My Ex From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy, #1)

It takes two to tangle (Part 1)

We ran for our lives. Instinct and adrenaline fueled me. Sometimes Theo was in the lead, sometimes I was. But we both seemed to have the same destination.

Many twists and turns down the hallway under the throne room and we burst out through a door onto the grounds of the palace, cutting off Hypnos' and Thanatos' pursuit and buying us a few critical seconds.

The earth shook violently under our feet as we fled. Theo grabbed my hand and we continued at breakneck speed. About a hundred feet ahead of us was a large, ornate fountain.

"Our way out!" he yelled, as we tried not to be upended by the rolling ground.

Only eighty feet to the fountain when a burst of flame hit my sleeve.

"Theo!"

"Move!" he ordered.

I bashed at my flaming arm as best I could while sprinting.

The sky above us had filled with Pyrosim. Fire rained down on us, fast and furious. I could feel it sparking in my hair.

Thirty feet to the fountain.

"Dive!" Theo shouted, pulling on my hand. "But don't look back!" He pulled me down in an action hero roll.

As we hit the ground, I was aware of a giant shadow soaring over me, landing somewhere at my back.

Before I could figure out what it was, the ground in front of me burst into flame from a direct hit from above. With no way to switch direction, momentum carried me right through it. Only the fact that I was still rolling and therefore smothering the fire saved me from becoming a one girl tiki torch.

Theo violently yanked me to my feet milliseconds later. I risked a look over my shoulder and screamed involuntarily.

On our heels was Cerberus, the hound of hell. He had bounded over us and now turned back in our direction for the hunt. As tall as he was wide, he was a canine killing machine. Hel-lo, Cujo.

Each of his three heads displayed massive fangs as they snarled and barked at us. His tail was scaly and spiked like that of a dragon and his massive paws ended in sharp claws. Every inch of the beast promised death.

"Told you not to look," Theo yelled.

For a girl who could barely run around the track, I may have broken some Olympic records. I could feel Cerberus' hot breath getting closer. I braced myself for the feel of his jaws ripping into me and crunching me to bits. By this point, I'd totally forgotten about the fire.

One of Cerberus' heads snatched the back of my jacket. I knew this was the end. By some fluke of luck, the ground quaked so violently that I was flung from his grasp just long enough for Theo to tumble us into the water in the fountain, through the gateway, and back to the school.

We were safe.

We were also filthy, ragged, and scorched. None of which mattered, because when I saw blue sky above my head, I felt reborn.

Also wet, because we were laying in the creek. My jeans had shrunk in the cold water. Which was funny since they should have expanded from the two tons of creek it felt like they'd absorbed. "I know we should get up but—" I was cut off by the creek bed bucking beneath me.

"The Underworld rages," Theo said as we crawled onto the shore to wait out the earthquake.

Normally I would have found this terrifying but after our little adventure, a minor natural disaster was a step in the right direction.

Cerberus' heads popped through, spraying water as they lashed out at me. Oh. Thing wanting me dead. Go back one step.

His front half emerged from the creek.

Without thinking, a ribbon of light snaked out of my left hand and, with one whipping motion, hefted a boulder from the creek bed at him. It cracked him hard enough to knock him back into Hades.

Cerberus disappeared and the rumbling stopped.

Finally, all was quiet.

I got to my feet. "Nice stealth moves there, buddy. Real safe. Remind me not to travel with you again any time soon."

"We got the pendant, we're alive. Pretty successful trip if you ask me." Theo looked at me hopefully. "Did retrieving it trigger your goddess memories?"

I shook my head. "No. Sorry."

"I had hoped ..." He frowned. "You always wore the sapphire. I thought if you had it back, it would help key you in to your Persephone self."

"I do feel better for having it," I assured him. "It just didn't help me remember anything. Is there anything else it does?"

Theo shrugged. "Only you would know that."

"Even if the sapphire is just a pendant with no special powers, my mom gave it to me and for me, that makes it priceless. Plus, Hades all busy being poisoned means he forgot to take it away from me. Of course, there is still the major downside that we're the ones framed for it." I gasped. "Is Hades dead? Are we going to be accused of murdering him?" Oh, that would be bad.

Theo shook his head. "I've never heard of anything that could actually kill the old bastard. He's down, but probably not out."

And yet, that wasn't much of a relief. "How could anyone know we'd be there to take the blame? Or was it just an unlucky coincidence?"

"I didn't tell anyone we were going." Theo was grim. "But unless we figure out who was behind it, we'll never be able to clear our names. You asking for the stupid seeds combined with us not eating them after Hades promised us immunity? We look guilty. All of the Underworld will be gunning for us. Worse than before."

I snapped my fingers. "Cassie! If she foresaw my transformation back to Persephone, what else could she know about? The Oracle had visions, right? What if Cassie saw the deception down in Hades? She might know who poisoned us. And that info might be the difference between life and death. Ours."

"It makes finding her even more important," Theo agreed. "So we hit up Keeper's office. Get something to lead us to either Cassie or Keeper herself."