She ignored his side-eye, and he added, “That’s not a plan, that’s a result. How do we do it?”
She shook her head, her breath pounding in her throat. “We’ll see when we get there.”
Dex snorted, and she wished he’d saved his air for running. As they got closer to the temple square and the heart of the city below the castle, the streets grew more crowded. They garnered looks that went from shocked to fearful. Several people started chasing after them. Not to catch them, but to see where they were going and why.
Good.She’d wanted an audience from the beginning. She let sparks sizzle down her braid and cascade off her arms. Flames trailed behind her. She’d start the show early—just like Eryx.
The crowd thickened, and she toned down her fire andpushed her way through people as the cobbled streets climbed toward the highest point above the main harbor. At times, it became impossible to run, and while she’d needed to catch her breath, she internally screamed in frustration at the slowdown. She blazed up again, her flames making a path for them. “Out of the way!” she shouted.
I will not fail.The words burned as brightly in Bellanca’s mind as her magic did in her body. She blazed and sweat and panted andran. There was too much at stake. Failure wasn’t an option.
The road climbed steeply, and she and Carver outpaced the others. Feet pounding, breath sawing in and out, they didn’t look back. The streets whispered as they blew past. “Magoi. Fire.Shedid it.”
Bellanca had no breath to answer, but she flamed the entire way to the huge courtyard that marked the center of life—and death—in Atlantapol.
Lookout point.Killing wall.Red colored her vision.
That wall was the backdrop to temples, grand and soaring. To Zeus. To Poseidon. To Apollo, Artemis, Demeter, and Ares.To Hera.Hate and heat roared through her. This was the site of generations of daily sacrifices that should never have happened. Zeus could’ve stopped them. Poseidon, too. Their hands werenotclean in the history of Atlantis.
Punishment had turned into nothing but a way to keep Magoi in check, creating new problems in the place of previous ones. But then, the gods never fixed the wrongs their worlds spiraled into—the greed, the violence, the injustice. When it got bad enough, Zeus finally chose a human to set things on a different path.
No, a couple. A fated pair.
Bellanca abruptly stopped flaming as she barreled into theback of a huge, solid crowd that had already formed in the temple square. She couldn’t risk burning everyone between them and Eryx, so she held back her fire, keeping it alive and blazing inside her body. She and Carver pushed and shoved their way forward, moving too slowly. Dex, Silas, and Dimitri caught up and joined them, but the crowd was too thick and stopped their progress halfway across the vast marble courtyard.
“Make way!” Silas boomed with authority. He drew his sword, puffed out his barrel chest, and used his castle uniform to get people’s attention. Dex did the same, and they created a path toward the front of the square. After maddening minutes, the five of them finally tumbled out of the mob and into the empty area around Eryx.
Bellanca’s jaw dropped. Eryx always had soldiers maintain a large perimeter, and today it was even bigger. Tall, burning torches made up a wide semicircle around him with the harbor wall as a backdrop. Eryx stood on the far side of a marble altar close to the sea wall. Lilika lay atop it, tied down and struggling.
Bellanca snapped her mouth shut. She heard a strangled sound on her right and turned. Theophania and Spiro stared at her from the front row in utter shock, him pale and sweating and her gripping his arm and crying. She locked eyes with a wan, weeping Theophania, and a gaping hole opened inside Bellanca. Her stomach plummeted right through it, hollowing her out like a gutted animal.
Of course they’d be there for their daughter until the bitter end. Lilika was their entire existence.
Her heart a tight, aching knot, she tore her gaze from them and turned back to Eryx. He stared straight at her, smug, and her eyes narrowed. She might not have given him the awful surprise she intended, but did he think himself safe behind his wall of soldiers?
Wrath smoldered over her as she stared back at him. The Shard of Olympus hung around his neck, glowing in the center of the amulet. He still had a slight red mark across his forehead but no real burn, and he moved without any obvious discomfort. Hera must’ve healed him so he could perform his ceremony, just as they’d feared.
“Lilika,” Dimitri choked out. He took half a step forward then stopped. “We have to…” Turning to Bellanca, he gripped her elbow. “What do we do?”
Slowly, she exhaled. Her throat loosened. They had to save Lilika, expose Eryx for who he really was,andkeep Hera from gaining the gratitude of Atlantians. This wasn’t just another confrontation like so many they’d already lived through. And it wasn’t about just one life, either, no matter how precious to her. It waspolitics.
She wanted to spit the word from her thoughts. She only knew one way to get things done. She blazed in and fought. How could she leave her friend tied to an altar, terrified and facing down death with thousands of people watching, while she stood around andtalked?
“Eryx!” she yelled, steeling herself.
With the wall at his back, he stood beside Lilika’s head, holding a curved knife in one hand and a golden chalice in the other. Lilika turned her head at the sound of Bellanca’s voice. Her eyes widened. Tears streamed down her face.
Bellanca stared straight into her friend’s panicked eyes. Then her gaze slid to the right, finding Spiro and Theophania again on the fringe of the crowd. What did they see when they looked at her? A warrior? A stranger? A fraud? She broke eye contact with them, swallowing hard.
Eryx had the gall to laugh, a low chuckle she couldn’t hear, but the Shard of Olympus illuminated his face from below,throwing icy-blue light over the cruel slant of his lips and the milky gleam of his teeth. His gaze flicked to Carver. “Seize them!” he shouted.
Bellanca stepped forward and burst into flames. “Don’t move!” The soldiers reeled back, alarm blaring across their faces. “Touch me, and youwilldie. You know that.”
They halted. She’d already killed. She just wasn’t in disguise this time.
“She’s trying to stop me from ending Punishment!” Eryx yelled to the crowd. “She’s working with Zeus to keep Atlantis sunken and magicless. Hera wants to save us. She wants our glory again. She gave me this”—he tapped the hilt of his knife to the amulet—“to bring back magic.”
Bellanca’s voice trembled with fury. “Zeus gavemethat amulet to end Punishment for Atlantis. Hera stole it from me and gave it to you.”
