Page 48

Chapter

Thirty-Four

Ravencrux

War of the Gods

“ Y ou fuckers tricked me again!” I roared. “Just like when I drew the short stick and ended up with the Underworld.”

“Will you ever stop playing the victim?” Zeus snorted, his face twisting in mock distress.

I didn’t waste another breath on him. He’d lured me here, away from my mate, leaving her exposed to the hunters.

I turned to leave, but Ares and a squadron of armored guards blocked my path. They formed a semicircle of gleaming metal and divine arrogance, each one handpicked for crushing defiant gods.

“Rude to leave so soon, Uncle,” Ares drawled, spinning his bloodstained spear in a lazy threat. “I insist we have tea and talk like a civilized family.”

“Quit playing alpha male, pup,” I said. “Poseidon might fall in line and think you’re cute, but you only bore me.” Ares’s face darkened with fury, but he wasn’t worth my attention. I turned back to Zeus. “I should’ve let Cronus devour you. Then your whole wretched brood would’ve never existed.”

I struck first. My shadows lashed out like serpents of living darkness, swift and merciless.

The throne room erupted. Zeus’s lightning clashed against my shadows in a thunderous detonation, the shockwave shattering every window in the palace.

The Atlantean architecture trembled. Walls of enchanted ice fractured and reformed in a relentless cycle, struggling to withstand the force of our warring powers.

Ares closed in on me, war given flesh, a blade without restraint.

Once, no god could rival me. That was why Zeus and the Moirai had targeted my mate. Now, my power was a ghost of what it had been. My army remained trapped in the Underworld. My forces, reduced to three.

Dante burst in from the courtyard, twin axes slick with the ichor of fallen guards. Hellfire wreathed the blades, their smoky trails curling in the air. Orren struck from behind, a hellhound of nightmares—three jaws snapping, venom dripping, tail lashing hellfire hot enough to scar even the divine.

At the room’s heart, lightning and shadow collided again, a maelstrom of opposing forces.

Where they met, reality fractured, flickering with glimpses of the void between worlds.

Zeus fought at full strength; I did not.

But wrath and centuries of battle experience nearly bridged the gap.

The King of Gods had spent eons lounging on his throne, commanding others to fight his wars.

He had never faced something as feral as what I had become since the fall of Cronus.

Zeus hurled a bolt that could have vaporized a mountain. I coiled my shadows around myself, absorbing the impact, though the force still rattled my bones.

“You’ve grown weak, brother,”he taunted.“Love has made you soft.”

“And power has made you stupid,” I shot back. My death-shadows lashed toward his ankles. He twisted away, but not fast enough. A tendril grazed his golden greave, leaving decay in its wake.

Across the throne room, Dante and Ares clashed in a brutal dance of violence. The war god’s spear met Dante’s axes in showers of sparks that ignited the very air. While others would have crumbled under Ares’s power of terror, Dante only gave a chilling laugh, like damned souls shrieking.

“You think you frighten me, little godling?” Dante roared, his archdemon form emerging, obsidian horns pushing through his skull, eyes burning with infernal fire.“I am fear incarnate! I am the terror that makes gods wake screaming.”

For the first time, Ares faltered. His step back was barely perceptible, but it was enough. Dante’s axes crossed in a brutal arc, splintering Ares’s spear and carving deep into his breastplate.

Orren unleashed claws wreathed in hellfire and faced twelve of Zeus’s elite guards. His three heads moved independently: one breathing hellfire, another biting through armor like plastic, the third howling a sound that forced even immortal warriors to clutch their ears in agony.

The battle raged with increasing ferocity.

I traded blows with Zeus, each clash shaking the entire palace.

His lightning carved smoking wounds into my flesh, charring skin that struggled to heal fast enough.

In turn, my shadows coiled around him like starving serpents, draining his life force wherever they touched.

“You fool!” Zeus roared as I landed a vicious strike that opened a gash across his perfect cheek. “You’d destroy everything for one woman?”

“She’s not just one woman,” I growled, pressing my advantage. “She’s everything you’ll never understand—love, loyalty, compassion, sacrifice.”

The palace fell apart around us. Atlantean ice and crystal exploded into prismatic shards. Columns crumbled like storm-felled oaks.

Dante had Ares on the defensive, the war god’s sadistic glee replaced by raw fear. Orren had torn through half the guards, their blood staining the white marble. But even the hellhound faltered now, his dark fur matted with blood, spear wounds piercing his flanks like macabre trophies.

Time was as much my enemy as Zeus. Every second here was a second Bloom faced the hunters alone, thinking I’d abandoned her. The thought drove me to new heights of fury.

I gathered every shred of remaining power, drawing shadows from the realm’s darkest corners. They coiled around me like loyal hounds, whispering of endings. Zeus answered with his own gathering storm, lightning crackling around him until the air shrieked.

“This ends now!”we roared in unison, our powers colliding with the force of a supernova.

The explosion shattered what little remained of the throne room and reduced it to a graveyard of splintered gold and broken power.

My ribs cracked, inner organs ruptured. I pushed through the agony, through the blinding light, until my shadows struck true. Zeus screamed as my death power slithered through him, aging his divine features, streaking his hair with premature white.

Zeus slumped against the broken throne, his form riddled with weeping shadow-wounds.

Ares lay groaning in a pool of his own blood.

Dante’s axes had found every chink in his armor.

The guards were dead or badly wounded, Orren looming over them with all three heads raised in victory, his body a tapestry of wounds.

We’d won. But the cost was written in blood and broken flesh. I swayed, my body burned badly. Dante’s mortal shell frayed at the edges, his true form straining against this world’s laws. Orren dragged a mangled leg, the bone beneath his fur shattered.

“Run back to your mortal whore!”Zeus spat. “But the trial comes for her, and I’ll be there to watch her fall.”

I ached to finish him. To ensure he’d never threaten her again.

But Bloom needed me.

She came first.

“Dante. Orren.”My voice was scraped raw from battle.“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

We carved through the palace’s remnants. With the last dregs of my power, I summoned Belladonna. The portal swallowed us whole, spitting us toward home. Toward Bloom.

Zeus’s threat coiled in my skull. The true war of keeping Bloom breathing was just beginning.

The journey back stretched into eternity. Each heartbeat pulsed agony through shattered ribs. Every breath tasted of blood and failure. But more terrible than the pain was the gnawing dread:

Would I be too late?

Belladonna tore through the void between worlds. I pressed my ruined body against her neck, urging more speed from her wings, more strength from my failing limbs.

Hold on, my love.

Just a little longer.

I’m coming for you.