THIRTY-ONE
Olympus
HESTIA LET OUT AN ENRAGED CRY and flung the entire contents of the table onto the ground with a swipe of her arm.
Artemis was here.
With her barbaric Egyptian husband and that ill-mannered daughter of theirs.
How dare they offer her a chance at surrender.
Like she was incapable of waging war. Right here. Right now.
Only . . . she wasn’t.
Thanatos was supposed to have prevented them from entering Olympus, had convinced her he’d create a barrier that would prevent the gods’ return. He’d also promised to come to her aid, to bring the full force of his might and that of the House of Nyx to protect Olympus should anyone try to retake it from her.
He had yet to answer her summons.
And time was running out.
Hestia bit on the inside of her cheek, refusing to consider surrender, refusing to consider Thanatos had lied. He thought her weak, well, she'd show him otherwise. Show him that he damn well better answer when she called. And to do that she had to face him in his black lair and remind him of their arrangement.
THIRTY-TWO
MEL’S VOICE FLOWED THROUGH the wreckage of my mind like a shadow moving through a smoldering combat zone. Her hand slipped under my arm and tugged. I tugged back, not ready to get up and face the world. I wanted to stay curled into myself forever, until my body collapsed and wasted away into nothing.
“Get up,” she whispered, pulling me. “It’s time to go.”
A deadened laugh burst through my wet lips. Go where. Back to reality? Back to a world where everyday I’d have to face the fact Sebastian was gone, that every place in New 2 would remind me of him, that everyday I’d have to look upon the face of his father and see Sebastian in every glance, every expression?
Yeah. No fucking thanks.
I jerked my arm from her grasp and pushed to unsteady feet. My face was hot, eyes swollen, throat hurting.
A dark bullet hit my stomach and knocked me back several feet.
It was Violet.
Oh, God, Violet.
I held her tightly for as long as she needed, and when she eased up and lifted her chin, I was met with round eyes that destroyed me all over again. The expression in them was broken. Something we both shared now, something we allowed the other to see.
I met Mel’s solemn gaze over Violet’s head. She was back in her Goth gear, eager to leave this chamber of horrors behind.
Nyx came forward. Violet released me and stepped aside as Nyx placed Archer in Mel’s arms, kissing his forehead and smoothing his hair from his brow. She turned away and left by way of the corridor behind the dais.
I blinked. The dais and the throne were now white.
My power must have hit it when it missed Thanatos, turning the black stone to gleaming white marble. Surrounded by the black walls, columns, and floor, it practically glowed.
Hypnos joined his mother, leaving his wife behind with Thalia.
Thanatos was gone. Injured. Uninjured. I didn’t care.
“Let’s go,” Mel said.
I followed her and Archer from the hall. As we were about to step into the corridor, Thalia caught up with us. “I want to come with you.” Numb, I just stared at her. At that moment, I really didn’t care what she did or where she went. “He released me. I am . . . free,” she said as though the word hadn’t quite settled on her tongue. “Because of you.”
No, what I’d done was stupid, rash, and someone I loved had paid a price too high for me to live with.
“Do whatever you want,” I mumbled, and kept walking. At the Erebos Gate, Mel stopped suddenly. “Violet. We’re missing Violet.”
While I heard the words, it took a second for them to register. With a sinking sensation I was pretty sure I knew where Violet’s head had been at. “Can you tell if she drank from the river?”
Mel paled. “Yes. I . . . give me a second.” She closed her eyes, connecting to whatever grid the Underworld allowed her to use to pick out wandering souls. Her eyes snapped open. “No. She’s not among them.”
A sigh of relief went through me. I gazed out over the poppy field, knowing that had I not been responsible for getting Archer back to New 2, I would have considered drinking from the river or smelling the poppies in order to ease the devastation inside of me.
“She’s in the poppy field,” I said in a numb voice.
Eventually we found her, curled on her side, a large bouquet of poppies in her hand and pressed against her face. She hadn’t just smelled them; she’d OD’d on them. I dropped to my knees. “Violet,” it came out strangled and hoarse. God, I knew what she'd been feeling. It had just been too much for her.
It’d be so easy, I thought tiredly, to lie down beside her. To let the gentle fade of sleep erase everything. Dry tears stung my eyes.
“Bring her,” Mel said. “She’s not human. She might wake up...” Eventually.
I removed the poppies in violet’s tight grip, and then gathered her into my arms.
During our hot, sweaty, solemn journey back to the fields, I didn’t speak. With every step, my insides became emptier and emptier. I willed it. I wanted it.
“Shit,” Mel breathed, drawing my attention as she handed Archer to Thalia. “Menoetes.”
Great.
Bastard Titan was standing in the road like some troll daring us to pass.
After seeing Thanatos in all his rage, Menoetes no longer looked so intimidating. And a glance at Mel told me, she felt the same.
As we approached, the Titan removed his hand from the hilt of his sword, reached up, and pulled back his hood. Yeah. Didn’t expect that. The god of violent rage was beautiful. Almost too beautiful, if not for the height and muscle mass, and the violent aura and bitterness in his eyes. The irony was not lost on me.
