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Chapter 19
Elyse
Darkness shrouded me, leaving me unable to hear or see a thing. The silence deafened me. And I struggled to breathe. It was almost as if the blackness around me was a cloud and breathing through the humidity was impossible.
Where was I? Why couldn’t I find myself? I wasn’t in my body because I’d died. I had no idea how I knew these things, but something about me felt ridiculously detached. I wasn’t ready to go through to my final resting place or be dragged down to the Underworld like the rest of the humans.
But for some reason, I couldn’t go home, either.
“Hello?” I called into the abyss.
No reply. The emptiness around me seemed so vast, and it echoed with my loneliness. I couldn’t find anyone, and there was no one here to help me, no one to reach out to, no one to bring me back. This shouldn’t have happened—I still had one more life. I should’ve been able to wake up.
How had I died, anyway? I couldn’t remember anything or anyone. But a terrible darkness pressed in on me and kept me isolated from everything that should have anchored me.
I closed my eyes and tried to focus on who I was. Elyse Lowe. Descendant of the Lowe family. Protector of the humans. Zeus’s power ran through my veins. And it was for this reason I couldn’t die. Not yet. I still had business to take care of. My story wasn’t finished.
As if this affirmation was all I’d needed, I started floating. I drifted through the darkness, up, up, up.
When I opened my eyes, I gasped for breath, as if I’d been drowning. I sat up on the bed and groaned, feeling as if I’d been hit by a bus. Everything ached, and a terrible headache thrummed through my skull. But when I inspected my body, there wasn’t a mark in sight. No bruises, no blood, aside from some on the clothes I still wore.
So why did it hurt so much? Before, the pain had been gone completely. The other two times I died, I’d woken up perfectly restored.
I lay back onto the comfort of my bed, cocooned by the blanket, and closed my eyes. Now I was conscious again, I remembered everything from my last death. Hades had fought X, stepping in so he wouldn’t kill me. The darkness had been too much, a thick cloud of black fog that wrapped around me and wouldn’t let go. I’d whirled around, trying to shake it off. It had suffocated me, and I hadn’t been able to breathe.
And the next moment, I only knew the sensation of falling, the wind whistling past my ears.
And then, nothing.
While I lay on the bed, the aches in my body started to fade away. It was almost as if my body was slow on the uptake, trying to figure out what was going on after I’d woken up again from being dead. It took a while, but eventually I stopped hurting. I felt stiff and tender, but I wasn’t sore. Still, I’d lost my last extra life, and that reality chilled me. When I died next time, there was no coming back. I’d either join the other souls or vanish from existence if X got his claws into me. And it terrified me to know how close I stood to losing everything, but I refused to let fear exist in my mind. Not when I had X to defeat and Catina to save. Those were my priorities.
I pushed myself up on the bed, sitting again.
“Hello?” I called out, the same way I had in the darkness. I expected an answer. Every time I’d died before, someone had been here.
But this time, there was no answer. I was completely alone.
I didn’t even know who’d brought me home. Hades? It was almost too much to expect from him. He’d made it very clear he didn’t care. I wasn’t sure why he’d then attempted to save me, but I wasn’t taking it as something I could hold on to.
In a lot of ways, Hades had betrayed me. Even though this time, it was X’s fault that I’d died. Indirectly or not, the bastard got what he wanted.
I slid off the bed, stiffly staggered to the bathroom, and splashed water on my face. I studied myself in the mirror. The reflection of myself showed me looking hollowed out, as if I hadn’t eaten for a couple of days. Dark circles sat under my eyes. Maybe I hadn’t slept, either.
Did being dead count?
What day was it? How long had I been out for? I headed to the bedroom and looked for my phone, finding it on the carpet near the door. Whoever brought me back must have dropped it on the way in. I picked it up, and the battery was dead.
After putting it on charge, I sat down on the bed again, overwhelmed by another wave of darkness. The power was strong this time, death’s call so loud that for a moment, I couldn’t hear anything else. It was as if I was back in that strange limbo, with nothing but darkness to keep me company. Was this how my dad felt during his last life? He’d once mentioned something to me about feeling like he was drowning all the time, and now I understood what he’d meant. The sensation crashed through me like waves, engulfing me, pulling me under.
I scrubbed my face with my hands and shook my head, trying to get rid of the feeling. Instead, I dug deep for my power to push the new energy away, but just as with any other time I’d died, the power felt unstable, fluctuating.
It would take a while before I figured out how to use it. This was the part I hated most about dying. You know, aside from actually dying.
What bothered me most was that the darkness grew worse each time. I was terrified of what would come next. Would I drown in darkness for eternity? I shivered, unable to shake off the tendrils of death that still clung to me.
What if I didn’t want to do this anymore? What if I was tired of battling the inner energy? I couldn’t die another time without it being final. If X found me again, if anything went wrong this time, it was the end of the line for me. My hands trembled at my sides, and sweat drenched my skin. My awareness grew that I’d been a fool to sacrifice one of my lives when X confronted me in this bedroom before. Now, with no more lives left, I worried. I should’ve thought it through. Should’ve considered what it meant.
But I’d been thinking as a warrior, focusing on quick survival. I’d only thought about the here and now, not about the complete war.
