The Struggle

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  Hades chuckled darkly. “Luv, look around and you should be able to answer that question.”

  Aiden’s frown was severe.

  “You weren’t supposed to kill Atlas or any of the Titans. “ Apollo’s voice was as harsh as a violent windstorm. “You were supposed to entomb them.”

  “Okay. Sorry?” A prickly feeling along my skin grew. I was so not in the mood for this.

  “Sorry?” Apollo repeated. “Perhaps my instructions were not clear enough when I explained that the Titans needed to be entombed.”

  Alex barked out a cutting laugh. “Your instructions are never clear.”

  His eyes snapped blue fire and he looked like he was gearing up for a major rant I really didn’t want to listen to. “He was going to kill us,” I said, and I felt that should’ve been explanation enough. “He was killing us. Look at what happened to Solos. If it hadn’t been for Seth—”

  “I really don’t want to hear that name right now,” Apollo interrupted, and yep, he was ticked off.

  “Sorry, but we’re going to need to talk about him.” Aiden’s voice was level and calm, but I tensed all over. “Because we all have several questions about what happened with him.”

  Neither Hades nor Apollo answered.

  “How did Seth become the God Killer?” asked Alex. Her arms were folded across her chest and her hip was cocked to the side. She was all attitude. “As far as we knew, that wasn’t possible. I was the God Killer and when I died my mortal death, that was that.”

  Impatience flooded Apollo’s expression, tightening his jaw. “I’m not sure if you remember how unordinary that entire event was?”

  Alex raised a single brow.

  “We had no idea what truly would happen to you or to Seth. Making you a demigod—who also happened to be the Apollyon and the awakened God Killer, while there was another Apollyon alive—had never been done before. I warned you—all of you—that anything was possible,” Apollo shot back, but he hadn’t warned me about any of this. Then again, he didn’t really tell me much. “Anything was possible.”

  “So you’re telling me that you really had no idea Seth could tap into all of us and somehow become the God Killer?” Disbelief colored Alex’s voice.

  “That is what I am saying,” Apollo replied sharply.

  My frustration grew, as did the ache in my arm. “Okay. Even if all the super-special gods in the world had no idea that Seth could somehow become the God Killer, that still doesn’t explain how he killed Atlas. We were told—he was told—that only the demigods with their unlocked abilities could kill them.”

  Apollo’s jaw flexed. “They could entomb them.”

  Whatever.

  “We were not sure if the God Killer could,” Hades stated after a moment. We all turned to him. He looked particularly bored with the conversation. “God Killers did not exist when the Titans were in control. We felt it was best to not put it in that unstable cretin’s head—the possibility of him being able to take out a Titan.”

  “He is not an unstable cretin.” My hands curled into fists.

  Hades smirked. “That’s a matter of opinion, luv.”

  I exhaled heavily. “Basically, you guys knew there was a chance Seth could become this. After all, didn’t you have Alex and Aiden watching him?”

  “Well . . .” Alex trailed off.

  “And you knew there was a chance he could kill a Titan, but you said nothing,” I continued. “And now I’m assuming the earthquake and the charbroiled daimons had something to do with Atlas’s death?”

  “Just like with Ares’s death, there was a weakening in all of us, allowing the Titans to make their escape.” Hades’s boots clicked off the crushed tile as he walked to his horse. “With Atlas, the ripple effect was much more severe.” His large hand moved along the side of the beast. “It punched a hole straight through the earth, through Olympus and my realm. Unfortunately it damaged the fire caverns, allowing for openings here and several other places.”

  My knees felt weak. “Punched a hole . . . a hole straight through Earth?”

  Hades nodded. “He was Atlas, after all.”

  The kitchen door opened once more and Deacon drew up short. His gray eyes widened as he spotted Apollo.

  Gable bumped into him from behind. “Who’s that?”

  “Nope,” Deacon said, turning right back around. “That is all kinds of nope right there.”

  And Deacon pushed Gable back into the kitchen.

  “Gods,” Luke muttered under his breath as he scratched his fingers through his hair.

  Anger tightened Aiden’s jaw. “Okay. Did it ever occur to any of you that if you just told us that there was a possibility that Seth could become the God Killer and that he could kill a Titan, we might’ve been able to prevent him from killing a Titan?”

  “And exactly how do you think you would’ve stopped the God Killer?” Herc spoke, shrugging out massive, muscular shoulders. “Even I, the Hercules, would’ve been unable to stop him. He could kill me.”

  “Oh, the tragedy,” murmured Hades.

  “I will probably never say this again, but Hercules is right,” Apollo admitted. “Your knowledge would’ve changed nothing.”

