“You’ve almost got it, granddaughter!” he called through the portal. “I see now that I underestimated my son. He is truly the Wily One, not I. He needed your professor, yes. But he also needed me. And not, old, weak me, mind you, but—”
“Silence, Father,” Zeus snarled while gesturing angrily to his siblings. Poseidon jammed the tines of his trident against Saturn’s throat. The Titan quieted, but his eyes still bored into Selene, daring her to understand.
“Do it now, brother,” Zeus called to the Sea God.
Poseidon Earth Shaker struck the ground with his trident. The field outside Athens trembled even as the summit of Olympus remained firm. The barley swayed wildly. A dark gash split the earth. Persephone let out a shocked gasp and clutched her mother’s arm.
Smoke issued from the cleft, and heat shimmered against the sky. This was no mere crack—this was the entrance to Tartarus.
Selene reached for her bow before realizing the uselessness of the gesture. If any giants stormed up from the pit, the newly glorious Olympians would defeat them without any help from her. Maryam readied her spear anyway, but Selene no longer believed in the oracle’s words. What cure could the Wise Virgin’s spear provide that the new Age didn’t?
Poseidon and Hestia dragged the Titan to the edge of Tartarus. Saturn dug in his heels, carving great gashes in the earth. “No!” he cried. “You already took my Last Age from me! You promised that if I helped you, I could live in this one!”
“I cast you down once before, Father,” Zeus said calmly. “And, against my better judgment, I let you back out. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
At Zeus’s nod, Poseidon flung their father forward. Saturn disappeared into the void of Tartarus, leaving nothing behind but a fading cry of rage.
Selene breathed a sigh of relief. Apollo is finally avenged. My father will be safe in his new world. Flint is happier without me. My job is done. She should have felt at peace. Instead, Saturn’s words echoed in her mind.
Not old, weak me… Suddenly it all made sense. “Dennis had it right, didn’t he, Father?” she asked slowly. “He said you’d stopped fighting Time. You used Time instead—used his power to help you open a new Age. But for Saturn to truly be the God of Time once more … for him to have that much power in the first place, his cult had to—” She choked, unable to finish the sentence.
June did it for her. “You let Saturn kill Mars! You knew his plans and didn’t warn us!”
Zeus took a careful step backward toward the portal, both hands extended, placating. “I knew the Host had Prometheus—but he wanted to die anyway. I didn’t know Saturn would kill the others!”
Selene’s shock quickly melted into rage. “But you knew he wanted to. You knew he’d try. All that time in New York while we were hunting down the man who killed our family, you knew who it was. And you didn’t help. Because you knew that with every death, Saturn only grew stronger. Just like you wanted. Mars. Hades. Apollo. Their blood is on your hands.”
The other Athanatoi tensed beside her; she could almost hear the discordant symphony of their rising fury. Mars had not only been June’s son; he was Philippe’s father and Esme’s greatest love. Everyone had loved Apollo for his music and poetry. Even Hades, the dark Lord of the Dead, had been brother to Hestia, Poseidon, and Demeter, and husband to Persephone.
The view of the barley field shimmered and began to contract, but she could still see Hermes flying overhead, watching her sorrowfully. Surely he’d known of Zeus’s treachery—and helped him anyway.
Zeus looked at the shrinking portal, his eyes panicked behind his glasses. She thought he would run, but he seemed unable to give up on his plan. “Please,” he cried, reaching a clawed hand to clutch at the air before him, “I don’t want to go in without you!”
Before Selene could react, Maryam aimed her spear at her father’s aegis-covered breast, right over the wide-mouthed Gorgon’s head that she’d sewn there herself. “We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to, old man.”
Zeus stood well out of the spear’s range, inching ever closer to the portal, but he sounded defiant, rather than intimidated. “I don’t want you to come, Sister Maryam. The oracle was wrong. I have no need of you. Or your spear.”
“Then I will use it to protect my family from your wiles.”
