The Return
Page 103

I fell to the floor, landing hard on my hands and knees, jarring my bones. All the wonderful strength, the glorious warm light, was gone. It took everything to lift my head.
The room was destroyed.
Glass was blown out, the windowsills on fire. The wood floor was warped, boards completely missing in some areas. Curtains were gone. Chairs were demolished into pieces.
Hyperion was gone.
So was Apollo.
In disbelief, my eyes scanned the wreckage of the room. I cried out when I saw Seth. He was lying on his back in the center of the room. He wasn’t moving. What had I done?
I forced myself across the floor with shaking, sore arms until I reached his side, my entire body trembling and my vision full of weird black spots that danced.
“Seth?” I placed a hand on his chest.
His eyes were closed, thick lashes fanning the tops of his cheeks. When there was no response, I pulled myself closer. I needed to get us out of here, but my head felt too heavy on my neck, and the next thing I knew, my cheek was on his chest, and the last thing I heard was the steady, strong beat of his heart.
Chapter 32
WHEN I opened my eyes, I was staring up at fluorescent lights. For a couple of moments I didn’t move or think beyond those lights. I recognized that I was in some kind of hospital room, but there were no sounds of an IV dripping fluids or of a blood pressure machine or a heart monitor. My mouth was dry and my chest a little sore, but other than that I felt okay. No. I felt more than a little okay. I felt kind of awesome, like I could get out of this narrow bed, and I don’t know, kick some butt or something, which was strange—
Holy crap.
My chest.
Pushing up into a sitting position, I knocked down the thin blanket and found that I had on some kind of horrible bright-pink hospital gown. I yanked the collar out and gaped.
Apollo—my father—had thrown a knife at me. The knife had hit me, square between the breasts. A kill shot if I’d ever seen one, but it hadn’t killed me. It had done something else entirely, and now there were faint white marks on my chest, and those marks formed a shape.
A straight line about five inches long with two lines looping around it—at the top, the design almost looked like tiny wings.
Smacking my gown back in place, I squeezed my eyes shut. Okay. “That’s not a normal scar.” “No. It’s not.”
A shriek erupted out of me at the sound of Apollo’s voice. My head whipped to the side. He sat in a chair next to my bed, one leg hooked over the other, and there was no way he’d been sitting there a few seconds ago.
At least I hoped he’d hadn’t been when I’d been checking out my boobs.
“It is my mark. One of them,” he said, smiling slightly. “Kind of like a rite of passage.”
I stared at him for a moment, and then I exploded. “You threw a knife at me!”
“I did,” he replied calmly.
“You hit me with the knife!”
“I did.” He leaned forward, dropping his foot onto the floor. “As I told Seth, unbinding you myself would not be easy. I wish I hadn’t had to do it that way. The last thing I wanted was to cause you pain. I didn’t enjoy any part of that—well, besides the look on Hyperion’s face—but the only way for me to finish unbinding you was to pass you through a mortal death.”
My head got tangled up on that, but there was something else important he’d said. “Seth. Where is Seth?”
Apollo stared at me with eyes that matched my own, and when he didn’t respond, I tossed back the thin blanket. “Where is he?” I demanded, my heart rate picking up. I remembered seeing him down on the floor. I remembered crawling to him. Knots twisted up my stomach, and I tasted fear once more in the back of my mouth. “Apollo.” My voice cracked.
He closed his eyes briefly. “He’s in the very next room, sleeping. He is fine, my daughter.” When I started to swing my legs off the bed, he raised a hand. “I know you are eager to see that for yourself, but trust in me, he is okay. He is the Apollyon. You will not be able to kill him.”
Relief loosened my shoulders. “Thank God.”
The look on his face said he felt differently. “I hope one day that relief never turns to dread.”
Staring at him, it felt like someone had reached around my neck and squeezed, much like Hyperion had. I swallowed— swallowed hard, but I held myself back and pushed that feeling away. I knew everything about Seth. It wasn’t surprising that Apollo would have some…misgivings. Several seconds passed. “What about Erin? She was hurt very badly. He…”
“Seth freed her. She’s in Olympus. Healing.”
I closed my eyes, but was unable to un-see the condition she’d been in, the damage Hyperion had done to her. “Will I see her again? Soon?”
“Yes.”
That was a relief—kind of. I hurt for her, and I needed to see her with my own eyes to believe that she was okay.
“Daughter…”
I opened my eyes, focusing. “I’m a…a demigod now?” “You know the answer to that.”
Of course I did. People didn’t levitate off the ground and have solar flares erupt from them if they were mortal.
“Your powers are not complete,” he continued. “Hyperion is not entombed. You basically put him in a time-out. When he comes back, he’s going to be very, very upset.”
For some reason, I got stuck on what was probably the least important part of all of this. “I’m not going to age anymore, am I?”