Chapter 10

The first scream isn’t sound. It’s pressure—like the river itself shoving into my skull. I’m on the balcony over the Styx, fingers dug into the black stone, trying to breathe through the constant ache of the mark over my heart, when the air rips open above the water. The river goes quiet. Every soul turns its ruined face upward. A circle of pale light blossoms on the far bank—wrong here, too clean, like a hospital hallway has been punched through the dark. Candles. Chalk. Human...