“It wasn’t my turn!” Persephone seems to grow along with her ire, and something terrifying and dangerous flashes in her eyes. “I had to stay away. The others forced me to. The Fates made the plan, and Zeus approved it.”
I sense an epic, ground-shaking God fight coming on, and I’m not letting them do that—at least not without me.
“Why didn’t either ofyoujust kill her?” I ask, suddenly furious as well. “Mother was right there. So were you. It could have been over. Alpha Fisa—gone!”
Persephone swings her gaze back to me, her expression abruptly cooling. “Is that really my role?” She sweeps a hand toward Ares. “Or even his?”
I glare at them both. “Should it really bemine?”
I see deep affection warring with the frustration in her eyes. She doesn’t answer.
Is that a yes? A no? She doesn’t know?
“Everything is for a reason,” Ares says cryptically.
“Oh, that’s helpful!” Little Bean picks that moment to feel like a tumbling bubble in my lower abdomen. Smart girl. She obviously agrees.
I growl. It’s loud. The air suddenly vibrates with power again, but this time, it’s mine.
Some of the most terrible moments of my life flash through my mind, and my heart starts to race. Griffin knocked down and unmoving in the middle of a maelstrom of magic and fire. Birds throwing me into a volcanic pit. Eleni—dead in the sand.
My rage grows like a storm inside me, around me. The wind begins to howl. “Give me your reasons then. Because from where I’m standing, they don’t look very compelling.”
CHAPTER 15
“Everything is for a reason,” Persephone agrees. Unlike Ares, I can tell she’s tamping down the power in her voice and all around her, maybe trying to limit her agitation. Or mine. “Everything is laid out like a map.”
“I can’t follow a map!” I never could.
“You don’t have to follow it. Just know that there are multiple roads. You alone choose the ones you take. Some lead to the same destination via different pathways. Others lead to similar or dissimilar outcomes, depending on where you turn.”
I shake my head. She’s talking, but all I hear is noise. “Why can’t I make my lightning work? How do I get rid of these wings? I can’t protect my baby!”
And there it is. The crushing root of my fear. The reason I’m terrified like never before.
I stumble back, bumping into Griffin.
Ares moves toward us, angling his head in concern and making a gruff sound I remember from my childhood. The low hum hurtles me back to a time when I still had my sister, when I was sure I’d fight harder than anyone, save the people I love, and die on my feet. It was a time when Thanos was my only God, even though I thought he was human, just like me.
All of my earliest memories include him. Eleni and I hiding behind him, because he’s as big as a house. Thanos spending hours in the nursery, watching over us and scaring off our older brothers when they took their cruelty beyond the usual harassment. Crying in his arms before I understood how to control my tears—a skill I’ve obviously forgotten lately. This scarred, hardened, giant-of-a-man lifting me up off the blood-slicked floor after Mother beat me and then holding my hand through the hard bite of healing, Eleni always on my other side. I threw up on him more than once, usually when I was at the final threshold of pain. Thanos put my first knife in my hand, curled my small fingers around it with his enormous ones, and then showed me how to use it.
My eyes snap up to meet those of the God of War. Persephone is wrong about who raised me. Eleni was my best friend. But Thanos was everything else.
Ares and I stare at each other. He knows exactly what I’m thinking, and how my emotions are raging inside me right now. His wide-set eyes soften, but that just makes it worse.
“You could have stopped it!” I lunge forward and pound on Ares’s chest, anger, hurt, and bitterness making me rash. “You could have stopped it all!”
Griffin wraps his arms around me and drags me back. I shout, still striking out as he plants me on my feet and holds on to me.
Ares’s expression shows just enough of the temper he has boiling beneath the surface to make me straighten up and pause.But doesn’t he understand?I savedno one. Eleni died right next to me, and I was too weak to even get up. I’ve dragged Griffin through vats of blood—his ownandmine—and put him through so much. And Little Bean… Mother was in her head! What lies did she feed my baby? What horrors did she expose her to? Will they stay with her, even though she’s so tiny right now?
Persephone spreads her hands in a calming gesture. “Zeus didn’t create humans so we could play with them like dolls, moving them here and there and filling their mouths with our own words. You’re not marionettes, and you don’t dance when we pull strings.”
“So what in the name of the Godsareyou doing?” I ask, still too seething to let this go.
“Setting things into motion,” she answers. “Helping—when really necessary.”
“You mean when it suits you!” My heartbeat echoes in the hollow space beneath my ribs, the place that should have been filled with siblings and family and home, but they were ripped out, one by one, or else I never had them at all. Slowly, that empty space has been filling up with people I love, but what’s to stop them from being torn from me now? “Where were you when I needed you the most?”
