16. Nyssa
Nyssa
I breached the surface of the River, and somehow also the bathtub. My eyes snapped open as my lungs dragged in a rasping gulp of air. It scraped down my throat, loud and raw, as I took in the chaos surrounding me.
“How dare you?!” Charon roared, just as the dragon screeched and flapped her wings.
He threw his arms around my upper body — still clad in my fighting leathers, now uncomfortably soaked — and caged me into a rough hug.
His shoulder slammed into my sternum, and I coughed up a black, viscous sludge — silt from the bottom of the Styx.
He pulled back, and we both watched as it drifted to the bottom of the claw-footed tub like a leaf on the breeze.
“How dare I what?” I rasped, perplexed.
The dragon sniffed at my skin from her perch on the tub’s rim. Charon examined me with wide eyes.
“I don’t understand,” he said softly, melancholy weaving through his voice.
“After you drank from the vial, you sank beneath the water. I couldn’t pull you back up,” he choked.
“No amount of pulling or wrenching worked… it’s like you were fused to the tub, or…
or like you suddenly weighed a tonn e?—”
“Rude,” I interjected.
“—but… you… I thought… you died, Nyssa. Or nearly died. I could have sworn your heart stopped.” His face fell, and the sight tore my heart in two.
“I’m okay,” I whispered, tugging gently on a lock of his light blonde hair.
“I wasn’t even able to pull the plug — it was stuck beneath you,” he confessed, regret lining every syllable. “Something held you under. I scooped water out by hand but it wasn’t enough and you still…”
Charon looked around wildly, lost to his anguish. His eyes finally settled on the wreckage surrounding us, and before I could ask, he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. A coppery blush tainted his cheeks.
“I thought you were dead. Or at least dying. I couldn’t do a damn thing to save you. Neither could your dragon. We kind of, uhh… trashed your bathroom a bit.”
“I can see that. Dare I ask why?”
“Because I thought my best friend had died, and I’d been the one to deliver her killing blow!” Charon yelled, leaping to his feet. His fists were clenched — a gilded mess of torn skin and broken knuckle bones.
I longed to reach out and hold his hand. I ached to close the chasm between us. But I couldn’t do it — metaphorical vision or not — so I turned my attention to the debris surrounding my freezing tub.
Dust coated everything. Fragments of mirror, tile, and wall were dotted with ichor. Some pieces were scorched beyond recognition, and the smell of smoke still lingered in the air.
“Char?”
“Yes?”
“We’re going to need a new bathroom.”
He huffed a laugh. “Let’s make the next one bigger.”
I shivered, and Charon frowned like it personally offended him. He reached in and scooped me from the water, brows flexing in stark relief as he realised he finally could.
“Come on, death-slayer. Let’s get you dry and tucked into bed,” he joked half-heartedly.
I allowed him to fetch some towels but dressing me was a line neither of us wanted to cross. I threw on the simplest thing I owned — an oversized linen shirt, probably one I’d pilfered from Charon’s absurdly extensive wardrobe — and climbed under the covers.
He fussed, eerily reminiscent of his mother: checking the blankets, feeding the hearth, and making sure I had something simple to fill my belly.
He also ensured the dragon had some fresh meat — I didn’t ask where it came from.
I also didn’t ask what kind of meat it was, but the dragon, apparently, held no such reservations.
It wasn’t until I lay in bed, hours later, with the warm belly of a dragon curled up against my ribs, that I realised something: Charon’s hair hadn’t faded to white between my fingers.
I spent the majority of the following week in bed. It took more energy than expected to heal from a hydra’s venom. It was not an experience I ever intended to repeat.
But Charon’s gamble had paid off. I was alive. The venom had been purged, my wounds had healed as much as they were going to. All that remained were faint scars on my thigh and torso, marks left behind by fangs and claws.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one left scarred by Artemis’ trial.
Charon had not smiled easily in the days since I’d ingested the river water.
He was haunted by what it had done to my body, while I had faced the ordeal within my mind.
Until I’d emerged from the water with a raw, rasping inhale — a rebirth; one final gift from my mother — he had believed me dead.
Those minutes had been pure torture for my sunshiny friend.
Ever since, he’d taken to hovering in doorways.
“I’m okay, Charon. I swear,” I groaned from my cosy corner of the library, in front of the open hearth.
He simply grunted in response, striding in to stir the embers.
“Did you know that, according to this book, Hera tried to murder a baby?” I asked.
