’ve saved yourself so much pain.”

Thanatos leaned in close, focusing on me with white eyes that held no pupils or irises. “You held your ground, and I can respect that. I can also admire that.”