Philippe, still holding Flint’s massive hammer, moved to stand beside Maryam. Selene raised her gold bow. Theo stood beside her, fists clenched. Esme flexed her fingers as if she might rip out Zeus’s heart with her long, painted nails. June joined them, her maternal rage the sharpest weapon of all. Yet none of them moved to attack the man they’d honored for so long.
“I carried you on my back,” Selene said, her voice low and dangerous. “I always thought the father who taught me how to hunt must truly love me. Now I know he would let his own children die. He only loves himself.”
Despite her words, Selene still couldn’t bring herself to loose her arrow at the frail old man.
Maryam had no such compunction. She charged forward, her spearhead darting out to catch one of the serpents dangling from Medusa’s head. She pulled back the weapon, trying to rip her aegis from his shoulders. Zeus yanked it away from her with both hands, falling backward and scuttling crablike the last few inches toward the portal. Maryam lunged after him, but the old man swung one skinny leg over the portal’s lip and tumbled into Athens.
Selene held her breath, waiting to see her father’s metamorphosis. When he finally arose from the barley, he stood both two meters and two thousand years away from her. He towered in the air, easily three times the height of the old man who’d left Olympus. His hair shone as glossy black as Artemis’s, his eyes as stormy gray as Athena’s. The snakes of the aegis writhed to life, their beady eyes fixed on their onetime mistress as they hissed an angry curse in Maryam’s direction.
The King of the Gods bent to pick up his lightning bolt from where Theo had dropped it in the field. Already, Hephaestus was striding toward the man who’d let Mars die, his youthful face red with fury. Persephone moved from the other side, full of righteous wrath over her husband Hades’ murder.
Esme took a step closer to the portal. “He must be punished for what he did to Mars and Apollo.”
“Don’t worry,” Selene assured her, watching as Poseidon, Dionysus, Demeter, and Hestia joined the angry circle surrounding Zeus. For now, they maintained a wary distance, but she knew it wouldn’t be long before they attacked the god who’d betrayed his own kin. Even mighty Zeus wouldn’t be able to withstand the combined power of so many Athanatoi. “He gave the others back their strength. He’s going to regret that.”
Maryam rolled her spear in her hands as if itching for a fight. “You sure you don’t want to go in there and help?”
Selene watched Theo’s jaw clench. He swallowed hard. “You could, you know.” His voice was careful, as if he didn’t want to sway her decision one way or the other. “Apollo might be in there.”
“No,” she said, suddenly sure. “Just another of my father’s lies. The Delphi I left Apollo in isn’t through that portal. It’s a Delphi of my twin’s imagining, not my father’s.”
“And Flint?”
She looked at Hephaestus—she couldn’t think of him as Flint anymore. Glorious and gleaming, possessed of infinite power, about to finally find justice for his brother’s killer. If he was no longer broken, would he still feel compassion for those who were? Had he truly become the best version of himself, as her father promised? And would she even love him if he had?
“You could claim your real name, be Artemis to his Hephaestus,” Theo urged, as if reading the conflict on her face.
The sound of her old name filled Selene with certainty. Regardless of how Flint might change, I know who I would become. I’d be a goddess once more dependent on mankind’s worship. One whose identity was constrained by what the mortal world expected of me. One whose absolute divinity would place an insuperable barrier between myself and those who wors
hiped me. At the height of her power, she had hurt as many mortals as she’d helped, punished as many as she’d protected—and most had not deserved their fates.
If I pass through that portal, she knew, I will become like my black-fletched arrows. Deadly and unstoppable, unable to tell friend from foe. A power that no longer belongs in the world I’ve come to know.
“My name is Selene,” she said finally. “It’s the name of the woman you fell in love with. It’s the name I chose for myself. That makes it the truest name of all.”
Chapter 48
RAGING ONE
Theo’s skin tingled. Not with the aftereffects of the lightning, but with the feel of Selene’s hand in his as they stood in silence on the summit, watching the angry gods surround Zeus as the portal slowly closed.
“You sure you’re staying?” he asked her quietly, still not quite believing it. Seeing Flint regain his magnificence, he’d thought for sure she’d realize the Smith was the better match after all.
