by Amy Braun
“And if you do, it will destroy your mind.”
Selena paused at that.
“Cronus was mad. A tyrant driven by paranoia, greed, and hunger. He devoured his own children, torn from their mother’s grasp, so they would not overthrow him.” Her eyes became sad as she looked at Selena. “You do not want that for yourself, Selena. I know you no longer trust me, but please believe me when I say that if you risk the Timeweaver, you risk your life. And to be killed by a weapon of that power… I do not think even Persephone would be able to bring you back from death.”
My heart pounded heavily in my chest, and all I could think about was that moment on the beach when Apollo stabbed her. Watching that blade fall, seeing the blood and her motionless body… I’d lost myself. Knowing a Cronus Shard could kill her and take her away from me for forever wasn’t something I would entertain.
But we’d barely scratched the surface of its power. Cronus was a god of time. The Eye had let Apollo See multiple futures to be prepared for nearly everything until Ares proved himself faster––
My hand splintered, knocking against plates, cutlery, and toppling my drinking glass. I cursed under my breath and used my good hand to clean up the mess, wishing I couldn’t see the goddesses and my friend watching me.
Selena’s fingers curled over my forearm. Warm magic flooded through my skin, and my bones ground together.
No one spoke, dragging out the awkward moment.
Sighing, I leaned back in my chair. “How did the Timeweaver get into that building?” I asked, eager to move conversation forward. “The other ones were well hidden and guarded by spells or creatures, and this one was out in the open. All that was protecting it was its own magic. I have a hard time believing Cassandra would leave it there like that.” I looked at Selena apologetically, but her eyes were understanding. “Could someone else have found it or moved it?”
Everyone at the table frowned. “It’s possible, but it would require a tremendous amount of resources and magical talent,” Athena said. She mulled over her words, and added, “An Olympian could have helped them.”
“Do you recall anything about where it was originally placed, Selena?” asked Persephone.
She looked at the goddess. “No.”
“So, what was the point of bringing the Timeweaver there? It wouldn’t make sense unless…” The answer was so obvious that I dropped my head into my hands. “Unless it was a trap for me.”
Because I was in the way. Someone moved the Timeweaver to a place where Selena would See it. And I walked right into the trap.
“How long do we have until the Furies break in here?” Selena asked Persephone.
“I do not know. They are a force of nature that cannot be stopped or contained once unleashed. They will burn entire cities to the ground to find and destroy their prey. My wards are strong, but they are not strong enough to outlast them forever.” She looked at me. “But I will do everything I can to protect you. My queendom may be small, but it is mine.”
The strength in her voice, which was always so soft and gentle, surprised me. And humbled me. I dipped my head toward her. “I cannot thank you enough, Persephone. Truly, that is…” How do you thank a goddess for putting her home on the line just to protect you? “Thank you.”
She smiled. Somehow, my words were enough.
“So, what are we going to do?” Selena asked. “Because right now, we’re trapped in this cathedral. The Furies are outside, and once they break in, we’re done for.”
I stood in the crosshairs of the Furies. Persephone and Athena were safe, but Selena… Selena was the target right next to me.
“There is little we can do at the moment,” confessed Athena. “The Timeweaver is safe, and everyone here can be trusted.”
Thankfully, that remained true. Kallis had been moved from Haven early a couple months ago by the Sea Guard, so I assumed the gangster was rotting in prison. I didn’t expect to see him again, and I was glad for it.
“This has been taxing for all of us,” Persephone said. “Perhaps we should rest.” She nodded to the plate of food I’d intended to devour but barely touched. “And you would do well to regain your strength, my son. You will need it, should you face the Furies again.”
I grimaced. I didn’t like how inevitable she made it sound.
All I could think about was the way the Furies surrounded me so easily. The absolute rage on their faces and the slicing burns of their talons.
And Tisiphone… her black and purple talons cut up my armor like it was paper. She had scarred me so badly that not even the combined efforts of a war goddess, my foremother, and a Farseer could erase them.
