The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(73)

He glared at Cupid. “Happy now?”

For the first time, Cupid’s gaze seemed sympathetic. “Oh, I wouldn’t say Love always makes you happy.” His voice sounded smaller, much more human. “Sometimes it makes you incredibly sad. But at least you’ve faced it now. That’s the only way to conquer me.”

Cupid dissolved into the wind.

On the ground where he’d stood lay an ivory staff three feet long, topped with a dark globe of polished marble about the size of a baseball, nestled on the backs of three gold Roman eagles. The scepter of Diocletian.

Nico knelt and picked it up. He regarded Jason, as if waiting for an attack. “If the others found out—”

“If the others found out,” Jason said, “you’d have that many more people to back you up, and to unleash the fury of the gods on anybody who gives you trouble.”

Nico scowled. Jason still felt the resentment and anger rippling off him.

“But it’s your call,” Jason added. “Your decision to share or not. I can only tell you—”

“I don’t feel that way anymore,” Nico muttered. “I mean…I gave up on Percy. I was young and impressionable, and I—I don’t…”

His voice cracked, and Jason could tell the guy was about to get teary-eyed. Whether Nico had really given up on Percy or not, Jason couldn’t imagine what it had been like for Nico all those years, keeping a secret that would’ve been unthinkable to share in the 1940s, denying who he was, feeling completely alone—even more isolated than other demigods.

“Nico,” he said gently, “I’ve seen a lot of brave things. But what you just did? That was maybe the bravest.”

Nico looked up uncertainly. “We should get back to the ship.”

“Yeah. I can fly us—”

“No,” Nico announced. “This time we’re shadow-traveling. I’ve had enough of the winds for a while.”

LOSING HER SIGHT HAD BEEN BAD ENOUGH. Being isolated from Percy had been horrible.

But now that she could see again, watching him die slowly from gorgon’s blood poison and being unable to do anything about it—that was the worst curse of all.

Bob slung Percy over his shoulder like a bag of sports equipment while the skeleton kitten Small Bob curled up on Percy’s back and purred. Bob lumbered along at a fast pace, even for a Titan, which made it almost impossible for Annabeth to keep up.

Her lungs rattled. Her skin had started to blister again. She probably needed another drink of firewater, but they’d left the River Phlegethon behind. Her body was so sore and battered that she’d forgotten what it was like not to be in pain.

“How much longer?” she wheezed.

“Almost too long,” Bob called back. “But maybe not.”

Very helpful, Annabeth thought, but she was too winded to say it.

The landscape changed again. They were still going downhill, which should have made traveling easier; but the ground sloped at just the wrong angle—too steep to jog, too treacherous to let her guard down even for a moment. The surface was sometimes loose gravel, sometimes patches of slime. Annabeth stepped around random bristles sharp enough to impale her foot, and clusters of…well, not rocks exactly. More like warts the size of watermelons. If Annabeth had to guess (and she didn’t want to) she supposed Bob was leading her down the length of Tartarus’s large intestine.

The air got thicker and stank of sewage. The darkness maybe wasn’t quite as intense, but she could only see Bob because of the glint of his white hair and the point of his spear. She noticed he hadn’t retracted the spearhead on his broom since their fight with the arai. That didn’t reassure her.

Percy flopped around, causing the kitten to readjust his nest in the small of Percy’s back. Occasionally Percy would groan in pain, and Annabeth felt like a fist was squeezing her heart.

She flashed back to her tea party with Piper, Hazel, and Aphrodite in Charleston. Gods, that seemed so long ago. Aphrodite had sighed and waxed nostalgic about the good old days of the Civil War—how love and war always went hand in hand.

Aphrodite had gestured proudly to Annabeth, using her as an example for the other girls: I once promised to make her love life interesting. And didn’t I?

Annabeth had wanted to throttle the goddess of love. She’d had more than her share of interesting. Now Annabeth was holding out for a happy ending. Surely that was possible, no matter what the legends said about tragic heroes. There had to be exceptions, right? If suffering led to reward, then Percy and she deserved the grand prize.

She thought about Percy’s daydream of New Rome—the two of them settling down there, going to college together. At first, the idea of living among the Romans had appalled her. She had resented them for taking Percy away from her.

Now she would accept that offer gladly.

If only they survived this. If only Reyna had gotten her message. If only a million other long shots paid off.

Stop it, she chided herself.

She had to concentrate on the present, putting one foot in front of the other, taking this downhill intestinal hike one giant wart at a time.

Her knees felt warm and wobbly, like wire hangers bent to the point of snapping. Percy groaned and muttered something she couldn’t make out.

Bob stopped suddenly. “Look.”

Ahead in the gloom, the terrain leveled out into a black swamp. Sulfur-yellow mist hung in the air. Even without sunlight, there were actual plants—clumps of reeds, scrawny leafless trees, even a few sickly-looking flowers blooming in the muck. Mossy trails wound between bubbling tar pits. Directly in front of Annabeth, sunk into the bog, were footprints the size of trash-can lids, with long, pointed toes.