‘I tried to give you one incentive,’ Thanatos trilled. ‘Let’s try another . . . Elliot. Go and fetch my Fire Stone from the bottom of the river. Or I’ll drop your friend in next to it.’

He jiggled Virgo by her hair, making her scream again.

‘Oh, dear,’ frowned the Daemon of Death. ‘Doesn’t sound like she’s got the heart of a lion today. More a nervous kitten . . .’

‘None of my business,’ said Hypnos out the corner of his mouth. ‘But is frying the friend really the best way to motivate your people? Basic staff management . . .’

‘Put her down,’ Elliot said, as calmly as he was able. ‘I’ll do it. Just, just give me a second . . .’

‘I’ve waited long enough,’ said Thanatos darkly. ‘The time for talking is over. I need to see some action. Now.’

He waggled his screaming prey to underline his point.

‘Elliot!’ Virgo panted, the tears streaming down her face. ‘Elliot, don’t listen to him. I’m just one person, he will destroy the whole . . . ARRRRRGH!’

Elliot felt his stomach rise up into his throat as Thanatos suspended Virgo over the flames again.

‘I mean it, Elliot,’ Virgo whimpered. ‘Please, please, don’t—’

But whatever Virgo was trying to say, Elliot couldn’t hear it. Without pausing to think, he raised his arms high above his head, closed his eyes, took a deep breath . . . and threw himself head first into the raging fire below him.

The second his body hit the flames, he could feel their ferocious heat blast every millimetre of his skin. But while they were hot, they weren’t burning him. He was in no pain. He dared to open one eye. He was inside the fire, sort of . . . floating around in it. The flames still burnt, but they bent around his body, not touching his skin. Elliot had to hand it to Medea: she knew her skincare.

Stranded now in the middle of the river, Elliot moved his arms as if he were doing front crawl – this propelled him slightly forward. He kicked his legs to see if that helped, and before long he was actually swimming in the fire. If it weren’t likely to fry him into a memory at a moment’s hesitation, it would actually have been pretty cool.

Virgo’s scream of pain catapulted him straight back into the moment. Virgo – what if Thanatos . . .

The moment the thought entered his head, the flames roared at his body, their searing fingers threatening to burn him to a crisp.

The heart of a lion, he thought. No more thinking about what was happening on the shore. He had a job to do.

He gave a big kick and swam down towards the riverbed, grateful that Hypnos’s goggles spared his eyes from the unrelenting heat. All he could see was the colour of hot – red, orange and yellow danced around him, distorting everything, surrounding him in a maze of flame.