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“There is no victory in the arena,” Hephaestus growls. “Only suffering.”

“She needs someone who can be soft with her. Someone kind and patient.”

“Someone like Eileithyia,” Hephaestus grunts.

“Eileithyia’s house is full of girls like her. Girls Zeus has destroyed.”

Hephaestus’ eyes flash almost entirely silver. In just a blink, it’s gone. His jaw hardens as he grinds his molars. “I will take this one. But no more, Ares.”

Ares passes the girl into Hephaestus’ arms. She looks so small there. So delicate and impossibly breakable.

I can no longer fight the tears that spring to my eyes any more than I can help the quick steps I take toward her. Hephaestus stands stone still as I lean in close to her, pressing my lips to the cool skin of her forehead. I whisper, “You didn’t deserve a single moment of the pain you suffered. Please don’t let your end be the thing to destroy all the beauty and love you carry inside you. You can overcome this. Your soul can live a beautiful life of love and peace.”

When I step away from the girl, the silver in his eyes has eaten through his pupil to blast through the dark of his iris. Those eyes lift over my head to glare at the God at my back. “She has a soft heart. It has no business being in that castle.” He begins to move for the door but pauses. Over his shoulder, silver eyes pinned to Ares, he says low, “Neither do you, brother.”

Ares says nothing as Hephaestus disappears with the body of the broken girl into his mountain home, the heavy armed door falling closed behind him with a sealing bang that rattles my already shook soul.

Chapter

Thirty-Two

Persephone

“Up you get!”A sharp hand falls on my thigh, and my heavy eyes pop open to see Leuce glaring down at me. Her hands, the assaulting one included, are plopped on her hips. She’s wearing the same scowl she had on when I slinked back into the room after my night out with Ares.

“Leuce,” I protest her name on a whine. “I’m exhausted.”

“Oh, and whose fault is that?”

“Argh,” I groan. “I already told you why I couldn’t sleep. I could hear her suffering and I had to do something.”

She narrows her eyes on me. “You didn’t have to do somethingalone.”

“I wasn’t alone. I had Ares.”

“You didn’t start out with Ares. You started out by wandering the halls of this diabolical place by yourself.” She heaves a sigh as she falls heavily onto the bed next to me. “Do you know how afraid I was when I woke, and you were gone? How afraid Hydra was?”

“I’m sorry.”

Leuce pins her eyes on me. “Don’t do that again, Persephone.”

I nod. “I won’t.”

“I’m serious. If something happened to you, if we lost you to this place—” She shakes her head. “I never would have forgiven myself.”

I sit up in the bed even though I swear I just fell asleep. It’s been days of very little, broken sleep. It won’t be long, and my body will no longer give me the choice of whether I want to sleep. I feel like I’m moments from slipping unwillingly into a catatonic state.

I say the only thing I can say, “I’m sorry.”

Leuce folds her lips in, releasing them on a slow roll. She sighs again. “I know. Me too. I’m so on edge here.”

“I get it.”

Her eyes drift over my face, surely seeing the darkening circles around my eyes. “You’re not sleeping much, are you?”

I shake my head. “I’m not coping with the ways of Olympus well.”

“You must sleep, my Persephone,”Hydra speaks into my mind, and my eyes flick to where she sits on the balcony. The high golden sun shines brightly in the clear blue sky. In the light of it, her sangria scales cast shimmering purple orbs over the white marble like the prisms scattered by a disco ball.