"She's killing them to fuel her escape," Thalia shouted as she raced forward. "And when she breaks free, she'll have enough power to force the birth and steal everything."
The lost daughter. The one stolen to fuel experiments. The one prophesied to return when the star-bearers' children quickened. Those statements ran through my head in a rush as I tried to process what she was saying. She shot me a smile that broke my heart as she passed.
For the first time since her escape, Thalia looked at peace with herself. Horror washed over me, and I shouted, “No! There has to be another way!”
"There's another way," she said quietly. "The prophecy spoke of a willing sacrifice to break the parasitic network."
"Thalia, no," I gasped as understanding flooded through me. "We have five gods here. We can find another solution."
"There is no other solution," she replied. Her voice carried the kind of calm that came from finally understanding your purpose. "I've been dead for decades. Everything since my escape has been borrowed time. This is what I was meant to do."
She walked toward the center of the magical maelstrom, where Lyra struggled against the golden chains. Her Pleiades magic blazed brighter with each step. I’d never seen it like that. Silver-white light that made the stolen artifacts around Lyra's neck crack and spark.
"You cannot stop me," Lyra snarled as she drained another Forgotten One to fuel her resistance. "I have transcended mortal limitations!"
"You've stolen everything you are," Thalia replied calmly as she began to glow. Her power felt ancient and pure even as she started to look like a human bomb. "And stolen power has no foundation when faced with something freely given."
What happened next would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. Thalia didn't attack Lyra. Instead, she opened herself completely. She lowered every barrier, every protection, and every instinct for self-preservation. She simply let it all go. Almost simultaneously, her Pleiades magic poured out of her like water from a broken dam. Instead of dissipating, it connected with every parasitic bond Lyra had ever created across centuries of systematic theft.
The network of stolen power that had taken a century to build began unraveling in seconds. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Lyra screamed as her carefully constructed web of magical connections started dissolving.
The artifacts around her neck shattered one by one as the original Pleiades essence they contained was freed and drawn into Thalia. "I’m breaking you," Thalia said as she became translucent. Her life force was pouring into the cleansing magic. "Every bond you've forged, every connection you've corrupted, every piece of power you've stolen—I'm severing them all."
The parasitic bonds that had linked Lyra to my babies snapped like overstretched rubber bands. The relief wasimmediate and overwhelming. For the first time in months, I couldn't feel her presence lurking in the back of my mind.
But Thalia wasn't done. Her magic reached out across continents, following the ley line network to every site Lyra had ever corrupted. Decades of systematic poisoning began reversing. That’s what happened when pure Pleiades power flowed through the magical arteries of the world.
Lyra's scream of rage shook the foundation of our house. As her network dissolved, so did her manufactured divinity. The remaining artifacts cracked and shattered, releasing the trapped essences of the original Seven Sisters. Without her power sources, she turned back into a regular human.
Unfortunately, it cost Thalia her life. Her body became increasingly transparent as she poured everything she was into the cleansing magic. I could see through her to the battle beyond, where the remaining Forgotten Ones were beginning to retreat as their ally weakened.
"Thalia!" I cried out as another contraction threatened to split me in half.
"It's okay," Thalia's voice was barely a whisper now. It carried on a wind that smelled of starlight and freedom. "I chose this. For the first time in so long, I got to choose."
Her eyes locked onto mine across the wreckage of our bedroom, and what I saw there punched me straight in the gut. Real peace. The kind that came from finally knowing your place in the world. She'd found her purpose and picked her exit strategy. That was more than most got. The acceptance radiating from her was going to haunt my dreams for decades.
"Tell Luciana," she whispered, her voice already fading as her body started coming apart like sugar dissolving in rain, "tell her I wanted to come home, and I love her."
The final surge of her magic slammed into the anchor network with the force of a nuclear blast. The cleansing wavetore outward from our property like a tsunami of purification. It raced along ley lines to scour away corruption that had been rotting in the magical world's foundation since before my great-grandmother was born.
When the light died, Lyra crumpled to the floor like a marionette with cut strings. She was nothing more than flesh, bone, and regret. The power that had transformed her into a divine nightmare was gone. It left her a hollowed-out shell of a woman. She stared at her trembling hands like she couldn't remember what they were for. She knelt there in the debris and dust, broken in ways that had nothing to do with physical injuries. She’d been stripped bare of everything magical.
She looked smaller than I'd ever seen her. She was fully human and fragile. She was completely and utterly defeated.
The remaining creatures scattered like roaches when the lights came on, fleeing into the forest beyond our property line. Without Lyra's power anchoring them to her cause, they had no reason to stick around for a losing fight. The battlefield fell silent except for the sound of my own labored breathing and the distant crash of waves against our shore.
"What a stupid move," Lyra spat, staring at the space where Thalia had been with cold calculation rather than grief. "Sacrificing herself for people she barely knew. What did she think that would accomplish?"
"Put a pin in it," Nana snapped before I could respond, her voice carrying enough authority to shut down a small army. She turned to Hades, who was still standing in our destroyed room, looking like he'd aged a decade in the last hour. "Take her away. Now. Before I decide to finish what we started. I want her to suffer for centuries. A quick death is too good for her."
Hades nodded, his usual cocky demeanor replaced by something that looked almost like exhaustion. He walked overto Lyra and placed a hand on her shoulder with surprising gentleness. "Time to go see your new accommodations."
For a moment, I thought she might resist, but she didn’t. Before teleporting, Hades turned back to me. "I'll return soon," he said. For the first time since I'd known him, his voice was soft. "I want to meet my grandbabies."
CHAPTER 20
Ishould have been able to relish in the defeat of Lyra. So naturally, my body decided this was the perfect time to remind me that I was about to push three magical babies out of my vagina. The next contraction that hit me felt like someone had wrapped barbed wire around my spine and yanked. Hard. I doubled over as much as my massive belly would allow, gasping for air that tasted like copper pennies and desperation.
