LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE . . . hoo

I.

MIA KNEW HER story wasn't going to be happy.

She'd never expected her life to 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.

And, sure, Mia wasn't a great hero. She'd never been destined to be great — not when she'd grown up soulless, arrogant, cold-hearted, a weapon. One made to destroy the world and everyone in it just to get her way.

Still, this wasn't fair. She'd gone through so much to get to this point. Just when she'd got her brother back, when things had been looking up and she'd been reunited with her siblings, she, along with said friends that she'd betrayed in the past, had plunged to their deaths.

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

But Gaea wasn't like the stars. The Earth Mother was more vicious, more bloodthirsty. Mia could imagine her laughing as they fell into the depths.

She'd lost track of how long she, Percy, and Annabeth had been falling — hours? A day? It felt like an eternity. They'd been holding hands ever since they dropped into the chasm. They were still holding hands as they tumbled through absolute darkness.

Wind whistled in Mia's ears. The air grew hotter and damper, as if they were plummeting into the throat of a massive dragon.

She tried desperately to think of a plan to save them. She's their resident Underworld expert, after all. But she couldn't think of any way to reverse or even slow their fall.

None of them had the power to fly — not like Jason, who could control the wind, or Frank, who could turn into a winged animal. If they reached the bottom at this speed . . . well, she knew enough to know it would be horrible.

She was wondering whether they could actually survive the fall when her senses came back. The darkness took on a gray-red tinge. She could see Percy and Annabeth below her. The whistling in her ears turned into more of a roar. The air became intolerably hot, permeated with a smell like rotten eggs.

Suddenly, the chute they'd been falling through opened into a vast cavern. Maybe half a mile below them, Mia could see the bottom. For a moment she was too stunned to think properly. 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 Mia's 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 what she felt around her — and she felt a river. Water.

"Percy!" Mia yelled, letting him pull her in closer so he could hear her. "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. He might be able to cushion their fall somehow. Of course Mia had heard horrible stories about the rivers of the Underworld. Hell, she'd seen all of them multiple times. They could take away your memories, or burn your body and soul to ashes. But she decided not to think about that. This was their only chance.

The river hurtled toward them. At the last second, Percy yelled defiantly. The water erupted in a massive geyser and swallowed them whole.

* * *

The impact didn't kill her, but the cold nearly did.

Freezing water shocked the air right out of her lungs. Her limbs turned rigid, and she lost her grip on Percy. She began to sink. Strange wailing sounds filled her ears — millions of heartbroken voices, as if the river were made of distilled sadness. The voices were worse than the cold. They weighed her down and made her numb.