Her eyes snapped back up. “You’re sorry to lose your throne.” Ignoring his olive branch, she kept her glittering blade up and stood her ground.
Zeus shook his head. “I won’t lose my throne. You’re strong, my love, but not strong enough.” Hera’s nostrils flared at the endearment. “I have a temple full of worshippers praying to me right now. You have an empty ruin. I have the biggest cult in Thalyria. You haveno onein Atlantis now.” Zeus took another restrained step forward. “Surrender, Hera. It will be better for you.”
Bellanca watched, stunned, her heart racing.He still loves her.
Hera backed away. “You’ll punish me. You’ll send me to Tartarus.” The word trembled in her mouth, because even gods feared the realm of eternal torture. “I’d rather die.” She lunged at Zeus just as a white light popped behind him. Hermes appeared, swinging a sickle-shaped blade at his father.
“Watch out!” Bellanca cried just as Hermes sank his scythedeep into Zeus’s shoulder. Zeus roared in pain, lightning branched across the sky, and Hera rammed her blade into his stomach just as Hermes yanked his scythe out.
Hermes’s winged sandals flew him up and back as Zeus whirled and struck out with a god bolt. Hermes dodged. The punishing magic sailed out to sea, and new fear crashed over Bellanca. Apollo still chanted over an ashen, unmoving Carver. They weren’t done yet, and if Apollo left to help his father, it could mean the end of Carver.
“Athena, Athena, Athena,” Bellanca whispered frantically. It was a prayer, a supplication, a desperate plea for aid. She needed the goddess—one who’d helped them before—to fight on Zeus’s side so that Apollo could stay with Carver.
Zeus’s god bolts chased Hermes across the sky above Atlantapol. Hera sprang at Zeus from behind with a new sword, her other one still lodged deep in his body. Bellanca gasped in horror as Hera swung at Zeus’s neck, his back to her.
The air split, and Athena crashed down onto Hera’s moving blade. She crushed it under her armored feet and slammed her spear into Hera.
Hera stumbled back, a pained breath rushing out of her. She regained her balance and flung one hostile, bitter word at Athena. “You.”
Athena yanked the spearhead out, and golden ichor flew from the weapon, splattering around them as she glared at Hera. “The second I have permission to kill you, it’ll be my pleasure.” Athena’s crested helmet trembled from her rage. Her shield and spear glinted. She’d come ready for war, and she was magnificent. Gratitude surged through Bellanca.
Hera breathed harshly, slowly healing. Zeus spun on them both, his eyes thunderous. He dragged Hera’s first sword from his body, snapped it in two with a snarl, and hurled the shardsaway from the battle. Athena moved out of the way, and he prowled toward Hera just as Dionysus and Hephaestus appeared, blocking him. Dionysus swung a blade. Zeus caught it in his bare hand, ripped it from the god of wine and revelry, and tossed it aside. Gaping in shock, Dionysus scrambled away from his father. Hephaestus poured lava from his hands and turned it into burning-hot hammers. He threw both at once, one slamming into Zeus and the other into Athena.
The force of the hits sent both gods skidding backward, their feet gouging deep tracks in the ground. Hermes swooped in from above, brandishing his scythe again. An arrow suddenly clipped a wing from his sandal, and he tilted wildly, dropping his weapon with a shocked yell. Bellanca spun in time to see Artemis let fly a second arrow from the steps of her temple and sever a wing from the other sandal. Hermes spun out of control and crashed into the toppled-over statues of the twins guarding the road to the castle.
Walking toward Hermes, Artemis shot arrow after arrow, her bolts so fast he didn’t have a chance to move before she pinned him by every limb to the fallen statue of her brother. Groaning in pain, Hermes pulled against the arrows. He ripped an arm free, and the huntress pinned him again. Cool as moonlight, graceful as water, her dark, curling hair held back by a crescent-moon tiara, she shot him over and over until he gave up and slumped against the cracked marble, soaking in his own ichor.
