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1
The pain inside me was unbearable. Imagine snakes slithering around in your belly, every tumble through your bowels creating another horrible, twisting contraction that makes your innards reverberate with sour agony. Imagine a throat full of acid, your own body blazing on the inside, but drenched with cold sweat on the surface.
Now roll it around in broken glass. Dump some kerosene on it. Set it on fire.
I writhed, I wriggled, my clothes stained clear through with sweat. My insides were burning. I was dying. I had to be dying. But through the tears, I caught a glimpse of a dark shape moving towards me, the bulk of his body blocking most of the light.
Florian, sweet, foolish Florian. My dearest friend. I reached out to him, my last, my only hope, as my chest and my stomach churned like fire.
“Florian,” I groaned. “Please. I’m dying.”
He nudged me with his foot. “Quit with the dramatics, will you? Just a little flying sickness. That’s all.” He nudged me with his other foot.
I groaned again, slapping his leg away. “Stop it. Hey, quit it. I’m sick.”
“Obviously.” He looked around my hut, the one I’d built with my own two hands in Artemis’s domicile, and he frowned. “Looks like you’ve been sick all over the place.”
I waved a hand around our general vicinity. “I got most of it in that bucket over there. Don’t judge me. Raziel didn’t tell me that this was a side effect of sprouting wings and flying for the very first time. How the hell was I supposed to know?”
“Listen. Buddy. It was your first time, that’s all. You got overexcited and exerted yourself a little too much. I’m sure next time’s going to be better.”
“There’s not going to be a next time,” I grumbled, my forearm pushed over my mouth.
Florian gave me a bright smile, the kind you make when you’re trying to be a great, supportive friend, which he was. “But don’t you remember the joy of the flight? You couldn’t stop talking about it the whole drive back to Valero. You had the time of your life.” He looped his finger around in a long curlicue through the air. “All those barrel rolls you did.”
My stomach gurgled. “Oh my God. Stop. You’re going to make me hurl.”
He shrugged. “I’m just trying to help. Speaking of, what do you need me to do for you?”
My forearm slid up to my brow, which was drenched with cold sweat. My lashes fluttered as I tried to focus on Florian’s face. “Here’s how you can help. Tell Priscilla I’ll miss her. Tell Artemis I’m sorry I ate all her snacks. And tell Raziel – ”
Florian frowned at me, but he bent closer anyway, curious.
“Tell Raziel that he’s a fucking asshole.”
Florian sighed. “Listen. You’re not going to die. Probably. Also, I can’t believe you got into her snacks. I’m pretty sure Artemis is going to be super pissed about that. You know how she gets about junk food.”
Snacky Yum-Yums, specifically, these cheesy, puffy snacks that the goddess of the hunt seemed to be so fond of. The gods of ancient myth complained all the time about how the world had changed, how they weren’t nearly as powerful now that mankind no longer worshipped at their temples or even believed they existed. But they sure as hell weren’t complaining about modern luxuries.
Artemis loved – fucking loved her Snacky Yum-Yums, and Dionysus was happiest when he was running his night club, which was well and good, because it meant that he wasn’t going around razing the countryside with his maenads in bloody berserk frenzies. And Apollo? Apollo was just horny. Super horny. But let’s not get into that.
What mattered the most were my insides, and making sure they remained my insides, because I’d spend the past day or so examining my outsides and checking that they didn’t have bits of my internal organs stuck in them. I covered my mouth as another spasm threatened to make things rocket out of me in a flurry of chunks. Raziel was going to get it from me next time I saw him. He was gonna get it good.