  “That is . . .” I shook my head in wonder. “That is the absolutely stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Knowledge is everything. Knowing what he could possibly be capable of ahead of time could’ve given us a chance to stop him—could’ve given him the chance.”

  Apollo said nothing, because how could he deny that? To do so would be foolish.

  “This is not our fault,” Aiden said. “Like always, you all deem it necessary not to tell us everything and like always, everything goes sideways fast.”

  “We tell you what you need to know when you need to know it,” Apollo snapped back.

  Herc rolled his eyes. “Trust me, you’ve only had what? A few years of dealing with a need-to-know basis. I, the Hercules, have lived—”

  “I am done with you.” Apollo waved his hand, and Herc just disappeared. There one second, gone the next.

  My mouth dropped open as I stepped over the dais. “Did you kill him?”

  Hades laughed.

  “I wish,” muttered my father. “I sent him back to Olympus. I have no need of him now. We have no need of him.”

  I shook my head. “We still have to find the other demigods.”

  “You already know where they are, and we have bigger problems.” Apollo turned to Alex and Aiden. “We have a God Killer who is obviously AWOL—a God Killer who is a threat to all of us.”

  “He’s not a threat to you.” I walked toward the crevice, steering clear of Hades, his men, and his horses. “If he was, he wouldn’t have done what he’s done.”

  Alex glanced at me and then agreed. “He left here without harming anyone.”

  “He did hit me,” Luke added dryly. “But he didn’t kill me and he could’ve easily done so.”

  “I know what he did,” Apollo growled, and I felt heat creep into my face. Did he really know what Seth had done before he’d left? Because, ew. “Seth cannot be trusted. Not now.”

  Closing my eyes, I tried counting to ten. I only made it to three. “He has given you no reason not to trust him. He has done—”

  “You do not know him as well as you think you do,” Apollo responded, his back to me. “You do not know him at all.”

  Tears of anger and frustration filled my eyes. “I know him better than any of you.”

  Apollo’s back stiffened. “You need to find the other demigods now. The Titans need to be entombed—” He held up a hand. “—and not killed. We will deal with the God Killer.”

  Aiden and Alex exchanged looks.

  Ice drenched my veins. “What do you mean, deal with him?”

  “Once you locate the other demigods, bring them to the Covenant,” Apollo ordered.

  I stepped forward. Pieces of tile fell into the gaping crevice.

  “Careful,” Luke murmured as he stopped a few feet behind me.
“I so don’t want to go down there after you.”

  Neither did I. “What do you mean by ‘deal with him’?”

  “What do you think, luv?” Hades asked as he mounted his horse with the kind of fluid grace I imagined only gods had. “We may not be able to kill him. Yet. But we can neutralize him.”

  The iciness spread, seizing my stomach. “How?”

  Hades didn’t answer, but he gave me a faint, mysterious smile, one that caused my stomach to dip unpleasantly. Guiding his horse around, he nodded toward Alex and Aiden. “I’ll be seeing you two soon.”

  Then with a flick of his wrist, his horse turned again, toward the tear in the floor. His men followed, and all three disappeared into the smoke whirling from the floor.

  Any other time I would’ve been shocked and awed by all of that, but not today.

  “How?” I demanded once more.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Apollo responded. “What you need to be focusing on is locating the other demigods—”

  “I know what I need to be doing,” I cut in.

  “And what is that? Running off after him?” Anger filled every word Apollo spoke. “As if what I’ve ordered you to do is not more important?”

  I took a deep, even breath. “Alex and Aiden have agreed to—”

  “I know what they’ve agreed to do. It does not matter.” Apollo turned his head to the side, but didn’t look in my direction. “You will locate the other two demigods and then wait for me at the Covenant in South Dakota.”

  I almost laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “You’d disobey me?” Apollo queried in a voice too soft for comfort.

  Across from me, Alex and Aiden looked like they wanted a bucket of popcorn, but both remained quiet as I stared at my father’s back. “I will do what I feel is right, and finding Seth is what I need to do. I love Seth. I love him when no one else believes in him and I will still love him when everyone realizes who and what he truly is. That will never change. And there is nothing you can say that will change my mind, so you might as well not even attempt it and just tell me how you plan to neutralize Seth.”

  “You won’t love him when he drains you dry.”

  I sucked in an unsteady breath. “He would never do that.”

  “He wouldn’t? Because I’m pretty sure he has already fed from you.”

  My gaze shot to Alex and Aiden. Had they told him? No. They hadn’t seen Apollo since I had. Or at least I didn’t think so.

  “You don’t understand, Josie. You approach everything with Seth as if it is a black or white issue, as if there is not gray. You don’t know him like I do—like all of us do. Whether you want to admit it or not, we do not know what Seth is capable of. We never have and you did not know him when he worked alongside Ares.”

