Page 39

Chapter

Thirty-Four

P ersephone

Where the Underworld is like a fantasy, Olympus feels like a dream.

There is a beauty here that is unspeakable but blurred somehow.

It’s not crisp, like reality should be. The haze that blankets the realm plays over the scene like a vivid dream in the first waking moments.

There, but not entirely clear. It’s been three weeks, though the days and nights feel impossibly long.

Hydra suffers burning heat, so different from the heat of the Underworld. She is flying less and less. Leuce is on edge, always looking over her shoulder.

And the machinations of this realm are deadly. Every day, another conspiracy is laid bare. Every day, a new horror revealed.

Every day I watch innocence die.

“You will do it, boy!” Zeus’ palm falls heavy on the table, rattling the dishes. “Your purpose is war.”

Ares simply glares through golden eyes speared red with daggers of blood as he cuts into the meat that oozes red onto his plate. He places a square into his mouth, chewing boredly before he swallows. “No.”

“Waste of power,” Hercules hisses, glaring at his half-brother.

Hera places her hand over her adoptive son’s, her blue eyes flicking once to me. “Perhaps he needs motivation.”

Leuce tenses beside me, but no one asks what she means, even though I’m certain she meant to propose that I could be his motivation for whatever atrocity Zeus wants Ares to commit.

What do they want from him?

Hercules stands fast, knocking his chair back as he leans into the table, glaring his hatred at Ares who doesn’t even flinch. “We need this. It’s been too long since there was a war.”

Attached to his back, Hercules’ much smaller, golden wings quiver. As a demigod, the fact he has wings is impressive. It’s no surprise, however, that they are mostly useless. No surprise that he keeps his Pegasus close.

“There are plenty of wars.” Ares leans back in his chair casually, though there is nothing casual about the danger that leaks from him.

“Do you not see the realm?” Hercules spits, throwing an arm wide. “It’s dying.”

Ares smirks, taunting the golden demigod with his golden boy charm now spitting ugly rage. He drawls, “Oh, I know.”

Hercules draws his sword and I gasp in horror, but Ares only laughs.

“Enough!” Zeus roars, his face burning red with anger. “Enough.”

In the arena below, a man no older than thirty and clearly in his physical prime deflects another deathblow from the gladiator. Though he’s holding his own now, the time will come when he inevitably tires. Then, like all the rest, he will die.

“What is this?” he screams from the bowl as he flees the gladiator. “What the fuck is this?”

The crowd leans forward in sickening rapture. The fish I’d eaten for lunch spoils in my stomach, threatening to soil the meat on my plate now.

I push my plate away discretely, but when I lift my eyes, I find Hera is watching me. And Demeter is watching her.

My skin crawls as I tear my eyes from Demeter. I’ve avoided her mercilessly since I arrived in Olympus, not able to stomach the sight of her now that the memories of my past life are accessible in the shelf of my mind.

Zeus lifts a goblet of wine, swallowing deeply. When it is empty, he places it on the table with a deafening thud. A servant girl with downcast eyes scurries to fill it to the rim. Zeus doesn’t seem to see her, but Hera’s hot glare possesses the power to cleave the poor girl in two.

There is an undeniable beauty to the girl, even if it’s broken. I get the sickening sense that Zeus was the cause of her breaking. That she may be one of the crying statues that litter my rooms and haunt my nightmares.

The girl scampers back to her place behind Zeus. “You will honor your part in this family by bowing to the gifts of your God, Ares.”

When Ares doesn’t respond, the blue of the sky begins to darken so fast, it’s like someone pushed a button to change the screen of the sky.

Angry clouds in dark shades of blue, purple, and gray crackle with white-hot light as though electrified.

The taste of heat in the air submits to an ominously cool wind that whistles harrowingly between the ancient columns of the coliseum.

In the arena below, both man and gladiator pause. Heads tipped back toward the sky, unmasked fear burning bright in their eyes.

Unease grows inside me, the urge to flee tightening my muscles.

“Do not move, my Persephone.” Hydra’s words are loud in my mind. So loud, I flinch. “If you move, the lightning in the air will strike you.”

Beside me, Leuce is so still it doesn’t even appear that she breathes.

The table—the whole amphitheatre—has suddenly turned to living, breathing stone.

Slowly, my eyes tip up to see that even Hydra sits stone still on her perch high in the sky. But her eyes are locked on me.

