ENTRAPPED ₂

97

ETHAN NAKAMURA LOVED NICO DI ANGELO VERY MUCH.

He loved him when he was moody. He loved him when he was happy. He loved him when he was pining over the idiotic Percy Jackson. Nico was easily one of Ethan's top five people in the entire world.

He loved him a little less when Nico shadow-traveled them over a volcano.

Ethan Nakamura was a person that did not fear many things. There were only three things that really scared him, in no particular order:

1. His father.

2. Losing someone he loved.

3. Heights.

He knew that the last one was completely irrational, but he had always been afraid of heights, for as long as he could remember. The only thing that really helped his fear was Madeleine. The only time he felt safe in the air was when he was in her arms.

She, of course, was not there.

Ethan's first view of southern Italy was from five thousand feet in the air. To the west, along the crescent of the Gulf of Naples, the lights of sleeping cities glittered in the predawn gloom. A thousand feet below him, a half-mile-wide caldera yawned at the top of a mountain, white steam pluming from the center.

Ethan handled shadow travel better than Reyna, who got groggy and nauseous, but it still took him a moment to get oriented with the scenery. His body had reacted before his mind, and now ever single muscle was tensed to breaking, and his oxygen was trapped in his lungs, and he thought he was probably going to die now.

No, he thought. No. Madeleine. He pictured her face in his mind and forced himself to concentrate. How did they get out of this?

"Nico!" Reyna yelled.

"Whaaaaa!" Nico flailed, almost slipping out of Ethan's grip. He held tight, and he felt Reyna clinging to the back of his shirt. Normally, Ethan hated being touched if you weren't on his select list of people he adored, but he understood her motive. If they got separated now, they were all dead.

They plummeted toward the volcano as their largest piece of luggage―the forty-foot-tall Athena Parthenos―trailed after them, leashed to a harness on Nico's back like a very ineffective parachute. Ethan hated that stupid fucking statue.

"That's Vesuvius below us!" Reyna shouted over the wind. "Nico, teleport us out of here!"

His eyes were wild and unfocused. His dark feathery hair whipped around his face like a raven shot out of the sky. "I―I can't! No strength!"

"Get the strength, you idiot!" Ethan screamed in an embarrassingly high-pitched voice. "Reyna, lend him your strength!"

"Nico, shadow-travel," Reyna ordered.

Nico stared at her blankly. "How are you going to―"

"Do it!" Reyna reached out and grasped Nico's hand tightly, her knuckles almost white.

Nico gasped. Color returned to his face. Just before they hit the volcano's steam plume, they slipped into shadows.

The air turned frigid. The sound of the wind was replaced by a cacophony of voices whispering in a thousand languages. Ethan's insides flipped upside down. He felt like he had been submerged in an ice bath.

Then his vision cleared. His feet rested on solid ground.

The eastern sky had begun to lighten. For a moment Ethan thought they were back in New Rome. Doric columns lined an atrium the size of a baseball diamond. In front of him, a bronze satyr stood in the middle of a sunken fountain decorated with mosaic tile.