“What happened to her?” Colin stumbled into the room, covered in blood, and darted to Leena’s side.
“What happened toyou?” Raven asked.
Colin cradled Leena in his arms. “Ransom is dead. What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s lost a lot of blood.” Raven turned worried eyes back to the elf. “I healed her wound, but she’s going to be weak until she replaces what she lost.”
The growl that emanated from Colin’s throat had Gabriel across the room and between them in the blink of an eye. He held his hand out toward Raven, and she took a step back from where Colin held Leena. Raven had no idea what was going on, but it was clear Gabriel suddenly saw Colin as a threat.
“When?” Gabriel asked his brother.
Colin cradled the scribe to his chest, looking like his heart was being ripped out through his fingernails. “Last night.”
“When, what?”Raven asked.
Gabriel didn’t have a chance to answer. Something crashed across the room—the collapsed shelves—and Eleanor stood in the center of the symbol painted on the floor of her ritual room, Marius’s heart in her hand.
“You and I are more alike than you’d care to admit, Gabriel,” the empress said, eyeing Crimson’s body.
When had she revived? When had she picked up the diamond? She smeared blood from her talons onto the gem. Raven stopped breathing. That was Charlie’s blood!
“Kaló,” Raven yelled.
Marius’s heart shot out of Eleanor’s hand and landed in her own.
“Too late,” Eleanor said. “It is done.”
Wind swirled. Glass shattered, toppled from the few remaining shelves in the gusts. A thin column of blinding light shot up through the center of the symbol, a giant glowing spear. The empress grabbed it in both hands, tendrils of her dark hair twisting in the building magic.
“No!” Raven screamed.
Eleanor grasped and lifted the light, then thrust it through the floor toward the heart of the mountain with such force it made her grunt.
Sparks flew up from around the circle, fireworks that stank of brimstone. And then something else was there. Someone ancient and blond in a toga that seemed to give off its own light.
“Hera!” Eleanor dropped to her knees.
All was lost. If the queen of the gods was standing in Paragon, the goddess of the mountain was truly dead, and Zeus’s promised protection gone with her. Raven’s heart squinched into a tight ball of dread. How could she fix this? Was this even fixable?
Hera snatched the golden grimoire from the place Eleanor had left it on her workbench, her lips twisting into a wicked, vengeful smile. “It is done,” she boomed. “Rise, Eleanor, goddess of the mountain.”
Raven stumbled back into Gabriel’s arms as Hera disappeared with the book and Eleanor transformed, growing in size from just under six feet to seven to eight to twelve. Raven cursed. She steadied her breath. Eleanor was goddess of the mountain? They were all doomed.
Marius’s heart winked in her hand, it’s internal light flickering as power surged through the room. The diamond was still smudged with Charlie’s blood. Raven’s brows lifted. Eleanor may be a goddess, but she’d just proved a goddess could be killed.
“Bow before your new goddess of the mountain,” Eleanor boomed. A lightning bolt formed in her hand, her sneer betraying her intention to destroy them all.
“Fuck the hell off, bitch!” Raven circled her hand over her head, and everything turned to black smoke.
Her next breath, she landed on her knees in front of a giant mural of Aitna, the true goddess of the mountain. Gabriel landed on his back beside her. Colin tumbled onto the cave floor with Leena still unconscious in his arms.
Nathaniel landed on his feet and smoothed the front of his tunic. “That was unpleasant.”
“Why have you brought us to the cradle?” Gabriel asked.
“Because this is where we undo the spell Eleanor just did. This is where we resurrect Aitna.”
“But the grimoire is gone. Hera took it.”
