Page 47

“Yeah, I found my queen,” I said. “Call off your dogs, or I’ll bring your world down around you.”

Zeus laughed into his tea. “You can’t touch me.

How long have you tried? I almost pity you.

Nothing you do works. Never has.” He set the cup down with a clink.

“But as your big brother, I’ll offer some free advice.

This mortal shell of hers—Bloom, is it?—is already broken.

They say she’s sick, weak, her mind broken. She won’t pass the trial.”

“What trial?”

Zeus took another sip of tea.“The eleven major gods voted. A mandatory trial at Forsaken Academy for all first-years.”

I saw red.“The fuck you mean, my school? There’ll be no trial, no bloodsport under my roof.”

“Huh.”He smirked.“We agreed to stay out of your academy on one condition. One event. A trial in your arena, where we can watch the descendants prove themselves.”

“She’s not a fucking descendant!”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, exasperated. “She won’t survive. And if she dies before her twentieth birthday this time, she won’t return. This is the end. No rebirth. No more second chance. Only the void. Eternal stasis.”

Long ago, one of the Moirai had prophesied an endgame between the second era and the third—this era. Even the Fates had grown weary of the cycle. One of them delivered the final warning, and the outcome did not favor my queen. Or me.

My heart burned. Rage boiled my blood.

“Have you ever considered your own role in this?” Zeus sighed. “It’s your fault, isn’t it? You began it all the day you stole Persephone, the purest maiden. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t wronged her and Demeter.”

I couldn’t deny his accusation, even if I wanted to.

Before Persephone, I had been a bad, brutal man.

I didn’t know love—only possession. So I seduced her.

Stole her. Tore her from her sunlit life.

When she begged to return, I tried to break her.

To force her to stay, to be mine. I had warped her fate, yet I could never bring myself to let her go.

The thought of her vanishing from my existence was unthinkable.

Zeus narrowed his eyes on me as if I was a very twisted man. Maybe I was.

“Your obsession is poison, brother,” he said, shaking his head. “No one clings to the same woman for eons, especially not after she has become mortal. Fragile. Flawed. Finite. And yet, in every lifetime, you still hunger for her.”

He wasn’t wrong. I would always crave her. And in this life, the hunger was worse than ever.

“It’s not an obsession,” I snarled. “It’s a primal need, like the air in my lungs and the oxygen in my blood.”

My existence had been nothing but the weight of the dead, the endless dark of the underworld, until her. She was light. Life. The only thing that made eternity bearable.

“Always so theatrical,” Zeus scoffed. “You’re no poet, brother. And poets are just losers anyway.”

Rage beat in me.

“Your fixation has destroyed you both,” he continued. “How many deaths has she endured? How much more suffering because you refuse to let her go? And each time she’s gone, you’re more broken. I’ve watched it all from my throne in Olympus, your grief devouring you whole.”

I dragged in a ragged breath. Zeus’s gaze cut through me, laying bare every wound, every ounce of grief and self-loathing. His lips curved in grim satisfaction.

“I take no pleasure in watching you stay on the course of self-destruction,” he lectured.

“Love is the universe’s cruelest weapon.

To see what it’s reduced you to…” He shook his head.

“I’ve waited eons for you to understand and learn the hard lesson.

Now that you finally do, I’ll offer this once more: a way out. For both of you.”

“Can you lift the Moirai’s curse?” I pleaded. “That’s why I came.”

He massaged his temples like I was a headache made flesh.

“The curse is unbreakable. You know the terms.” My growl rolled over him, ignored.

He leaned forward, throne creaking, eyes blazing as if his stare alone could bend me to his will.

“Persephone was weak even as a goddess. As a mortal?” A humorless laugh.

“A Viking queen in the eighth century. A silver-tongued socialite. Every lifetime, she fails. Every chance, she falters. You’ve seen it. Felt it. And it breaks you each time.”

I clenched my fists, resisting the urge to lunge at him and punch his golden teeth out. There would be blood, just not yet. Not until the Moirai showed up and this farce of a negotiation ended.

“She never stood a chance because your goons slaughtered her every time before she could remember,” I spat. The curse demanded her sacrifice, not mine. I was powerless to fight it. Only she could—if she ever awoke.

“Enough excuses!” Zeus cut in. “The Fates are cruel, but time is crueler. You, of all gods, know mortality’s curse.

Death comes for all. Persephone is doomed.

When she fails this time, and she will, she’ll be unmade.

Erased forever.” He leaned forward, voice dropping to a false whisper of concern.

“Here I offer you both one last chance. Make the right choice. Renounce her. Sever the bond. Let her go, and all the realms will forget she was ever queen of the Underworld. We can undo millennia of suffering. Choose any goddess—any but her—and you’ll have a queen worthy of your throne.

They’re stronger than her. More refined.

Eager to share your bed and crown. What say you, brother? ”

The tempting offer slithered through my thoughts like the snake from Eden. I’d almost taken it once to end my queen’s pain. But it was poison disguised as mercy.