“I would rather love those I serve than be loved by those who serve me.” Her words were solemn, but her lips quirked in the smallest of smiles. “Hephaestus, on the other hand, deserves some worship after all this time. I’m sure he’ll be happier in there. He’ll forget me in a week.”
“Doubtful. I tried that. It lasted about half a day.”
She pulled him into her arms and kissed him without warning. So hard he had to take a step back to find his balance. Her arms came around him, stopping his breath, smashing his glasses against his nose. He felt his whole body sing in response; he clutched at her back, her hips, and drew her closer. He’d imagined this moment for months, and now it was finally here. She was here. The Selene he remembered. Fierce and beautiful, warm and loyal.
“I love you, Theodore Schultz,” she finally whispered against his lips. “I love you.”
Then Maryam hollered a warning.
Selene and Theo pulled apart to stare through the shrinking portal. The three-foot-wide window showed black clouds and storm-tossed grain in the field outside Athens, even as the sky above their heads on the summit of Olympus remained clear.
Zeus, still surrounded by his furious kin, had stripped off his mortal garb and stood clothed only in the tasseled aegis, his naked muscles gleaming and sharp, his lightning bolt raised in one hand. He didn’t look penitent. And he didn’t look afraid.
He looked like he had a plan.
His voice boomed across the field and onto the mountaintop. “With the help of his mother, Kronos usurped Ouranos.” A King proclaiming his law to the new world he’d created—and the one he’d left behind.
This was an old story. A familiar story. One he’d made sure his family never forgot. “With the help of my mother, I usurped Kronos in turn.”
He lifted the bolt higher, and sorrow flashed across his face, as fleeting as lightning. “And with the help of their mothers, I knew that someday my children would try to do the same to me.”
Maryam stepped toward the portal, her spear raised. “This is why Father didn’t want me to join him.”
Theo felt his stomach knot as Maryam’s words sank in. “The prophecy Zeus received when Metis became pregnant: Her child would overthrow him. He’s never stopped worrying about that.”
On the other side of the portal, Zeus turned to glare at his gray-eyed daughter. “The cycle ends here.”
Black clouds roiled above his head, shadowing the barley field, turning its gold stalks gray. “Dionysus spoke the truth,” he continued. A roll of distant thunder echoed his words. The wind picked up, shaking the field, whipping the Athanatoi’s clothes. “I’ve made this world anew. We won’t fade, we won’t die. And I won’t be overthrown. By anyone. Ever. I’ve made sure of that.”
“Mother didn’t make me this spear so I could save my father.” Maryam continued toward the portal, a promakhos ready to defeat her foe. “She made it for me to destroy him.”
But it was too late. With a twist of his lightning bolt, Zeus carved the wind into a tornado that roared against the edge of the portal. The gale forced Maryam back, her near-human body no match for a divine storm.
The wind ripped the grain from the ground and sent it swirling into the ever-widening funnel. The tornado circled, faster and faster, its epicenter swirling above the gaping entrance to Tartarus. The Athanatoi in the barley field crouched among the stalks, fighting the force of the wind that threatened to lift them from the ground.
A finger of wind tore between worlds, snatching at Theo’s clothes, his limbs, and growing stronger every second. “He’s going to pull us in!” he shouted in warning.
“No, he won’t.” Maryam spun her weapon and thrust it blade-first into the earth, crying, “The cure is the spear!”
The tip struck stone, and all her strength could bury it no further. Selene rushed to her aid. Together, they drove it deep through the solid rock.
The wind picked Theo off the ground, his sneakers floating six inches in the air. He waved his arms like a new-fledged bird, desperate to land—Selene grabbed his shirt with one hand and hauled him back down. Together, they clung to the spear, sandwiched between Maryam, Esme, Philippe, and June like rush-hour commuters sharing a Manhattan subway pole.
Theo peered at the portal through the swirling debris. The Athanatoi on the other side clutched each other, the barley, the earth, but Zeus’s tornado, far stronger than the winds buffeting Olympus’s summit, only continued to grow. The funnel snatched them into the air like a deity’s fist. Hephaestus, his mighty strength restored, managed to stay rooted to the ground, but Dionysus, Persephone, and the others spun like rag dolls, their clothes tearing apart, their divine weapons ripped from their hands. The Smith watched them go, bellowing with rage.
