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Chapter

Thirty-Nine

P ersephone

On my knees at the side of my bed, my hands come together in front of my chest, and I dip my head. Old habits die hard, clearly.

Inhaling through my nose, I breath out through my mouth. “Zeus, God, hear my prayer.” I swallow the taste of bitter acid that swells when I add, “Father, I wish to come home.”

Outside, wind whips against the stone that crafts the dome of this room.

There is a window, large enough for Hephaestus to climb through, with mud-colored curtains pushed open, welcoming.

Through the glass, stars wink in a dark sky.

In the fireplace, the dancing flames have died to leave only the waving burn of hot coals to illuminate the space.

Shadows linger in every corner of the room. The narrow bed sits on a freshly laid carpet over the dusty stone floor. It is the only furniture in the room, moved in just for me. Just for tonight.

“Zeus,” I pray again. “King of Gods, find me in the mountains.”

A flash of golden-white light floods the room, and the window shatters into a thousand shards that shower the stone in a spray of tiny chimes.

Lightning. I smile to myself where I kneel at the side of the bed, my back to the window.

“You called, daughter.” At the sound of Zeus’ overconfident voice, my smile withers.

I stand and turn to face the evil God masked in the ethereal glow of an angel. Revulsion twists inside my belly, the acid of it threatening to spill from between my lips.

Zeus is—I hate to admit that he is a sight to behold. Now, under the dark spill of night in the low light of the burning coals that ignite the small fireplace in my room, Zeus paints a biblical picture.

White wings full with soft feathers span a massive length, sweeping the dusty floor and stretching over his head.

His white hair and the gold crown he wears on his head glow with the same iridescent glow that leaches from his tan skin.

His eyes are the blue of a sky promising a storm, cut with bolts of white-gold.

There is an undeniable attraction to Zeus that has surely seen many women throughout the span of history falling to their knees in prayer and submission.

But it’s not prayer or submission that excites Zeus. It’s taking that which isn’t willingly given. Life. Innocence. Servitude.

He gets off on the tears. The fear. The taking .

I swallow the burn of my hatred and force a smile. “Are you always in your Gods’ Form?”

“Unlike others I am not ashamed of what I am.”

I don’t let myself bristle at the dig on Ares and Hades. I simply say, “Why do some Gods change into something so frightening while others, like you, appear so,” I shrug. “Soft?”

Those hot bolts of light in his eyes flash. His cocky smile turns brittle. “I am not soft, I assure you, Persephone.”

“My apologies.” I cover my smile with a cough. “I meant delicate.”

Zeus takes a step toward me. I will my pulse to remain steady.

“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 habit are you 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.

“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.

“Because you and 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 of darkness 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.