What was immortality without fire? A sweet life with material abundance and no true passion was but a gilded cage. A hollow throne. A rot of soul. I could survive as a wraith of a god, but I wouldn’t condemn her to that half-life—existing without love, without feeling, withouther .

No. We would fight. We would bleed. We’d endure together, and we’d turn the tide.

“Fuck you, no brother of mine,” I snarled. “Fuck your stupid deal!”

Zeus sighed like a martyr. “Must we repeat this vulgarity, insults, and ingratitude? I won’t give up on you, even when you insist on self-destruction.

Family is forever, brother.” His eyes flickered with false concern.

“Speaking of destruction…how is Forsaken Academy faring?” He already knew.

His spies—Stardust and that traitor Poseidon, who posed as Professor Kingsley—fed him every detail.

“The Wild Hunt prowls earlier this year. I’ve wondered what stirred them.

Have you noticed the shift in the air, as others have?

” A deliberate pause. “Poseidon mentioned your walls straining beneath the weight of so many…guests.”

This fucker talked so leisurely as if his minions hunting Persephone were nothing more than sport.

And now he was probing, either he’d sensed the shift himself, or the Moirai had whispered in his ear.

My heart stuttered, cold with dread. More eyes would train on my mate. More gods would join the hunt.

Then a sudden icy clarity struck me.

Zeus had felt the shift. That was why he’d summoned me under the pretense of negotiation. For all his taunts about my mate’s inevitable failure, doubt had crept in. For the first time, he wasn’t sure.

Bloom wasn’t like her other mortal versions, the ones who had perished before. Physically, she was the most vulnerable. Asthma clawed at her lungs, and a weak heart lurked in her chest. Morrigan had checked on her in secret.

But her will? Unbreakable. A warrior’s spirit burned inside her.

This time, she wasn’t running from the truth—she was hunting it.

She tore into the investigation of the redheaded victims with determined fury, though she hadn’t yet realized they were all her , echoes from different eras.

When that truth hit, it would shatter everything.

She’d have to question who, orwhat , she truly was.

And that would be revolutionary. A final breakthrough.

Something had awakened in her. She dreamed of her former selves’ deaths, visions none of her other versions had ever glimpsed. None of them had lived long enough to piece it together.

And she trusted me enough to confess those nightmares, not yet understanding that the memories of her past lives were bleeding into her dreams. It gutted me, knowing her sleep was haunted by those brutal murders. But it also kindled something fiercer than hope.

She would survive this time.

She had to.

She’d rise to the occasion, and I’d carve my soul to ribbons to make sure she did.

Even if Icould break the blood vow and force the truth on her, it would only doom her. We’d tried, and it had backfired. This time, failure meant annihilation. So I’d ordered my team to stay silent, no matter how it gutted them to watch Bloom stumble in the dark.

I still remembered 1890. Morrigan had cracked, just once, and whispered to Annie, one of Persephone’s past selves, that she was the Underworld’s queen. The last Moirai sister came herself that night. She slaughtered Annie in front of us, and we stood there, powerless.

I didn’t forgive Morrigan for a long time. Good intentions meant nothing when her slip had cost my mate another life, another chance. If not for her unshakable loyalty, I would’ve killed the siren princess for that.

“Your gangs started the Wild Hunt,” I snarled.

“Your city thrives at the expense of my mate. You enjoy your peace because the gods have found new entertainment, turning my woman into their bloodsport. When this curse ends, I’ll slaughter every last one who ever harmed her.

Even their ashes won’t be safe.” My lips peeled back from my fangs.

“You should visit my academy. See what decorates the walls. Pity the gods leave no corpses, just their monsters.”

Zeus spread his hands in mock helplessness. “I cannot control every rogue god and quench their thirst for blood and flame. Stop blaming others. Your obsession with Persephone put you in this situation, not I.” He shrugged. “And technically, Hecate runs your academy.”

Zeus refilled my empty cup, steam curling like deceit. “Must we quarrel over women, however lovely?”

I crushed the porcelain teacup in my grip. “Where are the Moirai?”

His fucking sigh was all the answer I needed.

The realization struck like a blow to my head: there were no terms. Just a ploy to draw me away from the academy.

Ice spiderwebbed through my veins. My shadows twisted like hanged men as the truth opened my chest. I’d been played. The cup’s remnants clattered to the floor. For the first time in eons, I, the god of death, knew the greatest fear, the loss of the only thing that mattered to me.

The hunters were gunning for Bloom while I was having fucking tea with my two-faced brother.

I kicked the table at Zeus, sending his fucking tea set toward his face. He snapped his fingers and summoned his shield, the table and teapot crashing against the wall behind him.

“The Moirai aren’t fucking coming, are they?” I growled.

“Afraid not, Uncle.”

Ares emerged from behind an ice column, armored in war itself. His crimson armor plates breathed like a living battlefield, engravings writhing with massacre. The plume of his helmet licked the air like fire. In his grip was a spear still wet with the blood of ages.

“Your charm offended them,” he said, grinning.

I bared my teeth. “Fuck the sisters. Fuck all of you.

Ares chuckled. “Declined.”