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“Careful, dear daughter.”

“But I’m not your daughter, am I?” I cock my head, playing at curiosity.

I’m not curious, though. I already know that this scum-god isn’t my father. And I’m thankful for it.

His eyes narrow and he reaches out to catch hold of my upper arm, dragging me into his chest. At the contact, my skin crawls with a sickening need to escape him. To flee the beast who means to harm me, because I am certain he didn’t come here with good intentions even though I called him.

“I am your father, little girl. And you are mine.” The way he presses his body into mine is not the way of a father, and I fight to swallow another surge of bile. My hate for this scum-god is so great, it’s almost impossible to contain.

“I belong to no one.”

Zeus chuckles. “I think Hades would have something to say about that claim.”

“You don’t know him at all.”

“Oh, don’t I?” He presses closer, if such a thing is possible. Visions of the statues locked away in the rooms I’d been given flash in my mind. The way Zeus held the women he took captive in his arms as he pillaged their bodies plays in my mind like snapshots from a movie reel. He’d forced pleasure upon them, which only served to break their minds.

I hate him.

“You never bothered to know him. You used him to defeat the Titans and took the glory for yourself.”

“I deserve the glory, girl.”

“You deserve hellfire.”

I don’t see it happen, fail to prepare for it. The slap of his hand across my face is brutal and vicious. My head doesn’t simply whip to the side with the strike of it. My entire body flies to the side and I connect with the floor with a heavy thud. The cry I release is sharp.

Fear, hot and quick, consumes me. If they think I’m being hurt, they’ll burst in as planned to rescue me. But I’m not ready for that.

I force a laugh into the space between us as I find my knees. Blood is a metallic tang that floods my mouth. “You have a bad habit of doing that, don’t you, Zeus?”

“Putting mouthy little girls in their place?” He shrugs uncaringly. “It is necessary.”

Glaring up at him, I taunt, “We all know you like to slap around those who are smaller than you. Gods forbid you take on someone your own size, we’d all realize far too fast just how weak the king of Gods is now, wouldn’t we?” When he doesn’t reply, grinding his teeth instead, I taunt again, “But that’s not the bad habit I’m talking about.”

His lip curls. “What bad habitareyou talking about?”

“The one of you consistently taking credit for things you not only didn’t do, but aren’t even remotely capable of doing.” It’s my turn to curl my lip in disgust. “Like taking credit for birthing me, for example.”

Zeus curls his fingers into his palm, lightning crackling over the ball of his fist.

In my chest, my heart lurches with fear. But I force myself to my feet as I taunt one last time. “Careful, Zeus. You don’t want to destroy me.”

It’s almost funny, because he really looks like he wants to destroy me. To blast me with so much lightning that I turn to dust here and now.

He arcs a brow. “I don’t?”

“I possess the powers of Chaos.” I swing my arms wide as an unhinged laugh I don’t recognize spills from between my lips at the surprise that brightens the bolts of light in his eyes. “Oh, did my dear mother not tell you that?”

“You were born giftless. A failure.”

I cluck my tongue. “Has no one ever told you it pays to be patient?” I laugh again. “I was never giftless, Zeus. It was from me, from the blood of my innocence that the Underworld formed the realm it is now. It was the powers of Chaos that live in me, that complemented my own powers of fertility and spring,of growth, that birthed life into a realm that had only known death and despair.”

I take a brave step toward him. His eyes track me like the hunter who doesn’t know he’s the prey.

The predator I never knew dwelt inside me unfurls from the cocoon of her metamorphosis. She can scent the blood of the deserving, demands it be spilled in the quest for vengeance. For justice.

She is me. And I am power.