Charon’s head whipped around to face me, his brows knitting together in the middle.
“You mean Hercules?”
“Yeah. Apparently, baby-Herc strangled a pair of serpents she sent to his cradle. Vindictive bitch,” I muttered.
“Careful. She’ll hear you,” he warned.
“But I’m not praying?”
“Doesn’t matter. That one likes to listen when she hears her name.”
I pursed my lips, contemplating.
“Hey Hera?!” I yelled into the fireplace — not because the fire would summon her, but because I didn’t know where else to direct my voice. “You and Zeus made a fine pair! Both outsmarted by babies you intended to murder. Vindictive bitch.”
Charon stared at me, mouth agape.
“I hope for your sake she didn’t hear that… or your next trial is going to be a lot harder,” he murmured.
I shrugged. “Keeps things interesting.”
Charon shook his head and sank into the armchair opposite me. He picked up a book I’d already skimmed, one about Hestia. I continued reading, eyes scouring the passage about Zeus’ other son. Then a thought struck me.
“Hey, Charon?”
“Mmm?”
“What became of Hercules in the end?”
He paused, meeting my gaze. Something flickered within his blue irises, but it passed much too quickly for me to make any sense of it.
“My mother told me that Hercules’ mortal wife poisoned him.”
I frowned.
That’s a disproportionately anticlimactic ending for the hero demigod.
The dragon hummed in agreement.
“He built his own funeral pyre and climbed on,” Charon continued, surprising me. “The gods took pity on him, Zeus in particular.”
“Who knew he was capable of mercy,” I muttered.
“They allowed him to burn his mortal body away, leaving only his divine essence. In short, he became a god, married one of Hera’s handmaidens, and had two sons.”
“Interesting…” I mused. “But where is he now? Why is he not clamouring for the throne?”
“Hercules had no desire to follow in Zeus’ footsteps. He took his family and left Olympus.”
“But where did they go?” I grabbed at his forearm, oddly desperate for the answer.
“No one knows,” Charon murmured. “But he’s not dead, you’d be the first to know if he was.”
His gaze dropped to where my fingernails dug into his skin — his bare skin.
“Nyssa,” he hissed, suddenly frozen. “Your hand.”
“Oh! Shit, sorry.”
I retracted my claws, cringing at the crescent-shaped divots I’d left.
“No, you idiot,” Charon said. “You touched me with your bare skin, and I didn’t die.” His eyes snapped back up to mine, wide with wonder. “How? How did you do that?” he breathed.
“I guess… I guess the vision was telling the truth.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
It hit me then — in all the chaos of the bathroom, I’d forgotten to tell him the entirety of my Styx-induced ordeal. So, I told him. Every last detail. Leaving nothing out, not even the part where I’d almost given in to the blissful peace of a calm death.
Charon’s beautiful face fell, his heart breaking in real time. He fell to the floor in front of my chair and wrapped his long arms around my middle, enveloping me.
“Does this mean you can touch people now?” he mumbled into the fabric of my shirt. “Since you chose to accept your power… does that mean it’s safe to touch you? Or do you still have to be careful?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure. But let’s err on the side of caution, okay?”
“Okay, Nyss,” he murmured back.
The next trial arrived much faster than the ones before. After spending a week in bed and another in the library, I guessed it was inevitable.
And so, I now stood in the Parthenon’s long hall, bracing for the next hardship, the next step on the path to claiming my destiny: the crown, and the preservation of realms.
The third trial had almost killed me. Would the fourth succeed? Perhaps the fifth. Or maybe the sixth?
All eleven remaining champions were gathered, with their newly bonded animal companions at their sides.
Tails swished and creatures growled, but it did nothing to coax Hermes into appearing.
My violet friend had opted to settle on my shoulder, right above the hydra’s scar.
She was still nameless, but I had faith the right name would come eventually.
Allies clustered together, and once again, I stood apart. Interestingly, so did Caelus and Aros. Neither had chosen to join the others — but nor were they together.
They each dominated opposite corners of the chamber.
Caelus’ white wolf surveyed the room, and Aros’s manticore lay asleep at his feet.
Both sets of severe gazes were locked onto me from across the room.
Unwavering. Relentless. I was held hostage to their scrutiny, my own eyes flicking between them both.
Silver to amber and back again. The energy radiating off of them felt almost… angry?
My brows slashed together. What had I done to earn their ire?