Page 68

"Harvey," I choked out, scanning the ground for a dark streak of fur. My heart resumed beating when I found him racing away from the titan. Good. Anywhere but nearhimwas good. Being close to the titan would only cause unbearable pain and death.

"Oh god," Verena blurted. "Is he going to—?"

I snapped my head back to face the titan right as his dark hand shot out and plucked Aphrodite from the air.

She laughed, thinking it was a game.

My heart raced, my hands shaking; I grabbed Emlyn's thick arm and held on tight.

The titan's face split, that awful darkness parting as he lifted Aphrodite and tipped the goddess into his mouth.

His jaws snapped shut.

He'd devoured her.

CHAPTER30

HALWEN

He ate her. He really fucking ate her.

I slashed my wings through the air and spun away, flapping like crazy. He could grab us next, grabanyof my family. Maybe we were safer on the ground—no, he'd trample us like he trampled Hera. My arms shook, gripping Kai so tightly it had to hurt. He held me just as viciously, his eyes fixed on the nightmare over my shoulder as I flew as fast as I physically could.

Where was Harvey? Where were the others? I struggled for breath.

"There!" Kai yelled over the sudden wind hammering at us, making it harder to stay in the air. "He's with your friends."

My friends? What?I didn’t know wh—I saw them. Kai was right. Harvey was racing across the ground with Renna on one side of him and Tali's massive red panda on the other.Thank fuck.I could breathe again.

"What the hell isthat?"Kai demanded, his panic slamming into my soul over and over, like a violent ocean crashing into helpless cliffs.

Wind tore at me, too similar to when we were in the Labyrinth. I tried to follow his line of sight as I flew across Olympus, aiming my shaking body towards the tall walls around the city. I didn't know why I thought a wall between us and a titan would help, but I fixated on the idea of getting out of the city and I couldn't stop now.

Cold bloomed through me like ice fractals on a window when I finally spotted what had unsettled Kai. A plume of inky smoke as big as a city roared towards us from outside Olympus, and on its heels flowed an endless sea of silvery white fog. Magic. Vast enough to belong to more gods—or titans.

The magic was so immense that Olympus shook with a horrible wrenching groan, and the fragile buildings fell apart below us like they’d been ripped at their seams. It took all my willpower to stop my wings faltering when even spires and domes toppled from their heights, crashing into the ground with such echoing, violentboomsthat I flinched.1

"Oh shit," I breathed, gripping Kai so tightly he grunted when a giant wave of Caribbean blue water roared at Olympus from the other direction, like two natural disasters had conspired to wipe the city off the map.

I spun, scanning the mountains around us, hoping I was just being paranoid but—no,fuck,there was more. Light blazed from the tops of the mountains, racing down into the city like sunlight shaped into a weapon. Trapping us in a triangle of magic so powerful that the whole city trembled and crackled, the air tingling my skin.

"It's a guy!" Kai yelled, startling so hard I nearly dropped him. "The water'sa guy!"

I scrambled to adjust my hold, lightheaded with visceral panic. I couldn’t drop him. Kai wouldn’t survive a drop this big.

"Look," Kai urged.

Carefully, I turned to face Cronus, looking beyond him at the dark storm, the silvery fog, and the tsunami. Fuck, Kai was right. There was a man with long white hair in the heart of the water, riding a wave deadly enough to cause a tsunami. If that wave struck, even in the air it would be fatal.

"There's no way that's Poseidon," I said faintly, my head spinning. "Right?"

"Is he good or bad?" Kai asked, scanning the city with an intensity that usually scared people.

"I don't know, but Harvey, Tali, and Renna are runningtowardshim so maybe they know something we don't."

I had to trust Harvey.

Besides, we were trapped with no way out, hemmed in by magic on all sides; flying to Poseidon was only as dangerous as flying into the blinding glow behind us.