4. Nyssa
Nyssa
Charon casually flicked his playing card atop the pile, lips pursed in faux concentration.
“Pay the Ferryman,” he declared smugly.
Sure enough, his cards totalled thirteen — a winning hand.
Scowling, I replied, “How is it that you always win?”
“Because you keep losing.”
Charon mimicked my posture: a frown, arms crossed, lower lip stuck out. I managed to appear unruffled for all of three seconds before dissolving into a fit of giggles.
“Another round,” I laughed, leaning back on the fuzzy, multicoloured rug my mother had insisted on placing before the hearth.
It still bore the scars of our misguided childhood attempts to play pretend flame-wielders.
We’d scavenged fallen branches from the gardens, tossed them into the fire, and waited ‘til their ends lit — then proceeded to spar with our flaming branch-swords. In the living room, much to my father’s delight.
Melted patches now dotted the fabric behind Charon, and I smiled at the memory.
“You’ll owe me a hundred gold drachmas if you keep going the way you are,” he huffed amusedly. Still, he scooped up the pile of tattered cards anyway — their edges worn from years of use — and began to shuffle them.
Very. Slowly.
That Furies-damned dimple appeared as he smirked. I returned it while plotting and gleefully bore witness to his faltering grin.
I snickered as Charon flinched with his whole body, which then turned to snorting amusement as he flicked a hand through his hair and launched something black across the rug.
He leapt to his feet with a scream — a very masculine, very godly scream — and I howled as a fist-sized tarantula, crafted entirely from shadows, scurried across the now-scattered deck of cards to crawl into my waiting palm.
I couldn’t remember the last time my belly hurt from the intensity of a laugh, but it did now. I laughed until tears leaked from my eyes and my stomach cramped. Charon, still horrified, did not take his eyes off the offending creature, lest it reappear atop his head.
His scowl deepened as I gently placed the spider upon my shoulder and bent to collect the strewn cards, still sniggering.
“Cruel, vicious thing,” he accused.
“I’ve been called worse,” I replied, smirking as I slid a card his way.
“And you’ve earned worse,” he quipped, arching a fair brow. His chagrin faded, features sobering in an instant. “You’ll do worse, Nyss. You'll face worse, if you go through with these trials.”
“I have to, Char. Or they’ll start asking why Hades himself isn’t competing.”
Charon grimaced. “Right, well… You can’t exactly tell them where he went, now can you?”
“There’s another thing to consider,” I began. “You heard Zeus. The prophecy?—”
“Fuck the prophecy,” Charon snapped, slamming a hand down. “Fuck the Fates, and the gods, and the realms!” His voice shook with fury, cheeks flushed, eyes dark.
I placed my hand gently beside his, waiting — silently imploring him to just look at me.
“I have to,” I repeated quietly. “You weren’t there when the crown almost settled on my head. You didn’t feel the weight of it, how fucking heavy fate felt.” I implored him to listen, to try and understand. “It felt like it screamed at me. Begged me to take it. To earn it. To set things right.”
He finally looked up, pale blue eyes shuttering.
“You know how dangerous this is, right?” He leaned in, head tilted, brows drawn. “How easy it would be for any one of them to take vengeance for Zeus’ sentencing? How his son might want a poetic justice of his own making?”
I nodded. I knew the danger all too well.
“Any one of them would be glad to send you right back here. Only, instead of my beautiful best friend — alive, safe, and whole — begging me to dance, or pestering me to play Ferryman… I’ll be the one ferrying you across the River as nothing more than a wisp of a soul.”
Charon reached out, his hand hovering over my arm like he was fighting to maintain my invisible boundary. Then, with a sharp motion, his fingers flared and he pulled away, hand roughly raking through his untameable mane instead.
“Lucky I have you by my side then,” I said quietly.
“That’s exactly my point, though!” he yelled, shooting to his feet, and began pacing back and forth in front of the hearth. “Nyss, I can’t protect you in the trials. I can’t save you or help from the sidelines. All I can do is stand idly by, twiddling my fucking thumbs, watching as you suffer.”
His voice broke on the last word and his face crumpled.
I unfurled slowly, approaching him as cautiously as I would a trapped animal.
Tentatively, I reached out and tugged gently on a lock of his wavy blonde hair.
