I remembered that Stevie Rae had, unbelievably, asked me to get a pencil and some paper ’cause she thought it would be a good time to make a list of stuff that we needed to get down in the tunnels so that we’d have the right supplies and whatnot if we had to stay hidden for a while.

She’d asked me that, in a totally calm voice, while she was sitting in front of me with an arrow stuck through her chest. I remember looking at her, getting really sick to my stomach, and then looking away and saying, “Stevie Rae, I’m not so sure this is a good time to be making lists.”

“Ouch! Dang, that hurts worse than gettin’ one of those goat-head thistles stuck in your foot.” Stevie Rae had sucked air and flinched, but still managed to smile over her shoulder at Darius, who had ripped open the back of her shirt to expose the arrow that was sticking out of the middle of her back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it’s your fault that it hurts. What’d you say your name was again?”

“I am Darius, Priestess.”

“He’s a Son of Erebus warrior,” Aphrodite had added, giving him a surprisingly sweet smile. I describe it as surprisingly sweet because Aphrodite is usually selfish, spoiled, hateful, and kinda hard to tolerate in general, even though I’m starting to like her. In other words, she’s definitely not sweet, but it was becoming clearer and clearer that she really had a thing for Darius, hence the unusual sweetness.

“Please. His warrior-ness is obvious. He’s built like a mountain,” Shaunee had said, giving Darius an appreciative leer.

“A totally hot mountain,” Erin echoed and made kiss noises at Darius.

“He’s taken, Twin freaks, so go play with each other,” Aphrodite automatically snapped at them, but it had seemed to me that she didn’t have her heart in the insult. Actually, now that I was thinking about it again, she’d sounded almost nice.