Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
But right then, sitting in that room and being forced to say, “I don’t know. I don’t know” over and over as they heckled and called me stupid... I hated it more than a millennium in the reflection room.
“Galanis.” Hondros’s voice sharpened. “Answer me.”
“I do—”
“Harpies are born mad because they’re trapped here in Olympia with us.” All heads swiveled around. “In the ancient times, they had the whole world as their hunting ground. A veritable buffet of evildoers to capture and torture as they hauled them screaming to Tartarus. Now there are only us demigods, and we fight back. They enter life knowing they’ll spend their entire existence unfulfilled and unsatisfied,” said Sebastian Barba. “Wouldn’t that drive anyone mad?”
“Though your answer is correct, Barba, it was to come from her mouth, not yours. Do not speak out of turn again.”
Sebastian tipped his head. “I’m confused. Didn’t you just say we’re all responsible for each other? She clearly didn’t know the answer, so I helped out my fellow sister-in-arms.”
“Be silent,” he snapped. “Now, Galanis—”
That time I didn’t stifle my groan. Daciana squeezed my hand under the table.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “He’ll just keep picking on you until you answer correctly. He put me through the same torture on the first day.”
“Excuse me, wolf.” Hondros stalked toward us. “Did you speak?”
Daciana stared him dead in the face. “Yes. I said you’ll just keep picking on her like you did on my first day.”
His face hardened. “Is that what you believe I’m doing? Picking on her.”
“Absolutely,” Sebastian called.
“I will not tell you again,” Hondros roared, whirling on him. “Be silent.”
Sebastian made a show of buttoning his lip. I blinked at him, eyes huge. What was with this guy? Hondros looked ready to tear that expensive cooling unit off the wall and beat him with it.
“The purpose is not to pick on you,” he said, leveling us with that glare. “This information is vital. You cannot defeat a monster you do not know. Something as simple as knowing what the smell of sulfur means will save a life. Don’t you agree, Galanis?”
My glare heated to destroy his. “Yes, Captain,” I forced through gritted teeth.
“Next question. What do the three heads of a cerberus represent?”
They represented something? Mama only ever told me that the first one guarded Hades, and now his descendants guard places of importance—whether the locals wanted them to or not.
“I do—”
“The past, present, and future,” said a voice becoming all too familiar with me. “That’s why they’re near enough to impossible to kill. One head sees everything you plan to do. You’re dead from the moment you decided to attack.”
If I thought his vein was jumping before, it was out of control then. “You’re trying my patience, boy.”
He shrugged. “You’re trying mine. We all know she didn’t do the reading because she spent the last week locked away in the reflection room. It has nothing to do with her work ethic and everything to do with the lack of light.
“You are picking on her, and my guess is it’s because torturing students is the only thing that gets your blood pumping south ever since the battlefield chewed you up and spat you out.”
Someone gasped. It was me. This was a different world from my schoolhouse. Back there, no one dared speak to an instructor that way.
“Out! Out of my classroom!”
Smirk hanging off his lips, he spread out his hands. “I’m sitting right here, waiting for you to make me.”
Hondros advanced on him—fist raised to unleash a punch or his power, I couldn’t tell.
“Stop!” I jumped up, toppling my chair. “It’s my fault. I should’ve found you after I was released and asked what the assignment was. It’s been a while since I’ve been in school— I didn’t think,” I rushed out. “I will answer the next question right, or I’ll do ten scrolls for each one I’ve missed.”
He turned on me, eyes bulging. I couldn’t even be sure he heard a word I said. “You, your protector”—he spat the word—“and the entire class will give me twenty scrolls if you respond incorrectly.”
“Oooh. Mean little son of Anteros, isn’t he?” She laughed a strange, tsking chuckle. “Fitting that a man of such misfortune should be host to the god of unrequited love. I’m sure torturing my sweet pet does make his blood run south. Surely no man or woman has given him the honor.”
I tried to mute her nastiness, focusing on the question that would seal my fellow novices’ hatred. “Agreed.”
“Where do mermaids make their home?”
I ran the question five times through my head before it penetrated. This couldn’t be real. Of all the questions, he asks this of a girl who grew up by the sea.
“Mermaids do not exist. Olympia was founded by people from many lands, and their history, myths, and traditions molded with those of ancient Greece to create something that is entirely our own. But there were never mermaids in Olympia. The closest creature is the half-woman, half-bird sirens who build their nests on rocky, uninhabited islands.”