Zeus rises, the electricity in the clouds zapping audibly with a danger that threatens to smite us all.

“You will do your duty to this realm, Ares. If I must strip the flesh from your God to invoke the bloodlust, I will.”

The threat chills me to my bone, and I fail to keep my horror hidden from Hera’s too-seeing eyes.

Inside my stomach, the soul that grows aches.

Ares slices the meat on his plate, the only one aside from Zeus willing to move beneath the crackling violence of the sky. He pops the meat into his mouth and says darkly, “Do your worst.” He spits the last word, “ Father .”

Lightning spears from the sky, shattering the plate in front of Ares, leaving the meat in a pile of charred dust.

“Out of respect for your mother—” Anger curls dangerously around Zeus’ words. “You have been spared the arena.”

“It has nothing to do with respect, old man,” Ares taunts bravely. “If you respected her at all, your seed wouldn’t be spread all over Olympus. And if she respected herself, she wouldn’t be spreading her?—”

Lightning spears down from the sky to connect with Ares’ chest, cutting off his words. This time, I do scream. Inside my stomach, the soul of my daughter weeps.

But Ares shocks us all when his hand whips out to grip the bolt that surges deadly power into his violently shaking form.

Teeth gritted, he pulls the blade of the bolt from his chest, and I scream again when blood pours from the wound.

Sweat trickles at his temples, and the gold of his eyes is entirely gone to make room for the bloodlust.

When he tosses the bolt, it lands in the arena with a deadly blast before winking out of existence.

My eyes snap back to Ares to see that there is no longer tan human flesh on his hand.

Instead, the claw that sits in its place is three times the size and dark gray, like the stone of a rain-soaked mountain.

Between the cracks in his flesh, thin rivers of red run.

The scent of Zeus’ storm is overpowered by the smell of blood-soaked earth and battle. It’s so strong, I can’t help but cover my mouth. Inside, the soul of my daughter is restless.

“Take him!” Zeus demands, and lesser gods with wings the color of the sandy floor of the arena swoop down to grip Ares as he looses a terrifying roar.

More skin splits to reveal the God beneath the human flesh he wears, and as he swipes a clawed hand up at the Gods who carry him, they release him over the arena, and I gasp in horror as he begins to fall.

A human likely wouldn’t survive the fall, but Ares lands on lethal feet that are no longer human at all. He looks like a demon. The personification of battle born in bloodlust.

The human man in the arena stumbles back, jaw hanging open in shock and horror. His hands lift to his temples, and he shakes his head. I can’t hear him over the screaming in my own mind, but I can see the forming of his lips. The denial.

Ares looses a roar as doors open and gladiators storm into the arena.

Each one is armed with weapons that could crush the bones of a man with a single swing.

There is easily a hundred men now locked in the arena with Ares.

The only three without a weapon are the human man, the gladiator meant to kill him with his bare hands, and Ares.

Zeus laughs a maniacal sound that draws my sharp gaze.

I find his is already on me. “Hera thought to spare you this scene.” He shrugs, like it simply couldn’t be helped.

“But I did promise you a show, did I not?” Another maniacal laugh that slithers like snakes over my bones.

“This, dear daughter, will be a show the like you’ve never seen. ”

At the sound of a battle cry of men, I am unable to do anything but look back at the scene in the arena.

The armed gladiators charge Ares from all sides, and I wait for him to do something to deflect the attack.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t lift a single claw as he bows his head between his shoulders and braces for the deadly onslaught.

The first gladiator to connect with his flesh is one who carries a weapon that looks like a big hook.

He grips him around the neck and pulls violently down on the handle as the others connect with his back.

Long metal weapons with unbreakable clubs bursting with smaller blade-like points connect again and again with Ares’ back, splitting the human flesh he wears to ribbons to showcase the flesh of the God beneath.

Blood sprays as whips lash, and Ares hits his knees in the sand.

The first sound that tears from his lips is one of agony so extreme, so brokenly pained, my womb contracts under the stress of it.

This exposure is too much for the soul inside me that already loves him, and I grip my belly with shaking arms as though to hold the piece of me that aches to break free, to save him, safe inside me where I can keep her for just a little longer.

Still, I can’t tear my eyes from the horror of the scene below. I don’t miss the way the gladiators shred the last of the flesh Ares wears, exposing the granite flesh of the beast beneath.