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“I possess the power of Chaos,” I tell him again, firmer this time. “With that power, I alone possess the ability to feed the realms, to sustain their ravenous hunger in a way no other God or Goddess can. I am the sustenance that has been missing, the nectar of life. I am the power that was stolen when Uranus consumed the soul of the Mother Goddess. I am the essence of her, the only one alive today capable of wielding the violent power of her soul, of nourishing her realms and the children of those realms.” I laugh at the dark rage that lines his dimming features. “Your despicable sacrifices in the arena are little more than a Band-Aid on the gaping wound that bleeds an ocean of hunger into Olympus. It feeds you just enough to power the fading stars in the night sky.” I take another brave step. “Becauseyouand the Gods your sacrifices feed aren’t powerful enough to sustain a realm of this calibre or any calibre for that matter.”

“Is that so?” Zeus asks, his tone filled with a deadly kind of calm that should rattle me.

It doesn’t, because he’s till mistaking me for the little human prey that I’ve never been for even a second of my short human life. Because wrapped up in the flesh of a girl, I’ve always possessed the soul of a Goddess.

“Oh yes.” I nod. “I’m everything and more that you and Demeter conspired me to be.”

The lightning that surges around the ball of his fist brightens as he calls upon his power. “Then I guess it’s a good thing I have no intention of ever letting you leave Olympus. You’ll do as Hera planned, and you’ll wed my son. Perhaps you’ll make a God out of him after all, when he watches me rip the power from your soul again and again, for eternity.”

I know what’s coming when he raises his fist, crackling with deadly power. He aims to kill me now. To bind my human soul eternally to Olympus, where I will eternally be at his vicious mercy.

“Now!” I scream as I reach up for Hecate’s pendant. Since my arrival in Olympus, I’ve never taken it off. Not even to bathe.

I tug violently and the chain around my neck snaps. Under the hot heat of fear that bleeds from my palm, the stone begins to glow and shift. As though it is coming alive with the spill of a night sky touched by just the faintest white that radiates from a sliver of moon.

The door bursts open as the ceiling caves in with a violent crash. Stone rains in the room as the fading light of a dying realm’s night winks overhead. Hydra is a wrecking ball of devastation in glittering sangria scales as she dives toward Zeus, her nine heads loose from the coil of her neck and snapping at the Gods’ flesh.

The roar of pain as sharp teeth bite into him is a sound I’ll never forget. The fear that ribbons in the sharp sting of his vow to see us all through an eternity of pain is an orchestra of devastating beauty, for never has there been one responsible for so much suffering and deserving of so much pain than the King of Gods.

Finally, it looks like his reign of terror is over.

There will be a world worthy of the daughters I will sacrifice to the living realm.

A world worth saving.

Hydra yelps as Zeus strikes back with a burning bolt of lightning. In the sky overhead, thunder rolls a sound of anger.

“Now, Persephone!” Ares yells as he charges his father in the beast form of his bloodthirsty God. The collision of thunder and stone as Ares connects with Zeus is violent. The scent of scorched earth and flesh taint the air, smothering the scent of anything else with its cloying aroma of despair.

Zeus throws a fist of lightning that connects with Ares’ blood-seeping stone stomach with the clap of thunder. Ares must be beyond pain, finally given the opportunity to stand up against the father who has spent lifetimes repressing him.

I fall to my knees as Hephaestus joins the fight with a battle ax that looks crafted for giants. He swings, connecting with Zeus’ shoulder, severing an arm that Hydra, my beautifully vicious beast, catches in one of her maws. Zeus screams, a high, delicious sound of true pain and fear.

I focus on the pendant, impossibly bright now and swirling with the colors of dawn. It is slick in my hands as I lift it high over my head, before crashing it down on the stone floor.

A burst of night swirling with the colors of dawn and electrified by the white surging power of a cool moon climbs the columns of power that border an eternal night. The branches of power connect high in an arch to contain an endless spill ofdarkness split only by stars that shoot in the deep dark of the magic of Nyx.

“It’s time!” I scream over my shoulder. “We need to move fast now.”

Ares throws a bone splintering fist of stone into Zeus’ face, knocking the gold crown from his head where it clangs against the stone floor before rolling away. White teeth fly in the direction of the crown as the bone of his cheek punctures his flesh with spears of bloody obsidian.

Hydra growls low in her throat as she snaps her jaw around Zeus’ throat, bursting through the portal with the King of Gods.

A shooting star snaps in the darkness, and I sense the portal is closing as I hover in the entrance. My heart is beating messily in my chest, my breaths racing with fear and longing to return home.

“Ares!” I call, reaching for the God I know is intended for my daughter. “Come with me.”

His bloodshot eyes land hotly on me. He shakes his head. “I can’t abandon Olympus now. I must stay,for her.”

“No!” I try, but there is no warning before I feel the rough shove of stone hands on my shoulders, throwing me into the portal. It instantly snaps closed behind me.

The last thing I see is a vision of Ares and Hephaestus standing bloody in the aftermath of our battle.

The last thing I hear is the echo of my scream playing the harp strings of everlasting night.

Chapter

Forty