Charon’s devastated face met mine through the curtain of his unruly mop, and we both watched as the strands in my grasp withered to white, their colour and vibrance stolen by my touch. I dropped them quickly. The colour returned, but my heart twisted painfully in my chest.
I was forever withdrawing, forever mourning the lost moments and intimacies I could never have.
“I don’t need your protection, Char. I am my own weapon,” I said sadly. “I just need you in my corner, giving me a soft place to land. Like you always do.”
“Zeus’ murderer is still roaming around up there, too,” he choked out.
“I know.”
He sighed resignedly. “Just promise me you’ll be safe?”
“I promise I’ll try,” I told him, though we both knew it all came down to the whims of fate, regardless of what promises we might make.
He bent and pressed the ghost of a kiss to the top of my head, a silent plea woven into the faintest of touches. Without another word, Charon exited the room, the weight of his worry settling upon my shoulders.
Hermes had given us a week to prepare for the first trial.
One week of studying, training, and fraternising with the enemy.
We each had the unique opportunity to study our competition up close: to learn their weaknesses and how to exploit them; to demonstrate our strengths and remind them why they should avoid fucking with us.
For me, that meant nobody wanted to come within twenty feet. Everyone knew I was my father’s daughter. Word had spread years ago about the manifestation of my gifts, how they’d exploded out of me and left literal casualties in their wake.
I was dangerous. They all knew it.
At least I didn’t have to deal with awkward small talk.
The newly constructed training arena rang with the sounds of clashing steel, huffed breaths, and feet pounding against the hard earth. Champions sparred, ran laps of the stadium, or honed their weapon skills in the open centre.
Aphrodite ran the track alongside Hestia.
Athena moved through a series of slow stretches.
The sons of Zeus and Poseidon sparred on the mats.
Unfortunately for Leander, it appeared to be a very one-sided match.
The brooding white-haired storm-wielder seemed to be holding back, yet still had the son of the sea in a headlock, and enough spare focus to glance up and grin at me while doing it.
Cocky bastard.
I noted Artemis standing next to a target in the arena’s heart, watching her daughter move with the kind of effortless grace that came from years of training. The girl loosed three arrows in quick succession, each silver projectile thudding dead-centre.
Apollo grinned and immediately followed suit — his last golden arrow splitting one of her silver ones right down the shaft.
Impressive.
Ares’ champion, apparently unimpressed, launched his spear like a javelin.
It tore through the air, whistling faintly, and sank deep into the very same bullseye, knocking the arrows to the ground.
The twins whirled around, their expressions as opposite as night and day.
Artemis scowled while Apollo beamed at the red-haired spear-thrower.
My dark brows lifted higher.
I take it back — that was impressive.
The nameless god winked at me and blew a fiery kiss. It singed the air as it passed, brushing my cheek with heat. A blush bloomed across my skin, though I wasn’t sure if it was from the heated kiss or his attention. I didn’t care to analyse.
I chose to ignore both the god and my body’s reaction to him.
Taking Athena’s lead, I eased through my usual series of stretches.
It felt good to be moving and alleviating some of the restless energy I’d unwittingly held onto.
My muscles protested at first, but I welcomed the burn, grateful for the comfort of familiarity.
As I bent to grasp my toes, I felt the prickle of lingering stares. My leather-clad ass was squarely on display for half the arena. A knowing smirk pulled at my lips.
Impressive, yet still male.
I looked up and caught the eye of a beautiful brunette trainer. Unashamed, she shot me a wink before resuming her sparring.
And female, apparently .
I grinned, fully letting that one go to my head.
Charon moved into position opposite me and tossed a wickedly sharp blade my way. I twirled it in my hand, testing the weight. It was no shadow blade, but it would do.
Gods had no use for practice blades — wood could not withstand our strength, and wounds from steel healed too fast to matter. Our gifts pulsed through our veins, stitching us back together almost as soon as we were cut.
By the age of maturity, around twenty-five, we were virtually impossible to kill.
The only exceptions thus far: a Titan-forged weapon or a death-wielder’s power.
Thankfully, those were extremely rare. They’d presumably all been destroyed after the war, and the Titans themselves were locked away in the deepest trench of Tartarus for millennia .
I briefly wondered which artefact — and which god — had managed to take out Zeus. It made no sense to kill the King of Gods and risk another more egomaniacal figure taking his place. Or to risk triggering the Ascension Rite — not unless they would benefit from doing so.