I exhaled heavily. “You going to move?”
Arresting coppery eyes met mine. His hair was black. Sebastian’s hair is black. Was. The thought stabbed right through my chest, making me gasp.
I refocused on Menoetes. Yes, refocus. Don’t want to think about this now. Not now.
Scruff framed a perfect jaw. He frowned, drawing his perfectly arched brows together as his copper eyes narrowed on Violet in my arms. “What is wrong with her?”
“Decided to stop and smell the flowers.”
“She is Titan,” he said it with conviction, but there was a shadow of confusion there, too, as though he sensed Violet was different.
“What do you want, Menoetes?” Mel demanded.
“She is . . . Cronus.” He shook his head and breathed in deeply. “She is my . . . king.”
“No, she’s not,” I cut off that line of thought right there. “She’s just a little girl.”
I perceived such longing in his eyes, the same kind of longing that was in Mel’s eyes, the same longing I’d seen countless times in Violet’s eyes. To belong, to be among your own kind, to ease the loneliness...
She might smell like Cronus or put off some weird vibe because of how she'd come into the world, but she wasn't the Titan king. She might have his DNA, but she was a kid and this kid was going home.
“We’re kind of on a schedule here,” I said, meeting his gaze with all the bleak anger that brewed inside of me.
His throat worked. His beautiful eyes drank in the sight of her in my arms. She was precious to him, to a Titan god of violence; I could see the reverence plainly in his face. He drank her in as though committing her to memory. She was part of a past, a life, a family that he had not seen in over ten thousand years.
Finally, he dragged his gaze away. His jaw worked, the muscle flexing there, telling me it was hard for him to walk away. He gave a respectful and strode away, pulling up his hood and stabbing his wooden staff into the ground with each step.
I stayed there, Violet’s weight burning my arm muscles, and just watched him. Everyone suffered, even the biggest, baddest, strongest of us. We all hurt, all struggled, all had to deal wit
h the realities of our lives, of all the ups and down and unending obstacles.
No one was immune. And if they were, they were the luckiest sonsofbitches in the known universe.
Lost in my thoughts, we continued on. It wasn’t long before the ethereal fire boundary came into view.
A ghostly figure awaited us, a faded reflection with black hair, faded jeans, soft black T-shirt, strong arms, leather band around one wrist...
I froze.
Panic rose in my throat choking, suffocating. I spun to Mel and Thalia, shoving Violet at them. As soon as she was out of my arms, I hustled away.
I got a couple feet before stopping, heart pounding, arms wrapping around my middle. I couldn’t do this.
God, please don’t make me do this.
Thalia stepped around me. “You should go to him,” she said in a gentle voice. “To say goodbye.”
I looked up at her, my eyes growing watery even though I did everything I could to stop it. My voice was thick and unrecognizable. “I’m not ready to say goodbye.”
With the dip of her head, she moved away, most likely joining Mel at the boundary. Fuck. Nope, sorry. Not doing it. I pressed my palms to my eyes and took a few shuddering breaths. The image of Sebastian the last time I saw him swam in my mind. That smile of his as he glanced over his shoulder and told me to stay out of trouble. My chest burned, the pain in my heart so acute and consuming that I felt nothing else. It overshadowed everything. I glanced over my shoulder.
He was gone.
I dropped to my knees, gasping, praying, denying my grief over and over and over in my head. But it built anyway, built until I could no longer deny it and it spilled out of me in great, ragged sobs.
Forehead in my hands, I bent over until the backs of my hands pressed into the barren earth.
“You’ll make it back,” he said, that voice ripping my heart apart.
He was standing in front of me.
My body shook with my cries.
“Ari.”
I lifted my head a fraction as he knelt, one arm over his bent knee, his gray, gossamer fingertips brushing the ground.
“I’m glad you’ll make it back.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard, and forced myself to look up.
He smiled, a shadow of that crooked grin I loved so much.
My heart broke in my chest, just cracked in half, the pain thundering through me with a great empty echo.
“He says I’ll forget.” He straightened, drawing my gaze higher. He stared at me fiercely and with love. “But I won’t. I won’t forget you, Ari.” His form wavered. “I’ll never forget.”
And then he was gone and any small bit of me that might have still existed was gone. Just. Gone.
Leaning back on my heels, I let my arms go slack, lifted my face to the undulating gray sky, and screamed with all the rage and agony in me.
I had no idea how much time had passed.
Could have been minutes, hours, days... When Thalia tapped my shoulder I was still on my knees, feeling like one of the statues in Athena’s garden.
“It is time for us to go now.”
My muscles were stiff, my skin hot, my insides achy as though I had the flu. “Where’s Mel?” I asked in a scratchy voice.
“Gone. She could stay no longer, she said. We are to leave by the marker.”
Thalia cradled a sleeping Archer in her arms. Violet was curled on the ground. Thalia appeared a little frazzled, dirty, sweaty, but I was grateful that she’d waited and gave me time.
Straightening my stiff shoulders, I gazed at the gray flames, feeling a hundred years old. I was tired of this realm, tired of the gods, and their machinations, their disregard for human life.
I started to push to my feet when the flames shivered. A figure stepped out.
