Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“It’s okay if you can’t. The first couple times, I had issues with it too.” She takes a breath and her hand falls to her gently rounded stomach. “But if you can’t, then you’ll be a distraction, and we can’t afford that right now. If you want, you can wait here, and I’ll—”
“I can handle it.” I squeeze Orpheus’s arm and step out of his embrace. There’s absolutely no way I’m going to allow them to shuffle me off to the side. I’ve fought too hard to be taken seriously. But that’s not even the driving force right now. I need to see Charon, to know he’s going to be okay. My sister looks doubtful, so I repeat, “Persephone. I can handle it.”
To her credit, she doesn’t question me again. She nods. “Then let’s go.” She turns and strides out of the room.
I go to follow but stop and turn to Orpheus. He looks just as worried as I feel. I open my mouth, but he gets there before I’m able to speak. “If you’re about to offer me an out, I don’t want it. I’m worried about him too.”
“I know you don’t like blood.” Gods, I hope Persephone overstated things. The truth is that I don’t like blood much either. I learned to deal with it. You can’t live on a farm—even a very rich one—without bumping up against the messiness of life, but it never got easier. And this is people. My stomach twists in knots.
Orpheus steps around me and offers me his arm. The gentlemanly gesture should look ridiculous, especially considering our current circumstances, but on him it’s as natural as breathing. “We’re wasting time.” He says it gently, as if I can’t see the tension in his jaw or the worry in his dark eyes. “Are you ready?”
“No.” But I place my hand in the crook of his arm, and we walk out the door together.
Persephone leads us to a part of the house that I’ve never been in before. Based on my mental map, it’s on the opposite side of the garage than I usually enter from. I understand why it’s new to me the moment we walk through the doors and find an arsenal. There are gun racks filled with weapons on three of the walls. There’s also what appears to be tactical gear and a number of other things I have no names for. That’s not where my sister heads though.
Her destination is a door I missed on my first glance. It leads into a hallway studded with more doors. She glances over her shoulder at me. “This is where most of our staff sleeps, or at least the ones who don’t want bedrooms on the second floor.”
Considering I’m the only one I know who sleeps on the second floor, it seems like everyone who works for Hades and Persephone prefers to be housed down here. “I see.”
We turn a corner and push through double set of doors into a room identical to one we would find in a hospital. The only difference is that it’s quite a bit bigger than I expected, but if I don’t miss my guess, they have everything they need here in order to conduct a surgery. The room isn’t empty either. There’s a trio of people in scrubs at the sinks on the far side of the room, washing their hands. Hades stands a few feet back from them with his arms crossed over his chest and a forbidding expression on his face. It only lightens a little bit when he catches sight of my sister as she hurries to him and throws herself into his arms.
I’m happy my brother-in-law is safe. Really, I am. But he’s not what catches and holds my attention. No, that’s the five gurneys with bodies on them.
My legs are shaking, but I muscle past that instinctive response as I carefully cross the room to look down at the people. Two of them are burned so badly I’m not even sure who they are. I recognize the other two, but I don’t pause until I get to the final one. To Charon.
At the sight of him on his side, my knees really do buckle. Only Orpheus’s arm around my waist keeps me off the floor. I suspected it would be bad when Persephone tried to warn me away, but I had no idea. Charon isn’t as badly injured as the first two, at least on the front. But his back? The burned skin has my stomach attempting to rebel. “Oh, Charon.”
“The burns are nasty, but he’ll be fine as long as they don’t get infected.” This is from the nurse who I hadn’t even realized had approached. He’s a tall white man with an easygoing smile and a comforting energy. “We gave him something for the pain, which is why he’s unconscious right now.”