Gone Girl.¹

𝟬𝟬𝟳. fatal hairbrush

She instinctively touched the place where she had felt the empousa's spear and her fears were confirmed when her hand had turned red. "B- Blood," she shuddered and Percy, who had wrapped his arms around her body to get her to walk, swore in ancient Greek.

"You'll be okay," he repeated about three times, more to himself than her and made his way to the back of the room, where Rachel had already fitted herself with wings and was working on Nico, who looked pale and sweaty, probably from his struggle with Minos. 

"We have to help Daedalus!" Annabeth said but Rachel yelled that there was no time. She was right – Amaryllis could hear shouting and footsteps from the tunnels, signaling that more monsters were coming their way. 

Percy was trying his best to support Amaryllis, while pressing the wound on her stomach, even though she was already doing that herself. "Help her first," he begged Rachel, whose green eyes widened when she saw the wound but nodded, trying to appear calm. 

"How am I going to fly? I'm bleeding out," she muttered. There was also her fear of heights, but it seemed less important at that moment. "I can't do it. Just... leave me here."

She knew that if they left her there, she would probably die, but a small part of her felt that it was better to die there than to die falling from the sky.

Annabeth glared at her, though it was obvious that she was indeed getting anxious by her misty eyes. "Shut up, okay? You're coming with us. I'll be beside you to help you." Amaryllis nodded, even though she still thought it was a stupid idea.

After all of them had fitted themselves with coppery wings and Daedalus had told them to leave without him, it was time to jump out the window into open sky.

❀

With a little help from her friends, Amaryllis managed to survive the fall.

When they finally touched the ground, she doubled over in pain. Percy immediately got down on her level. "Let me see," he insisted. Her white t-shirt was now full of blood and she felt like she was about to faint by just seeing it. He gently pulled her shirt up only a little bit to see the wound and after Rachel emptied her backpack to find bandages, he maintained the pressure by binding the wound with a thick bandage. 

"It's not too deep. You'll be fine," he assured her.

Annabeth let out a sigh of relief, but she didn't stay calm for too long. "You stopped fighting. You just stood there, what were you thinking?" 

Amaryllis lowered her head. "I don't know why, I- I froze," she replied, embarrassed by herself. She genuinely wanted to dig a hole and just crawl into the earth and die. Just die. She had presented herself as a good fighter to the two demigods, but it seemed like she could never just do something right.

She sighed. "The workshop moved," Annabeth changed the subject, probably feeling bad for the other girl, who was still in pain. "There's no telling where."

"So what do we do now?" Percy asked. "How do we get back in the maze?"

"If Daedalus died, then the Labyrinth is probably destroyed already," Amaryllis said, though she knew the swordsman wasn't dead. There was no way they could be lucky enough for something like this to happen.

"No," Nico said, looking at the horizon. "He isn't dead."

"How can you be sure?" Percy asked. 

"I know when people die. It's this feeling I get, like a buzzing in my ears."

He hesitated for a moment, like he had forgotten that Nico was a son of Hades. "What about Tyson and Grover, then?"

Nico shook his head. "That's harder. They're not humans or half-bloods. They don't have mortal souls."