The wind drowned the Athanatoi’s screams as they spun faster, higher, helpless despite the awesome power that had returned to them. Then, in an instant, the tornado sucked them downward like water through a funnel. They were gone. Swallowed whole by Tartarus’s gaping maw.
“What are you doing?” Selene screamed at her father, her words barely discernible above the wind. “You’re killing them!”
When He Who Marshals Thunderheads replied, his voice carried through the storm as easily as it would through an empty room. “I would never kill them—I love them.”
Zeus turned to Selene, and Theo was shocked to see the truth of his words reflected in the sudden gentleness of his gaze. “I love you all. If you die, I would only lose a part of myself. I want you with me forever. I only seek to put you somewhere safe, where you cannot hurt yourself—or me.” His face hardened, and he spun his lightning bolt; the storm around him intensified.
Hephaestus’s fingers had dug into the earth, but the rest of his massive body swung toward the cleft like a compass needle. He bared his teeth; sweat ran from his brow. Selene cried out. Theo watched her fingers loosen on the spear.
“You can’t go in there!” he hollered at her over the wind. “You’ll just get sucked in, too!”
She sobbed, but her hand closed back around the shaft.
June, however, could not be stopped. The aging goddess with the pudgy white arms released Maryam’s spear with a cry and staggered forward to save her son.
The raging winds tossed her into the air, her round body hurtling helplessly toward the portal. Philippe released his hold on the spear, scrabbling after her with his stepfather’s hammer in one hand. But June was already rocketing through the opening between worlds.
Hephaestus lifted one hand from his grip on the earth, but his fingertips only skimmed his mother’s as she streaked past, her mouth opened in a cry of horror.
She plummeted into Tartarus.
Hephaestus let go of the ground to reach after her. His huge frame bulldozed the barley as the wind dragged him to the cleft’s edge. Theo could hardly bear to watch.
Then Hermes dove out of the sky toward his stepbrother, the metal wings of his cap flapping as powerfully as a raptor’s. He looped his own strong arms under the Smi
th’s and lifted him into the air. They swooped heavenward, seeking to outrun the storm.
“Flint will be okay!” Theo shouted to Selene. “Zeus won’t hurt Hermes!”
But Zeus proved him wrong. The Raging One raised his lightning bolt higher. The storm grew taller, the funnel elongating into a twisting black serpent, its jaws aimed at the flashing wings above.
Selene finally let go of the spear. Theo seized the back of her jacket before she, too, could fall prey to Zeus’s storm, but the wind on Olympus had already begun to subside. The portal gaped no wider than a man’s head. When Selene reached to grab the edges and yank it open again, her hands passed through vapor.
“No!” she bellowed, staring through the hole at the black sky.
Through the whirling clouds, Theo could just make out Hermes, still hovering above the ground with Hephaestus in his arms. He kept trying to fly free, but the wind buffeted him back and forth above the sucking heart of the vortex like a shuttlecock volleyed by giants. Selene grabbed her bow and a hawk-feather arrow as Hermes screamed down a single word to his father.
“WHY?”
“I’m sorry, my Tetractys,” Zeus called back. “Even you would seek to overthrow me someday. Such is the destiny of the gods.” His face crumpled with sadness. “This is the only way.”
The gold, silver, bronze, and copper of the braided metal bolt glowed with every color of the spectrum. Small arcs of light jumped from branch to branch, then shot heavenward. Zeus’s eyes sparked in concert with the lightning that crackled toward his favorite son. It struck the winged cap with a shower of sparks and a deafening clash.
As Hermes and Hephaestus plummeted through the sky, Selene loosed her arrow. It flew through an opening now little more than an inch wide, but Theo knew the path it would take: straight through the tornado and into Zeus’s heart.
The arrow got halfway through before the hole closed around it, slicing the shaft in two. The black fletching tumbled to the rocky ground where the portal used to be, lying as motionless as a bird with a shattered wing.
Olympus Bound Page 37
