This Cold Year ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase²

―i. misery river

NINE DAYS.

As they fell, Naomi thought about Hesiod, the old Greek poet who'd speculated it would take nine days to fall from earth to Tartarus.

She sincerely hoped Hesiod was wrong. She'd lost track of how long she, Annabeth, and Percy had been falling—hours? A day? It felt like an eternity.

They'd been holding hands since they dropped into the chasm. Now, Percy pulled her and Annabeth close, the three of them clinging to each other as they tumbled through absolute darkness.

Naomi should have been at least a little in her element—she was a daughter of Persephone and a legacy of Erebus, the literal personification of darkness. But her powers had failed her, and even now, it was as if the darkness had rejected her, refusing to give her the control she'd come to take for granted.

Wind whistled in her ears. The air grew hotter and damper, as if they were plummeting into the throat of a massive dragon. Helplessly, she tried to take hold of the darkness, to shadow-travel them anywhere that wasn't the seemingly bottomless pit.

But the shadows didn't answer to her anymore. They'd abandoned her.

And what was she without them?

She wrapped her arms around Percy and Annabeth and tried not to sob. In all the time she'd known she was a demigod, she'd accepted that her life would never be easy. Most demigods died young at the hands of terrible monsters. That was the way it had been since ancient times. The Greeks invented tragedy. They knew the greatest heroes didn't get happy endings.

Still, this wasn't fair. They'd been through so much in the past half-year—she and Percy had lost their memories and been displaced to Camp Jupiter, separated from Annabeth, and just when things had been looking up and the three of them had been reunited, they had plunged to their deaths.

Even the gods couldn't devise a fate so twisted.

But Gaea wasn't like other gods. The Earth Mother was older, more vicious, more bloodthirsty. Naomi could picture the old goddess laughing as they fell into the depths.

No, not laughing. Naomi could still remember the roar as they fell into the chasm. This wasn't apart of Gaea's master plan. Something had gone wrong.

Underneath the wind racing past her ears, Naomi heard Annabeth's voice: "I love you."

Naomi's throat refused to let her speak, but she tightened her arms around Annabeth and Percy, hoping they'd understand what she couldn't say out loud: I love you, too.

Below them, Naomi saw the chute they'd been falling through open into a vast cavern. Maybe half a mile below, Naomi could see the bottom. For a moment, she was too stunned to even think. The entire island of Manhattan could have fit inside this cavern—and she couldn't even see its full extent.

Red clouds hung in the air like vaporized blood. The landscape—at least what she could see of it—was rocky black plains, punctuated by jagged mountains and fiery chasms. To the left, the ground dropped off in a series of cliffs, like colossal steps leading deeper into the abyss.

The stench of sulfur made it hard to concentrate, but she focused on the ground directly below them and saw a ribbon of glittering black liquid—a river.

"Percy!" she yelled. "Water!"

She gestured frantically. Percy's face was hard to read in the dim red light. He looked shell-shocked and terrified, but he nodded as if he understood.

Percy could control water—assuming that was water below them. He might be able to cushion their fall somehow. Of course, Naomi knew about the rivers of the Underworld. The River Lethe could take your memories; the River Phlegethon could burn your body and soul to ashes. She couldn't tell what river it was below them.