  While a part of me recognized that Apollo had a point, he was still wrong. I didn’t know Seth then, but I knew that was a different Seth. People could and did change. “Since you seem to be watching from afar like a total stalker, then you know he stopped and he told me what happened.”

  Apollo tipped his head back. A moment passed and then he said, “You sound like a foolish child in the middle of a tantrum.”

  “Oh geez,” Luke murmured from behind me, and Alex’s eyes widened.

  For a moment I was consumed with the skid mark his words had left behind. Just for a few seconds, and then I shed that hurt like I’d done so many times in the past whenever I thought about my father, where he was and why he hadn’t been a part of my life.

  There was a time when I saw Apollo that I wanted to rush to him. That all I wanted was for him to hold me like I’d seen Alex and her father embrace one another. That I wanted him to talk to me like he did when he spoke to Alex and Aiden.

  But right now, I wanted nothing more than to punch him in the throat.

  Anger filled me, squelching the exhaustion and the pain in my arm. “How would you know what a child sounds like in the middle of a tantrum? Like you’re actually around children enough to know that? I mean, you weren’t there for any of my tantrums. Or my birthdays. Or holidays. Or any of the hundred times my mother had a relapse and I was scared to death that she would accidentally hurt herself.”

  My words struck their mark. I knew this because the room suddenly filled with electricity. Alex and Aiden shifted uneasily, and I had a feeling Luke was slinking away.

  “You think that’s what I wanted?” Apollo asked. “That I chose to not be there for you?”

  “Right now you choose to not even look at me when you speak to me, so yeah, I’m going to go with you chose not to be there for me.”

  Apollo whipped around so fast I barely saw him move. I couldn’t read the emotions in his face. I didn’t want to.

  I spoke before he could. “You barely speak to me when you do decide to appear. Hell, you seem more happy to see them than you are to see me, your daughter.” I gestured at Alex and Aiden across the rift. I don’t know what exactly had tipped me over the edge. It could’ve been everything and anything at this point, but there was so much raw hurt building inside of me. “You won’t even tell me anything about my mother. You always disappear before I can even ask.”

  His chest rose and those large hands opened. “Sometimes it is best to not be given the chance to ask a question that will lead to an answer you will not want to hear or need to know.” Regret flickered across his face the moment he snapped his mouth shut.

  Everything in me stilled and slowed. Even my heart. “Why . . . why would you say something like that?”

  Apollo’s gaze shifted away, and I . . . I knew. I just knew. My heart dropped to my stomach and a hole opened up in my chest. “I want to see my mom. Now.”

  “That is not possible,” he answered quietly.

  I drew in a breath and then another, and it did nothing to help the sinking feeling spreading throughout me. “Because she’s in Olympus, right? I’m not allowed to go there?”

  Apollo, my father, said nothing.

  Behind him, Alex and Aiden blurred out of focus. “That’s what you’ve been telling me this entire time. That she’s safe in Olympus. So I want to see her.”

  “Josephine . . .”

  “I want to see my mother,” I stated again, clearly and slowly just in case he didn’t understand my request.

  “You can’t.” His voice as strained as his expression.

  “If you do not take me to see my mother, I will go myself.”

  Surprise filled his ocean-blue eyes.

  “I know where there is a gateway to Olympus,” I said, and then I bluffed big time, because I didn’t know if Medusa would allow me or if I could get past her. “And I can and will get through that gateway.”

  A heartbeat later, Apollo was standing right in front of me. “You must understand that I’ve told you what I have because I felt it was best at that time. You’d just learned that you were my daughter and that a Titan was coming for you. You’d just discovered that your grandparents had been murdered. I told you what I did because I did not feel you could withstand the truth.”

  Nothing was still in me anymore. I was full of trembling cracks and shattered pieces barely held together.

  Apollo’s voice lowered. “I tried to stop Hyperion when he went to your grandparents’ house, but I didn’t get there in time. Your mother was . . .”

  “No,” I whispered.

  His eyes closed. “Your mother was already dead.”

  Chapter 5

  Apollo was talking and I was hearing what he was saying. I heard those words and I felt them on my skin like a thousand pricks of a burning needle.

  Mom was dead?

  I opened my mouth and a cry of denial erupted from me, building into a scream. Rage and heartache blanketed every cell in my body. I screamed and screamed as fury and horror mingled with all the aether in my veins.

  Apollo’s ocean-blue eyes widened a second before the irises faded into white orbs. He reached out a hand toward me. “Josie—”

  Pure po
wer erupted. I exploded like a volcano. Bright light had