CHAPTER 1
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My mates’ roars poundedin my ears, and then cold hollowness swallowed me whole.
I’d been dead for a while.
But why did such excruciating pain fill my every cell? As my consciousness stirred and fluttered, agony erupted from my chest like the hottest fire in an inferno and coldest ice in the galaxy.
Couldn’t I find peace, even in death?
I screamed at the burning pain—or tried to. My screams stuck in my parched throat.
I snapped open my eyes.
The cruel truth sank in along with the feeling of thousands of needles stabbing into my bones.
I’d survived the blade that impaled my heart.
Maybe I couldn’t die, like my Titan father, or maybe the elemental had done something to prevent my final death?
Septum had crashed into me. The last fragment of his life force had flared in me like the dying light and heat from a supernova, and then everything had collapsed around me.
What had happened to my demigods after that?
I tried to rise. I must go to them, even if I had to accept their condemnation. But my body wouldn’t move an inch. I was paralyzed from the neck down.
A new wave of panic swirled from my stomach, surged up, and choked my lungs.
Faint, eerie light emitted from a tiny hole on the low ceiling a few inches above me. My eyes rolled slowly until I registered that I was trapped inside an iron coffin, my body bound by dark magic.
I tried to scream again, to call for help, to get someone’s attention. And again, no voice came out. I didn’t know how long I lay like that on hard, cold iron that jutted into my back, waiting for this eternal torture to end and yet knowing it never would.
Pain engulfed me.
After what seemed like ages of torturous confinement, the heavy lid above me slid aside and revealed a stony hall so vast and a dark ceiling so high that all I wanted was to shrink back into the coffin.
“The sleeping beauty is finally awake,” a dark, velvety voice whispered above me, chilling me to the bone. “You can talk now. I think the drugs have worn off.”
I swallowed, trying to work my vocal cords, and my throat burned.
“Where. The. Fuck. Am I?” I managed to string the words together, my croaking voice like a knife scratching on a gravestone.
“You’re in Hell, Princess Celeste,” Loki, the demon prince, purred.