Hades Legacy (Hades Series #3)

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

I can count on one hand the amount of times I've woken up with the feeling of genuine terror seizing my veins.

The first time I can remember feeling that chilling numbness was when I had my first genuine nightmare. I didn't have nightmares often, but when I did, they were so vivid and realistic that I was awake and shaking with terror in an instant; but like all children when they're frightened awake by their imagination's rendering of the Bogey Monster (who, much to my mother's immense amusement, apparently took the form of Poseidon when I was younger), I ran straight into the safety of my mother's arms.

The second time, was completely and utterly Dorian's fault; he's always loved playing pranks on me, but for this one particular time, he just so happened to decide to play one after one of my training sessions with my father had ended on a particularly harrowing note.

It resulted in me sprinting through the palace invisible, screaming at the top of my lungs and confusing the hell out of both the palace staff and my parents; all who which could not see me, but knew something was wrong because of the high-pitched screams echoing through the halls after me. Once again, my mother was the one who finally managed to find me, hiding shaking in one of my many hiding spots in the library, and it was only after she reassured me that she'd beaten Dorian senseless that she finally succeeding in placating me.

But this time, the problem that was bothering me wasn't as simple as a childish nightmare or a friendly prank; this time, I didn't have my mother to run back to and reassure me that everything was alright; this time, I was all by myself, with nobody to help me to discover the solution that had been eluding me all month.

So, suffice to say, all those times in the past had nothing on the icy trepidation that seized me the moment I opened my eyes the morning after Jasmine's party.

I'm not even sure if classifying it as pure trepidation was even the right analysis of what I was feeling. A more honest, truthful description was that I was a big confused bag of twisting, oscillating, and contorting emotions; for lack of a better, less hilarious description, it was like I was a bag of jellybeans, and every time I reached into that bag, I came out with another emotion that I didn't think was possible feeling in conjunction with the big mess that I already was. Terror at the decision I knew I had to make. Apprehension at what was to follow. Sadness at the prospect of never seeing my friends ever again. Pure distress at the prospect of never returning to the Underworld ever again. And then, in a bizarrely contradicting sense to all those emotions I felt due to the decision I had to make later that day, complete embarrassment at the way I acted last night; if I was any other person, living any other life, I would probably be crawling into a cave and refusing to emerge for at least ten years, considering the monumental amount that my drunk self decided to blurt out to Eric last night (and I'm not going to lie, for a moment there, I almost did consider that). But most of all, I felt all-consuming, overwhelming confusion as I desperately tried to figure out why everything had resulted in the sprawling mess that was my life.

Letting out a long sigh, I slowly sit up in bed, groaning quietly as an ear-splitting headache explodes between my ears at that one small action. How was I supposed to choose between my friends and my family? I glance down at my phone, and it stares back at me blankly from my bedside table. For a moment, I consider just ignoring the threat my blackmailer had sent me a week ago. Even though they had threatened Jasmine's life, I hadn't heard from them since then; so how serious were they really?

But then I remember last week. I remember how close they had come to killing Jasmine while we were walking back to her car, and I remember how if it hadn't been for me, she wouldn't be sleeping peacefully in her bed on the other side of the room. Fear grips me again, this time so completely that it actually stops my breath short for several seconds. If I went back to the Underworld with my parents like I planned, then she wouldn't have me to protect her if my blackmailer really did follow up on their threat. Sure, she had Eric, the gang, and even Spencer to protect her, but they wouldn't be able to provide her the 24/7 protection I feared she would need if I left. And I knew that I would hate myself for the rest of my life if she was killed because of me.