Wildfires, Heroes of Olympus ₂

061, who is this DIVA

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
SILVIANA       DUVALL

Losing her sight had been bad enough. Being isolated from Percy had been horrible. Breaking multiple ribs was one of the worst pains Sylvie ever had to withstand.

But watching Percy die slowly from gorgon's blood poison and being unable to do anything about it—that was the worst curse of all.

Nemo slung Percy over her shoulder like a bag of sports equipment while the skeleton kitten Marlin curled up on Percy's back and purring. Nemo floated along at a fast pace, even for a Titaness, which made it impossible for Sylvie to keep up.

Walking with broken ribs was incredibly excruciating. It felt like her entire body was on fire, and there was an intense, sharp pain whenever she moved. Sylvie winced with every step. She tried keeping her torso as still as possible, so her movements were jerky, trying to compensate for the pain. But the agony was radiating outward, making her feel lightheaded and dizzy.

Her arms instinctively hugged her body, but that didn't provide much relief. Her lungs rattled. Her skin had started to blister again. She probably needed another drink of firewater, but they'd left the River Phlegethon behind. Her body was so sore and battered that she'd forgotten what it was like not to be in pain.

"How much longer?" she wheezed.

"Almost too long," Nemo called back. "But maybe not."

Very helpful, Sylvie thought, but she was too winded to say it. Her breath was already so shallow and rapid, instinctively trying to avoid deep inhales because the slightest expansion of her chest sent waves of searing pain across her broken ribs.

The landscape changed again. They were still going downhill, which should have made traveling easier; but the ground sloped at just the wrong angle—too steep to jog, too treacherous to let her guard down even for a moment. The surface was sometimes loose gravel, sometimes patches of slime. Sylvie stepped around random bristles sharp enough to impale her foot, and clusters of... well, not rocks exactly. More like warts the size of watermelons. If Sylvie had to guess (and she didn't want to) she supposed Nemo was leading her down the length of Tartarus's large intestine.

The air got thicker and stank of sewage. The darkness maybe wasn't quite as intense, but she could only see Nemo because of the mistiness fogging off her body and the point of her wiper spear. Sylvie noticed Nemo hadn't retracted the spearhead on her windshield wiper since their fight with the arai. That didn't reassure her.

Percy flopped around, causing the kitten to readjust his nest in the small of Percy's back. Occasionally Percy would groan in pain, and Sylvie felt like a fist was squeezing her heart.

She flashed back to her tea party with Annabeth, Finley, Piper, and Aphrodite in Charleston. That seemed so long ago now. Aphrodite had sighed and waxed nostalgia about the good old days—how love and war always went hand in hand.

Sylvie had always been on relatively good terms with Aphrodite. According to Grover, she'd talked Sylvie up to Percy back when Sylvie was still pining hopelessly for him. She tried nudging Sylvie's love life in the right direction, with the claims that she was "fond" of Sylvie, for whatever reasons. Because of this, Sylvie started thinking that maybe, just maybe, Aphrodite had happy plans for Sylvie's future.