I wondered how much energy it had taken to heal my lighter wounds. Basically everything in me had been broken by the time Athena showed up.
I lifted my gaze and looked at the goddesses. “Are you certain there is no way to beat them? Nothing we can look for and no one we can ask?”
One look in their eyes told me everything I needed to know.
Selena reached across the table and grabbed my hand. I was grateful for her silent promise.
Heavy footsteps slapped the floor behind us. I turned in my chair.
Sam, the young scion who worked for Persephone, burst into the hall, his face pale as death.
“They… There’s something you need to see.”
LIAM
TO SAY OUR arrival shocked the crowd would be an understatement.
Just minutes ago, the group had been eager to slander the names of gods. But that changed with a violent crack of lightning and a quick elemental teleportation. Sometime within three months, Thea had learned to call up water to move through and hide her Trident when she didn’t need it.
I wanted to tell her how much more badass she had become, but my words weren’t what she needed to hear.
Plus, I was nervous as shit.
Knowing the guards were here, the crowd is quick to give us space and relative silence.
The Olympians stayed on the rooftop to watch. Thea turned and started walking.
I stayed close to her, watching the gawking crowd and listening to their mutters. Part of me wanted to Adapt and hear exactly what they were saying. The rest of me knew better.
Thea, for her part, walked tall and proud. She only had eyes for Kallis.
And he only had them for her.
The bastard stood on the roof of an abandoned car, smirking at her approach.
“I would say it’s good to see you again Thea, but we aren’t here to lie to each other.”
“Killing me won’t bring back Alexi and Catalina—”
“You don’t get to speak their names, you treacherous bitch,” Kallis roared.
He leaped off the hood of the car and stomped toward us. I sidled next to Thea’s side.
The angry, devastated water scion didn’t even see us.
“Everything I have lost, I have lost because of you. Because I was fool enough to take you in. Raise you like my own. Let you love my son and a friend of my daughter.” His enraged green eyes shot to me. “Just like you will do to them.”
“You called me down here because you wanted to fight,” Thea reminded, “but I’m giving you the chance to walk away. Because you’re right. I’ve hurt you enough. Please don’t make me do it anymore.”
Kallis laughed bitterly. “If you beg for mercy, I might not kill you instantly.”
Thea didn’t balk at the threat, but I did. More and more, this confrontation seemed like a bad idea. I didn’t want her to be hurt. But one look on her face told me she wouldn’t back down.
Behind us, the crowd shuffled back, giving the scions enough space to square off. Kallis stomped away, shrugging out of his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. His eyes flashed to the Trident. “A tough girl like you needs a weapon? You don’t want to play this even?”
Thea’s jaw clenched, but a pulse of energy shifted from the Trinity Weapon in her grip. The engraved, gold Trident shivered and beaded with water. The beads
rolled across the pronged weapon, dissolving it until Thea’s hand was free.
“Whoa,” I remarked. “Cool.”
Thea half-smiled. I didn’t like the way she looked at me, the sadness in her eyes that looked like a goodbye.
I curled my hand on her shoulder. She looked at me, the fear distant in her eyes, but there.
I smiled as if I weren’t terrified. As if I weren’t trying to memorize her face in case I lost her.
Then she leaned in and kissed me.
It was a soft, simple thing, her lips holding mine, her body flush against me. I knew she wanted this to be simple, something to do in case she didn’t get to again.
But that wasn’t what I wanted.
I curled my hand against the back of her neck, parting her lips and kissing her deeper.
Give her more. Give her a reason. Give her some godsdamn hope.
Thea’s hands curled around my biceps, holding me desperately. Dragging the kiss out even as the crowd made catcalls and impatient, unwanted jokes.
Fuck them. I didn’t care about them.
Thea drew back, panting and sliding her hands to my chest. Not meeting my eyes.
“You can do this,” I promised her, pressing another kiss to her forehead. “He’s just an old, grumpy man.”
She laughed breathlessly. “Thank you, Liam.”