Unless Zeus had wronged them. In that case, the list of suspects was miles long.
A sharp sting across my forearm snapped me back to the present. Charon quirked his cocky brow, coaxing a scowl in return.
“Try to keep up,” he teased.
I feinted left, but he moved with me. My sword slashed through empty air, meeting no resistance; Charon was already whirling, blade moving with the surety of someone who knew my every manoeuvre before I made it.
Because he did.
He was my instructor and training partner, the one who had drilled every skill, every instinct, every reaction into my arsenal.
Not just because the Underworld was short on subjects, and the list of those willing to spar with the daughter of Death was even shorter, but because he was one of the best the three realms had to offer.
No one had bested Charon in years. Granted, he had not pitched himself against the likes of Athena or Ares, but he had surpassed my father.
The fact that he had honed me like any other weapon also meant I knew his habits just as intimately as he knew mine. We were hewn from the same cloth, he and I. Forged by the same upbringing, the same grief, the same steel.
I darted forward, narrowly avoiding the strike meant for my thigh, and simultaneously drove my sword upwards, aiming for his reinforced bronze chest plate.
Charon parried, metal clattering against metal as we traded a flurry of quick blows.
My chest heaved. Muscles burned. My arms reverberated with the shock of each clash.
We were too evenly matched. Neither could gain the upper hand. It was a well-rehearsed dance of mind just as much as body, and we flowed like water — spinning and clashing with a smooth precision that bordered on choreography.
Maybe it was, thanks to two decades of training.
As per usual, Charon’s footwork was impeccable. He dodged and weaved past my every attack, lithely traipsing around the mat. I jabbed. He sidestepped, as elegant and fluid as the River Styx.
I was so busy admiring his easy grace that I almost missed the sharp slash aimed at my shoulder. Ducking just in time, I felt the breeze from his blade slice through the air above my head, severing the stray ends of my braid.
“Hey!” I chastised.
He smirked, watching the strands float to the floor.
“I did not sign up for a haircut.”
My eyes narrowed. I twisted, sweeping my leg out in a sharp, vicious arc. My boot connected strongly with his calves, and gravity did the rest, dropping him to the ground with a satisfying huff.
It was my turn to grin.
“Maybe I’m not the one who needs to keep up,” I said, laughing.
Charon jumped up with a growl, twirling his sword and readying himself for our final waltz.
I swung — a sharp, angled strike aimed at his hip. Predictably, he deflected, the clash of weapons ringing out in the sudden hush surrounding us. I lunged again, forcing his guard higher, then I stepped unexpectedly into his space.
In my free hand, I conjured a dagger made of shadow. Its sharp tip now pressed against his ribcage.
But his blade was already at my throat.
A perfect stalemate.
Charon relented first. Breathing heavily, he slowly withdrew the sword from my neck. The dagger vanished from my palm, melting into the lines of my hand like it had never existed.
I broke eye contact, and only then noticed how quiet the arena had become. Our breaths were suddenly a little too loud.
Our heads darted around in sync. Apparently, we had become this evening’s entertainment.
Every champion and their partner had stopped.
Gods and goddesses alike had gone still, their eyes glued to our battle, on the brutal efficiency of our sparring.
Our skills were too brazen to ignore. We had put on one hell of a show, and like all good art, our audience didn’t know what to make of it.
Murmurs rippled between them. Expressions ranged from begrudging respect to outright contempt. Ares’ champion grinned like a madman beside Zeus’ son, who loomed half a foot taller and glared down at us with arms crossed over his absurdly large chest.
“Your footwork still needs attention,” Charon said, playfully tapping my ankle with the flat of his sword.
“But it’s your eyes that get you in trouble.
They give your every move away, like an open book.
Perhaps tonight you can practice not skewering someone alive with a look,” he added with a laugh.
I glanced around as the others packed quickly and left. No doubt hurrying home to ready themselves for this evening’s arduous banquet after we’d stolen a portion of their primping time.
“Now what would be the fun in that?” I replied coyly.
A roguish grin crossed my face as I felt the familiar relief of releasing my shadows. I took Charon’s extended elbow, and together we stepped through the shadow portal, letting the darkness swallow us whole. Taking us home. To where we were the things that went bump in the night.