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“She won’t return to her body willingly.”

His answer says everything. More, the bruises and cuts on her body speak all the words she can’t. Her death had been horrific. Her screams had been a nightmare, and yet I found myself foolishly clinging to the hope that it hadn’t been quite as bad as I’d imagined.

Turns out, it’d been worse.

My emotionally bludgeoned soul aches. “Where are we taking her to now?”

“Somewhere—” he pauses. “Safe.”

“Outside the castle?” I press as I hurry after him, down a flight of stairs.

“Shhh,” he bites out the command. Instantly, my teeth snap together.

We’re no longer in the wing of Castle Olympus where Hera shoves all that she does not wish to see. Somehow, we’ve made it to the ground level, but we didn’t take the wide sweeping stairs that would have brought us to the grand entrance.

Instead, Ares led me through darkened tunnels of stone entirely void of the grand lookouts that even the shunned wing of the castle displays. We took narrow, spiraled sets of stairs that curled around pillars of marble, scuffed and not shining quite like the marble that glistened in the main passageways.

We’d taken the servants’ tunnels, I realize.

And now, we race to a weathered wooden door in an area of the castle that, I assumed considering I could hear the clattering of ceramic and steel, and the clucking of feminine tongues, was close to the kitchen.

Ares pushes through the door into air that reminded me of a summer night by a lake in British Columbia. Crisp and cool, but not cold. If Olympus had anything on the Underworld, it was this. The fresh nip in the kiss of clean air that tasted of morning dew and smelled like the mist before rain.

“Keep up,” Ares growls, and I hurry to do just that. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped to smell the air, hadn’t noticed the space that now loomed between us.

Ignoring the magic of the land I’d not been permitted to explore; I race after Ares. I nearly bump into his broad back when he stops suddenly.

His head tips back and he lets out a piercing whistle to the blanket of night that illuminates the vibrant cut of the land in shades of night. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, entirely otherworldly. It is beautiful. And yet, there is a dullness to it that can’t be ignored.

It’s like looking at a canvas of astonishing art and realizing that the colors are all wrong, diluted with white, gray, and black. It’s like the very realm wants to glow, aches to shine. And yet there is a hazy film that covers it all.

It’swrong.

From the night, something appears. It’s dark, but not for long. A blaze of flames that singe the haze just long enough Icatch a glimpse of a radiant glow that snaps shut a moment later, leaving me to question if I saw it at all. From the flames, four horses emerge towing a black chariot. Each of the horses is a different color, red-brown, grey, black, and white. All of them have manes and wings of gold.

“Are they—” I stutter.

“Pegasuses.”

The horses swoop to land in front of us, and Ares climbs into the chariot with the girl still in his arms. I don’t hesitate to climb onto the seat beside him, even as the horse,Pegasus!—closest to me, the red-brown one, noses at me curiously.

I can’t believe this is my life.

Just last year, I was an average girl doing average girl things. Well, maybe not entirely average. I was hearing a voice in my head, after all. A voice that turned out to be the God of the Underworld, my soul mate. Regardless, I had no idea any of this existed outside mythology texts.

The fact that I’m here now, pregnant with Hades’ babies and sitting in a Pegasuses flown chariot next to Ares with a dead girl who will reawaken, bound to the prison realm that is Olympus, is surreal.

Ares says one word, a name, “Hephaestus,” and the beasts take running flight.

We burst high into the sky, into the haze that seems to blanket all of Olympus. I can’t help but ask, “What is this?”

“It’s particularly bad tonight.” Ares shifts the girl in his arms. My stomach turns at the bruises on her flesh. I avert my gaze to give her privacy. “It mostly burns off in the day, though some days it is heavier than others.”

“But what is it?”

“Consequence.”

My head turns to him.It’s impossible not to see her when I look at him. “Consequence of what?”