Then she pushed away and walked toward the makeshift ring.
I shot a glance up to the apartment where the Olympians watched. Wondering if they gave a damn about what Thea was doing. How she stood in the way of their wrath. I wondered if they cared that this was for Thea and not for them.
A shout carried from behind me. I whirled around, eyes widening as the match started.
Kallis struck first, sending a bolt of ice flying across the ring toward Thea. She ducked, and the ice shattered against a wall. Rising up, Thea formed three ice arrows from the palm of her hand and flung them at Kallis. He ran, shocking me with his speed, bobbing and weaving away from her arrows. He rushed her as water beaded on his forearms and hardened into ice.
Then he started throwing punches.
Before things went sideways after the Trident debacle, Derek and I took the time to give our friends better combat training. I watched Thea use the moves I’d taught her, shielding her head and constantly moving her feet. Her forearms blocked the strikes that Kallis nearly landed.
But I saw the winces of pain on her face. Each blow stung in its own right, but the gangster’s ice gauntlets added more weight and pain, tearing at her skin. Splotches of her shimmering blood splattered onto the ice gauntlets. The frost was ripping small patches of her skin off.
Screaming angrily, Thea drove her knee into Kallis’s stomach. He doubled over and she clocked him in the chin. Water beaded from her skin and curled into a ball between her hands. She spread her arms, widening the sphere, and slamming it into Kallis. The water engulfed him from head to toe, and she lifted the sphere with him in it. Kallis tumbled in the water—more water than I’d ever seen another scion hold before.
Our magic depended on the elements, but every scion had a limit to how much they could wield before exhaustion set in. All strength levels were different, but Thea surpassed them all. She stood on the same level as Derek.
But Kallis wasn’t a slouch.
He grit his teeth inside the sphere as energy slammed out from his body and smashed into the watery sphere. Its edges started to harden. Kallis kept pushing the frosty energy outward, until the sphere hardened and cracked.
Kallis fell with a collapse of water behind him, landing hard on the ground. He regained control over the formed ice all the while.
Shards of ice kicked up and sliced toward Thea. She raised an arm to fend off the worst of it, but icicles sliced into her ribs and thighs. Blood spilled across her clothes. The force of the icy storm knocked her onto the ground.
My heart thundered seeing her wounded form, and then I saw it.
Her blood… it wasn’t just shimmering. It was no longer solid red. Orange blood slipped from her wounds, shining even under the dim lights.
Red blood turning to gold ichor. A mortal becoming a goddess.
Distantly, I heard the crowd murmuring about this. Everyone knew Poseidon had been replaced by an heir after his death. Any doubts or rumors about who that might be were put to rest.
If Kallis saw this, he didn’t seem to care. He swept his hand across the road, hardening the fallen water and turning it into a line of spikes that sliced down the road to where she lay.
Thea’s eyes widened and she rolled aside, the spike knocking against the ankle of her boot. She scrambled to her feet, and he charged at her with fists raised. Ice rolled across his knuckles, lifting into spikes half the length of my finger.
Fear gripped my stomach.
Thea gasped and jumped back, snapping her hands down and drawing water out of her palms. It coalesced and hardened into icy knives, but she couldn’t get them up before Kallis threw his first punch.
She ducked and jabbed at him with a knife. He kicked her arm aside and punched again. Thea blocked with one hand and stabbed with the other. Kallis wrenched away from the knife, drawing closer. His forehead smashed into Thea’s, rocking her head back. He pulled his icicle-knuckled hands back and hammered them into her stomach.
“No!” I screamed, launching forward. Hands grasped my arms and pulled me back, shouting for me to stop, that it was too dangerous, but I didn’t hear them. I watched Kallis hammer blows into Thea’s middle, drawing blood every time.
A kick to her wounds ripped a scream from her throat and knocked her onto the concrete. My heart splintered and I pulled again, but whoever was holding me wouldn’t let me go.
