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‘It’s brilliant,’ said Ephialtes. ‘And it willdefinitelyhelp us go viral!’
Nico looked at Nyx in panic. Then back at the giants. He thought about trying to make a break for it, but he was deep in Tartarus, surrounded by four immortals, with barely enough energy to stand. Maybe if he could goad them into fighting one another, he could sneak away …
‘I can see you plotting, Nico,’ said Nyx, her voice syrupy. ‘But there is no escape for you.’
‘I thought you resented Gaia.’ Nico turned to Hypnos. ‘You called her intolerable. Why do you take orders from her?’
Hypnos shook his head. ‘It’s pointless to try dividing us, demigod.’
‘Does that mean we can have him now?’ asked Otis. ‘Gaia will reward you for your cooperation, Nyx.’
Nyx didn’t frown, exactly, since she had no mouth, but Nico could sense displeasure in the darkening churn of her face. ‘I do notneedrewards. And it is one thing for me to support my primordial sister’s awakening. It is another thing for you to barge into my home and demand –’
Nico wasn’t going to wait around for the result of this negotiation. He sprinted for the archway. Hypnos shouted. The giants cried out in alarm as Nico dived between Otis’s snake legs and came up running. He was almost to the exit when two new shapes closed ranks to block his path – horses with bodies of pitch-black void just like Nyx, their disturbingly sharp silvery teeth gnashing at Nico. Giant vampire horses.
‘Nope!’ Nico cried, and veered into the woods.
The horses whinnied. The giants bellowed, ‘Get him!’ and ‘No, dude, you get him!’ but Nyx’s voice rose above the din.
‘Let him try,’ she said. ‘Go ahead, Nico di Angelo. Try your best to escape.’
Nico knew she was toying with him, but he didn’t have much of a choice. He ran as fast as he could, following the perimeter of the garden. A dark wall hemmed it in – much too tall to climb, made of seething ash particles like the archway. Nico considered trying to shadow-travel through it, but even if he’d had the concentration and the energy, something told him shadow-travel in Nyx’s sanctuary would be a very bad idea.
He kept running, his clothes snagging on briars and tree branches, until he stopped short, staring at a house that should not exist.
Nico had seen so many terrible things over the course of this journey through Tartarus, but this? This was what broke him.
Thelivinghouse towered above him – its many gables and overlooks and bay windows shifting from one shape to another, each one like aneye, dilating, constricting, swivelling to focus on him. Nico could sense them inspecting him, peering deep into his soul. The black shutters snapped hungrily. The double doors yawned, inviting him in past bristling rows of black teeth.
He dropped to his knees. As the house shifted and shuddered, Nico realized what it was made of. Like the archway, like the garden wall, the house was constructed from black particles – but these particles weren’t dust or ash or stone as Nico had thought. Each and every speck was an insect. Billions of tiny wings, pincers, and stingers swarmed together, somehow forming the shape of the mansion and not collapsing. Nico knew deep in his heart that he should not be looking at this, thatno oneshould be looking at this.
Suddenly he felt a cool hand under his chin. Nyx lifted Nico’s head and tenderly wiped the tears from his cheeks.
‘I told you there was no escape,’ she said gently, almost as if shepitiedhim.
‘What … What is this place?’ he asked.
‘The Mansion of Night. It is my home.’
Nico whimpered. ‘Why? Why design something so awful?’
‘You have seen nothing but the smallest part. You mortals have a phrase for that: the tip of the iceberg. It is the purest expression of who I am.’
He sobbed and shut his eyes, but he could still envision it in his mind. He imagined himself breaking down, crumbling into a billion swarming insects that would slowly be absorbed by that house.
‘Your filter has burned away,’ Nyx said softly. ‘Few demigods have ever entered Tartarus … Fewer still have seen my home. The Mist clings to you, trying to protect your sanity from the true appearance of things …’ She caressed Nico’s face. ‘But now you can see it all, can’t you, child?’
‘Yes,’ he said, wishing it wasn’t true. Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a bad thing to be drawn into the black hole of Nyx’s gaze, to be crushed into nothingness by her gravitational pull. It might hurt less than seeing the world like this: nothing but swarms of dark, ravenous bugs, pushed into whatever patterns pleased the goddess of night.
Nyx lowered herself until her head was level with Nico’s. ‘Good … I am going to give you over to the giants, because I believe in what Gaia is doing. But if there is any future in which you survive – in which you and your little demigod friends aren’t destroyed – then we will continue this conversation, Nico di Angelo …’ She rose and spread her smoky wings to their full span. ‘I will make you choose your true nature. You won’t be able to escape it.’
Nico may have whimpered. He was too terrified to even be ashamed.
Nyx turned to the giants. ‘Take him.’
Behind Otis and Ephialtes, the massive fanged stallions snorted and pawed the ground.
Nyx raised her hand. ‘Settle down, Shade, Shadow … There will be other flesh for you to devour.’
