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To die.
For me.
No. No. No.
“That’s not what I wanted.” I don’t know I’m sobbing until I hear my own voice. “That’s not what I wanted. I never would have let you in there if I thought that’s what you’d do.Whywould you do that? You don’t have to die for people! You have to live for people!Wake up.Breathe. Stop doing this.Wake up.”
“Daisy.” It’s my dad this time, and I don’t push him away because that would mean taking my focus off Hercules a second time. He’s sitting on the bed with me. I don’t know when he got here. “What happened?”
“He went through.” Can he even understand me? The words feel misshapen in my mouth. Words are so unimportant right now. Explanations are so unimportant. “He went through the gates and shut me out.”
Poseidon yells again, the sentence running together except at the very end. “—your ass in there.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” my dad snaps.
“You were in there too, weren’t you?”
“I don’t know where I was.”
“Hades, youscreamed.”
Zeus breaks into sobs behind me, and another, softer voice smooths his over. Why can’t I hear them clearly? There’s something else that feels louder than they sound.
I choke back my own sobs and force a breath into my lungs.
The nightmare’s gone.
There’s no nightmare.
I’m not in any pain. Not the way I have been since before I left for California. My eyes are starting to burn, the very, very beginning of pain, but that—that makes sense. I’ve been in the dark for a long time. It’s not catastrophic. It’s not a warning.
Conor’s not barking. I’m okay.
But I can still feel…
I can still feel the gates. They’re nearby, but they’re not in my own head anymore.
Maybe I’ve lost it. Maybe there’s no such thing as reality for me anymore.
Or maybeHerculeshas them.
“He came with me to get Conor and the kitten out. He came with me, and he brought me back out again. There was a door, and he—he pushed me through it, and it shut, and—”
I squeeze my eyes shut, my hands over his heart, and try to go back in.
Nothing happens.
I don’t knowhowto go back in. I’ve never done it on purpose. It happens to me while I’m sleeping, and there’s no way I can fall asleep, unless—
“Knock me out.” I look over my shoulder and meet Zeus’s eyes. He swipes furiously at the tears on his cheeks. “Knock meout.”
“You won’t dream,” he says.
“Fuck,” I scream at Hercules. At everyone. How am I supposed to do this if I can’t get back in to my own fucking dreams? How can this be a good thing if it comes at the price of Hercules’s life?
It can’t. It can’t.
I push harder at his chest. I push hard enough to break ribs. No air moves in and out. No breath. None. None. I keep trying. Keep trying.
