My Date From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy, #2)

The Understatement of the Century (Part 2)

I sent up a prayer of thanks to Theo for having taught me how to both jimmy and pick locks so I could pull a prank on queen bee Bethany Russo-Hill the night of the Halloween school dance. A prank that had ultimately led me to Kai, his kiss, and this entire crazy mess.

Sweat joined the blood streaming down my cheeks. My bottom lip had gone numb from me biting it so hard.

But what felt like an eternity and some of the most creative cursing I'd ever uttered later, my left cuff fell to the stone floor with a dull thunk.

It was the greatest sound I'd ever heard.

My eyes stopped bleeding, my skin stopped boiling, and the pain went down from "kill me now" to "kill me in about a half hour."

But each breath still felt like inhaling a lungful of hot, broken glass.

Getting the right cuff off was a lot trickier since I was practically useless doing stuff with my left hand. Having clear vision again and insides that didn't feel like they might liquify helped.

Finally, blessedly, I got free.

I ripped the chain from around my body and tossed it deeper into the room, then sprawled limp in a jelly fish imitation on the ground.

The pain was gone. Let me rephrase. The manacle pain was gone. My body still felt like it had done a tango with a freight train. Every inch of me hurt.

I couldn't move. Couldn't do anything except will my body to return to its normal functioning.

Inhale ... Exhale ... I calmed my racing heart down to a slow gallop, eyes fixed on the perforated ceiling tiles and florescent lights favored by soulless institutions everywhere.

All this pain that Zeus had rained down on me. I wondered if he'd have hurt Persephone as easily. I doubted it, given the way he'd spoken so glowingly about her, even knowing that she'd been planning to instigate a coup.

I wearily rubbed a hand over my eyes. There were a lot of important reasons for me to get Persephone's memories back. But maybe, if I was being honest, my biggest one was to know what it had felt like to be that loved. Instead of being killed without a second thought, the way Zeus was behaving with me now.

For someone who was such an absence in so many ways, Persephone's presence was impossible to ignore.

Though I'd have rather died than admit any of this.

I rolled onto my side and pushed up with both hands to swing myself into a seated position. Gingerly, I massaged my limbs, my breath hitching at the pins and needles screaming to life in my hands and feet.

A large table blocked my view of the rest of the room. I used its metal legs to pull myself up to standing so I could get a sense of where I was, then flinched, jerking my hands off it when I realized the table was made of cold steel. The kind used for autopsies.

The table had been designed for beings that were at least fifteen feet tall. So on the plus side, it was roomy. On the minus side, it recalled pointy things that could cut me open.

No way was I going to to let Zeus slice into me. I glanced out at the rest of the room to see if there was anything useful.

My heart sank.

Other than the table, the only other item in the room was a nightmare of a machine.

About ten feet tall and three feet wide, made of black iron, it had "FeE" embossed on its frame, just like the manacles. The frame held a wide vertical board, about seven feet high. Also attached to it were all manner of hooks, blades, saws, lightning rods, and miscellaneous scary things.

My imagination ran riot with all the ways Zeus would have that monstrosity deliver pain in the morning. Didn't matter. I couldn't let Zeus get that location from me.

Ignoring the dread in the pit of my belly, I forced myself to creep toward the torture device to examine it for something that could get me out of here. Something to get me through the wards and past the guards.

I came around the front of the machine and screamed.

I wasn't alone.

Strapped to the board, manacled, and totally unconscious, was Kai.