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“I’ll sleep after. Come here, give me a hug, Gracie.”
She wrapped her arms around my waist, clinging to me for a long moment before reaching up to kiss my jaw. “Come back to me soon, okay?”
I heaved a sigh, propped up by adrenaline alone, and donned the Spartoi’s armor. “This is our last goodbye, Gracie. I’m not doing it anymore. After this battle is over, I’m going to handcuff us together if I have to, but I’m not letting you go.”
Chapter 25
Thiswassofucked.
Wewere so fucked.
Gaia must have grown a catapult out of the ground, because the rocks were coming harder and faster, and reaching further back into the ranks. Through the whispers from the back line, I’d heard that Riot had arrived, but in the chaos, I hadn’t had a chance to see him yet.
And T was flagging.
He’d already been throwing everything at the fortress before the dragon had shown up, and he’d stayed up all night to watch over our soldiers.
Grace had good instincts. T was a solid ally, and I had to find a way to assist him.
“We need to help him!” I shouted to Ariston, gesturing up at T then lifting my spear. “Maybe we can hit the dragon the next time he swoops low. I think we need to aim for the throat, the skin there looks thinner.”
We both raised our shields, the ring of the rocks denting the shield almost deafening when we were holding them so close to our heads.
Ariston was trying to communicate something with me, but it took a moment for my ears to stop ringing enough to understand him. Now that I was looking, I realized howunsettledhe seemed to be. Glancing back,allof the Spartoi looked slightly unsettled. They were staunchly fighting the agathos, but studiously avoiding the battle happening overhead.
They hadn’t responded to T that way.
“Drakon,” Ariston said, staring at the shrieking dragon that was attacking T right above us. “DrakonKolkhikos.”
“You know him?” I asked, signing one-handed while I spoke.
Ariston looked apologetic. He pointed at the dragon before opening his mouth and pointing at his teeth, then his chest, before miming scattering seeds on the ground.
“Men sown from the teeth of dragons.”That’s what Bullet had said. The dragons teeth that Persephone had given Grace when we were in the underworld.
Teeth fromthatdragon.
“I can’t catch a fucking break,” I muttered, scooping a rock off the ground that the agathos had thrown and biffing it back before raising my shield again. They were just an annoyance for now. The dragon was the priority.
“Is that… your father? Can you not fight it?”
Ariston shook his head apologetically, though his nose wrinkled slightly at the word father. There was a good chance he hadn’t understood me, though.
“Will it attack you?” I shouted over the din, gesturing at the dragon and then at the Spartoi.
Ariston shook his head again, but he didn’t look as confident in that as I would like. Glancing up at the dragon, itdidlook more hesitant to unleash a full attack when T was driving it directly over our army. Perhaps T knew that, which was why he was so happy to risk crushing us all if either fell from the sky.
We all ducked as T took a fierce blow that knocked him down a few feet. He unleashed a stream of fire, forcing the dragon to duck to the side, but since the dragon appeared to be flame-proof, it didn’t make much difference. From what I could tell, it couldn’t breathe fire the way Typhoeus could, but the edges of its wings were edged with flames which it was using as a weapon by trying to sideswipe T.
Okay. Make a plan. What was the next logical step? Weak spot around the throat, wings were lethal, Spartoi were potentially safe—
With a roar of pain, T finally went down, slamming wings first into the base of the plateau. Time stood still as the tower, already weakened by T’s incessant rain and lightning, teetered. Rock and dirt fell away, showering down on him as T slid down into the ditch.
Grace screamed from somewhere behind me, and the base of the plateau cracked, the whole thing tilting hard to the right, sending the structure Gaia had created on top sliding off—complete with the agathos in it. The dragon divedhardtoward the base, and for a brief, hopeful moment, I thought he was going to try to save the mortals falling to certain death, trapped within the rock shield that had become a prison. No, atomb.
But he didn’t. The dragon was aiming for T.
I hefted my spear into the air, surprising both the beast and myself when it embedded in his tail. Shit.I didn’t think this through.
