“I feel dreadful.”
A sob threatened again. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
“I’m glad to be here,” he answered hoarsely.
She kissed him again, harder, her lips trembling. “I love you, you idiot. Don’t ever almost die on me again.”
“No promises here.” He chuckled wryly. “But I’ll do my best. Did we win?”
Her gaze flicked to the side. She’d stopped paying attention to the gods the moment Carver woke up. Now, Apollo stood next to his twin sister, and Athena looked as if she had no real love for either of them but wasn’t looking for a fight, either. “Zeus did.” She turned back to Carver. “We sort of did. There’s a lot of cleaning up and rebuilding to do—months’ worth. I think many made it to safety, but there are so many casualties. It’s…not the victory we hoped for.”
“Or that we had before Hera showed up.” Carver leaned against the altar, his arm around her. They both stared at the gods. Olympians stood mere steps away, but they were as distant as ever, wholly caught up in themselves.
“No.” But Carver was alive. She was alive. And Atlantis would recover. Because that was what civilizations did, even if it meant evolving into something different, and because the human spirit was unbreakable, especially when it labored out of love.
Zeus still held everyone captive, his might so plainly unparalleled in this moment that his enemies no longer fought. Olympianomachy—at least on this plane of existence—was over.
“Really, Hermes?” The look on Apollo’s face gave new meaning to scorn. “You had a good thing going, but I guess you always were an opportunist. Too bad you chose wrong.”
“I didn’t see you joining the fight,” Hermes taunted. “Too worried about messing up your perfect hair?”
Apollo dipped frosty eyes over his half brother. “It’s a good thing for you I was otherwise occupied, or you’d have more than just your sandals that wouldn’t heal.”
“Stop.” Zeus slashed his hand with enough force to leave a trace of a thunderbolt in the air. “I have no patience for yoursquabbling on such a sad day for me.” In the middle of his allies and foes, he looked around, his powerful gaze heavy on each of them. “Two sons betray me. My beautiful island suffers. My wife—a goddess a man or god can only dream of—despises me.”
Hera’s color rose. “Your dreams have led you to too many other beds. Neither of these sons ismine.”
“And yet you took both Hermes and Dionysus from me. And Hephaestus is your Athena. Created by you alone, and your revenge for a daughter that wasn’t yours and didn’t need you.” He looked at the smith god, his mouth a grim line. “Now,you, I understand. I mistreated you.”
“Maimed and abused me,” Hephaestus growled.
Zeus’s jaw tightened under his flowing beard. “You know I have to punish you?” He looked at each of those he’d fought today in turn. “All of you.”
A hard laugh cracked out of Hera. “You think I’m done?” Determination twisting her features, she conjured scores of Olympian vipers in seconds and shot them high into the air. “Let us go or I drop them all over the island. Apollo won’t be fast enough to save even a fraction of Atlantians before they die.”
Shock slammed into Bellanca. A collective gasp surged through the square, and people raced back up temple staircases, panic sharp in the air.
“Sun flare,” Carver choked out, his wide eyes locking on hers.
She gripped his hand and grasped at her magic, yanking up whatever she could find from herself and their connection. A burst of heat reached only the snakes directly above them, and then it was too late. The rest spread out, darkening the sky.
Her stomach dropped with nauseating force. She was still weak, and now so was Carver. Even together, they couldn’t save anyone.
Athena swung her spear on Hera. “Get rid of them,” she demanded.
Hera laughed again, her smug mirth oozing disdain. “It’ll be a cold day in the Underworld before I take orders from you, child.”
“You sure about that?” Artemis nocked an arrow and aimed it at Hera. She drew back her arm.
Dread rushing through her veins where her magic should’ve been, Bellanca watched the standoff in horror. Hera didn’t have anything left to lose, which made her the most frightening thing Bellanca had ever known.
“You shouldn’t have evoked the Underworld, Hera. Because it’ll come for you.” The silky, caverns-deep voice arrived seconds before Hades did. He rose from one of the cracks in the devastated square, and Bellanca’s jaw dropped, her eyes huge. Carver’s gasp echoed hers. Hades walked up to his brother, and they stood shoulder to shoulder, allies to the end. Persephone followed her husband up from beneath the mortal plane, flanked by a gigantic three-headed dog. The shaggy white hound had six bloodred eyes, pointy red back spikes all the way to the tip of its tail, and fangs the size of forearms. Its huge, razor-sharp claws stabbed through marble every time it moved.
“Keres likes snakes even more than Cerberus,” Persephone said smoothly. “I guarantee she kills them all before they kill any Atlantians.”
Hera’s sneer almost hid her alarm. “She’s not that fast. She can’t be.”
The two queens faced off, and there was only one whose magic-drenched eyes held any confidence.