The harsh ring of metal drew Bellanca’s eyes back to the main battle. Athena took on Hera while Zeus battled Hephaestus and Dionysus. Dionysus got in everyone’s way, sloppy and frenetic, his wine-colored eyes more fearful than focused, but Hephaestus fought like ten lions, sending Zeus’s blood spraying toward the altar.
Bellanca ducked the golden droplets, her pulse racing and her magic stirring and reaching and heating. She stood her ground, guarding everybody at the altar and raging with anguish as Olympianomachy took a huge and deadly toll on Atlantapol. The temples lining the square shuddered. The people inside them cried out in fear. Some even dared to race outside rather than go deeper underground. One whole side of Ares’s house of worship suddenly collapsed, and she gasped, her chest folding violently inward along with the building.
“No…” Her heart pounded sickeningly hard. Anyone inside who hadn’t gone down into the sanctuaries had just been crushed under half a temple’s worth of marble.
Columns cracked, staircases shook, and Atlantians screamed, the muffled sound of their terror coming from inside the temples. She bit down to keep from screaming with them. They’d found shelter that could bury them alive. This time, she prayed to Zeus, pouring all her strength into it. All her passion, all her hope, all her ferocity of spirit. Hehadto keep her people safe. Besides, he needed them. Right now, Atlantians praying just like she was as he defended them from Hera kept him bright with Olympian power despite his injuries while Hera struggled, barely deflecting Athena’s blows.
Her heart and soul blazing with the intensity her magic didn’t have right now, she prayed and prayed. If worship was power, she offered Zeus and his allies everything she had.
Athena struck out with her spear, shearing through Hera’s cheekbone. Artemis hit Dionysus with a trio of arrows, making him squeal like a satyr and dive away from her. Hermes finally tore himself free and stumbled toward the battle. Artemis turned her bow back on him while Hephaestus pummeled Zeus with huge hammers made of volcanic stone and bubbling lava. Zeus pummeled him back with god bolts meant to stop but not kill.They left the smith god riddled with burns, his skin bubbling like the lava that poured from his weapons.
“Enough!” Zeus suddenly thundered. Lightning sprang from him in four directions, blasting into his foes. Instead of hitting them with a lethal god bolt or sending them straight to Tartarus, he turned his magic into ropes of living lightning and captured them, dragging all four of them to where he stood. With a great downward heave, he buried each bolt deep into the ground and tethered them to the core of the island. “My family is at war! This should never have happened!”
“And whose fault is that?” Hermes spat, his wounds dripping gilded patterns onto the fractured marble. He staggered to his feet along with the rest of them.
Zeus leveled a blinding-white stare on the fleet-footed messenger. His jaw tight enough to make his beard tremble, he let off two concentrated thunderbolts and destroyed Hermes’s golden sandals, obliterating the two wings still weakly hanging on to them. Hermes gasped as he fell to the ground, his feet charred and useless.
“My own son.” Shaking his head, Zeus called Hermes’s scythe to his hand. It flew out of the rubble and into Zeus’s waiting palm. He threw it out to sea with a snarl.
Breathing shallowly, afraid to move, Bellanca kept her weakly flaming hands up and ready, though Zeus seemed to have just put a sudden and unbelievably mighty end to the battle. Had her prayers helped? Ifthiswas the result of fervent human worship, it was tremendous. Truly something to wage wars for. Still being treated by Apollo, Carver moaned a dreadful sound behind her. Her heart cramped in fear, but she didn’t dare look away from the gods as they argued.
“She’s not even your mother,” Zeus growled to Hermes.
“Ah. Does he begin to see one of the problems?” Themessenger’s upper lip curled in hostility. “Another is that you’ve ignored me just as much as you’ve ignored Hera.”
Zeus sucked in a breath that made every leaf still clinging to any tree still standing pull in his direction. “You’re a millennia-old god. I didn’t think you needed constant supervision and validation to not betray your own king and father.”
“No. You’re more interested in your human pets—yet another problem.” Hermes tossed Bellanca a venomous glance, and it was all she could do not to take a quick step backward.
“Thosepetschange worlds. WorldsI’mresponsible for keeping in balance. What have you done lately?” Zeus thundered.