Hestia.
And she was pissed. When her eyes lit on me, vengeance flashed. And you know what? I was tired of it. Tired of it all. She wanted a piece of me. Bitch could have it.
As she advanced, her stride swift and her focus locked firmly on me, burning with a deep hatred, a hatred far deeper than any shove off the temples steps could have caused.
I pushed to my feet, energized with purpose as I closed the short distance between us, my jaw tight and my eyes returning her hatred tenfold. My fuel was loss and rage, a need to lash out, punish, to exact revenge and take my ounce of flesh. She was not going to stop me, not going to get in my way, and she sure as hell was not going to hurt Archer or Thalia.
Too close to release her power from a distance, Hestia and I collided, her hand up, ready to release her god power, but I slapped it aside, unflinching, my power electrified brimming and overflowing with so much anger, so much pain. It was like a whirlwind around us, a force that would not be deterred or denied. My palm slammed against her chest. And I released it all into her, every last bit.
And then I kept walking.
I picked up Violet, glanced at Thalia--she just stared at me with wide stunned eyes--and told her, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Her gaze flitted to Hestia.
I didn’t need to look back to know the goddess stood in the middle of the road, a stone cold reminder to the inhabitants of the Underworld that the god-killer had limits and didn’t react well to being manipulated and used.
I was off limits. My friends and family were off limits. My city was off limits. And I wouldn’t hesitate, not anymore.
THIRTY-THREE
THE BRIGHT SUN WAS BLINDING as Thalia and I stepped out of Mel’s temple. The Olympian air was warm and fresh, and smelled like the woods around the temple. As my sight adjusted to the brightness, I tensed at the line of shapes taking form in the clearing.
Warriors with grim faces came into view, as surprised to see us as we were surprised to see them.
Artemis. Horus. Menai. Henri. Bran.
Even my father.
And Michel.
My knees went weak. I met Michel’s eyes and couldn’t look away. A frown pulled his dark eyebrows together as fresh grief swelled in my chest. Sebastian was there in the shape of his face, the color of his eyes, the set of his shoulders, the shade of his hair...
God. I couldn’t do this. How could I do this?
But I didn’t have to say a word. It was all written in my face, all there for him to see, for him to know. The slow realization that came into his eyes and paled his face was unbearable to see. His face twisted into a mask of pain, and a tormented groan grew in his throat until it came out in a bellow of pain.
He dropped to his knees.
No one seemed to understand for a second what was happening. Bran clued in first, his hard eyes latching onto mine with disbelief and guilt.
Unable to stand, I sat down on the steps with Violet in my arms as tears streamed down my face.
MORNINGS WERE THE HARDEST, and every one I woke the same, to the smell of the Mississippi River and the gardenias that grew below my window. After lying there a long time, breathing in the scents and detailing all the nuances until I had nothing left to detect, I had no choice but to open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, numb.
I didn’t belong here anymore.
Not that I belonged anywhere else.
I was different. Out of my element wherever I was and whatever I was doing.
After two months back home, I couldn’t settle into the life I’d been building. I felt like an outsider. My surroundings, the city, the sights and sounds were all muted and glazed over by grief, all different now, all painful.
I drew in a deep breath, knowing I’d have to get up at some point and face another day when all I really wanted to do was stay in bed and be the hollowed out version of the old Ari I’d become.
Still, there were things to do. Shower. Dress. Go down the hall and check on Sleeping Violet. Feel like shit. Lose my appetite for breakfast...
Same old shit, different morning.
Then, I’d leave, go to the Square and stand there lost and alone. I’d think of the plans we tal
ked about, his plans, my plans, plans for New 2, plans for Archer, and plans for the future and the war that was coming.
A couple decades would pass by in a heartbeat. The war would be upon us, and at some point I was sure I’d feel determined not to be on the losing side.
That point wasn’t now.
I rubbed my eyes, took a few more deep breaths, and then sat up.
And froze.
THIRTY-FOUR
ARI FROZE.
Her skin went pale, ghostly pale, almost the same shade as her white hair that fell all around her. She blinked. Three times, slowly. But he was still here in the corner chair where he’d been for a while now just watching her sleep. It was the first place he’d come since leaving the Underworld.
She was so beautiful, her hair falling over her shoulders, and so . . . broken it twisted his insides. Her sea-blue eyes held such pain, a deep crushing despair that told him this reunion would be as hard as he’d thought it’d be.
Pain like that didn’t simply vanish...
One didn’t go through the things she had and be relieved of it so easily. The happiness would return, he knew. But he also knew her pain would cling to her for a very long time.
“Please don’t cry,” he said softly and scrubbed a shaking hand down his jaw, his heart pounding in his chest.
She shook her head, her expression tormented.
She fell back onto the bed and held her hands over her eyes. The bed shook with her cries. He pushed off the chair and walked to the side of the bed and sat down.
The mattress gave with his weight.
As gently as he could, he slid his fingers over the skin of her wrists, and grabbed them, slowly pulling them away from her face. She wouldn’t look at him and that was okay.
“You’re not real,” the sadness and desolation in her words made his throat constrict.