This Cold Year ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase²

―iii. kelli's kind of a bi-

THIS WAS BY-FAR THE LEAST ROMANTIC WALK Naomi and her partners had ever been on.

They followed the River Phlegethon, stumbling over the glassy black terrain, jumping crevices, and hiding behind rocks whenever the vampire girls slowed in front of them.

It was tricky to stay far enough away to avoid getting spotted but close enough to keep Kelli and her comrades in view through the dark hazy air. The heat from the river baked Naomi's skin. Every breath was like inhaling particles of glass. When they needed a drink, the only refreshment they had was liquid fire.

At least Annabeth's ankle seemed to have healed. She was hardly limping at all. Her various cuts and scrapes had faded. She'd tied her hair back with a strip of denim torn from her pants leg, and in the fiery light of the river, her gray eyes flickered.

Percy seemed to have shaken off the worst of his shock. He was standing straighter now, his grip on Riptide so tight that his knuckles had turned white. His sea-colored eyes scanned their surroundings constantly, looking for the next threat.

Despite being beat-up, sooty, and looking like complete messes, they looked great to Naomi.

So what if they were in Tartarus? So what if they stood a slim chance of surviving? So what if Naomi's prophecy predicted her downfall?

Okay, so maybe that last one was a little hard to find a silver lining for.

Naomi didn't mean to, but she couldn't stop thinking about the middle two lines of her prophecy: Darkness falls where the ancestor dwells, when hope is lost and terror swells. Unless there was something worse waiting for them, Naomi was fairly sure this was where hope was lost and terror swelled. It sure felt like it, at least. Which meant this was where darkness would fall. Where the ancestor dwells.

Who this ancestor was, though, she had no idea. Maybe if she wasn't too busy trying to survive this hellscape, she might've been able to come up with a guess or two, but...

Well, she was too busy trying to survive. 

Time was impossible to judge down here. They trudged along, following the river as it cut through the harsh landscape. Fortunately, the empousai weren't exactly speed-walkers. They shuffled on their mismatched bronze and donkey legs, hissing and fighting with each other like a colony of feral cats, clearly in no hurry to reach the Doors of Death.

Once, the demons sped up in excitement and swarmed something that looked like a beached carcass on the riverbank. Naomi couldn't tell what it was—a fallen monster? An animal of some kind?

The empousai attacked it with relish, like piranhas in a feeding frenzy.

When the demons moved on, the trio reached the spot and found nothing left but a few splintered bones and glistening stains drying in the heat of the river. Naomi had no doubt the empousai would devour demigods with the same go-getter attitude.

"Come on." Percy led them gently away from the scene. "We don't want to lose them."

The walking gave Naomi far too much time to think, and eventually, her thoughts shifted from her death prophecy to despair. After all this time, after all these battles and injuries and losses, they ended up here? Was it so unfair to think they deserved a break?

She kept hoping things would get better for her and her partners, but their lives just got more and more dangerous, as if the Three Fates were up there spinning their futures with barbed wire instead of thread just to see how much three demigods could tolerate.

After a few more miles, the empousai disappeared over a ridge. When Naomi, Percy, and Annabeth caught up, they found themselves at the edge of another massive cliff. The River Phlegethon spilled over the side in jagged tiers of fiery waterfalls. The demon ladies were picking their way down the cliff, jumping from ledge to ledge like mountain goats.