Thea curled a hand on her middle, quickly healing her wounds, but not quick enough to slow Kallis down. He kicked at her head, and she pushed away. She staggered to her feet and threw a strong hit at his face. He grasped her arm with one hand and used the other to stab the knuckles through her forearm.
Thea screamed in agony, blood seeping from the wounds. Kallis wrenched his wrist, and the spikes punched up from the top of Thea’s forearm, ravaging her arm.
Her painful cry twisted into one of rage. Lifting her free hand, she blasted Kallis in the face with an orb of water. It struck him like a baseball to the face, rocking his head back and freeing her.
Whimpering and curling inward, Thea gasped for breath and lifted her hands again. Water peeled out from her palms and wove into a gigantic wall that blocked Thea from harm. She pushed outward, the wall smashing into Kallis.
The blast knocked him slide into the road. His head bounced off the concrete and he lay still.
The crowd fell quiet. I twisted free from whoever held me back.
Healing herself, Thea carefully approached Kallis’s prone form. I jogged toward her, my mind reeling over what had happened, what would come next—
Kallis crunched upward and shot a ray of ice into Thea’s middle. She doubled over, crying out in pain, and Kallis surged upward to grab her ankle.
She went down hard, stunned from striking the concrete. Long enough for Kallis to form an ice knife and raise it over her chest.
Fire filled my palm—I would have to be fast, I have to be accurate over the discontented shouts echoed from the ring—
A bolt of silver punched through Kallis’s back and poked out of his chest.
I skidded to a halt, startled and confused. Then I turned and looked up to the apartment.
Artemis lowered her bow. Angry thunder clouds formed over Zeus’s head.
For a long, tense moment, no one said a word. And then someone was foolish enough to speak.
“That wasn’t fair!”
Lightning crashed across the sky. The crowd huddled together, frightened by the god’s power.
Some voices were angrier and louder than others.
“You didn’t need to kill him!”
“He was right about you!”
“We don’t need to take this
from you!”
One by one, the crowd shouted its disapproval, sending up pent-up rage that Kallis had encouraged.
The mortals had had enough.
And so had the Olympians.
Thunder and lightning filled the sky. One of the flashes seared brighter than the others. When it faded, the Olympians stood in the crowd, glaring at every single face.
Magic rippled off them; hot and sharp auras pierced the air.
Artemis nocked her bow. Hermes rolled on his heels. Ares smiled.
Zeus’ eyes burned white hot, static rippling around his body.
Horror filled me. Whatever was about to happen, it was going to be bad. Irreversible.
“No,” he growled, his voice rumbling into each and every ear. “You don’t need to take it from us. Nor do we have to take it from you.”
He raised his hand, destroying my hope.
DEREK
IT WAS TORTURE TO stand back and do nothing.
We’d heard the news of what the gods and done in Sacramento. We’d seen it on news feeds and online. I couldn’t stop hearing the screams. Couldn’t stop being terrified of what they would mean for the future.
The Olympians were still there. Still causing pain and chaos. I watched all those people run for their lives, grab the hands of loved ones, and trample over each other to get away. Sparks of magic flew wildly. Fire and ice and gusts of wind and tendrils of aether. As if a scion’s magic could compete with a gods.
And my brother stood in the middle of it all.
I’d watched video coverage of Thea fighting for her life against Kallis, and the arrow that turned the tide of that brutal fight. I’d caught a glimpse of Liam running to help her before the crowd and chaos swept him away.
I didn’t know where he was now. I didn’t know if Corey and Mason were with him, or if Thea’s injuries had worsened.
I can’t just stand here. I can’t.
So I didn’t.
Just minutes ago, I stormed out of the basement with Athena, Persephone, Selena, and a dozen other sorrow scions working in the cathedral and made my way back up to the main floor. On my way, I Adapted my body with a cloaking spell and snuck into the potion laboratory in the corner of the cathedral to take a teleportation enchantment. I felt a pinch of guilt for the thievery but drawing attention away from those innocent people mattered more than how I felt about stealing.
