“I didn’t think Hades ever left the Underworld,” Carver whispered.
“Hedoesn’t.” His presence was exceptional. Incredible. Theyknew Persephone. Her cool perfection, her fathomless blue eyes, her affection for Cat—and maybe now for Cat’s family. But Hades never joined his wife on the mortal plane. The last War of Gods vanquished the Titans and gave Zeus the lands of the living and the skies, Poseidon the seas, and Hades the Underworld. The last time Hades had left the realm of the dead was…unknown.
Bellanca stared, her pulse racing and her body heating as if magic burned inside her again. The King of the Underworld was so unnervingly handsome, he was frightening to behold. Unlike his brothers, he had no beard and wore his black hair short. His dark eyes smoldered with inner fire, twin furnaces to light and warm a sunless world. Shadows swirled around his head like a living crown. He felt like gravity itself, his pull intense. He was the anchor to endless souls.
Tears burst across her eyes again, sheer awe. She’d never fear death again.
Carver squeezed her hand, his breathing unsteady.
Smirking at Hera, Persephone laid a possessive hand on her new dog’s closest head. “Oh—and she flies.” The Queen of the Underworld pointed up, and the terrifying beast unfurled wings hidden in her long fur and sprang toward the sky. Keres reached the deadly, old-world serpents in the blink of an eye and hunted them down, quickly, mercilessly. Blood and chunks of snake dropped from her jaws. She skewered others with her claws or clubbed them with her spiked tail. Most fell but some trailed like ribbons from her lethal nails as she attacked, eating or shredding anything that moved.
Hera’s fury shrieked from between her clenched teeth. She threw her hands down, and her outburst of power punched into the ground. Snakes dove at her unspoken command, and Keres launched into the chase of her life, catching them so fast she blurred.
“You know that’s even more fun for her,” Persephone said smugly.
Not a single living snake made it to the ground, and Hera watched in disbelief, her anger darkening the air.
Snake carcasses splattered around them, and Bellanca ducked, covering her head. She turned, checking on her friends. They’d huddled under the altar again and had knives out, ready to stab. Then the smacking thud of dropping vipers stopped, and she turned again.
Keres circled down and landed at her mistress’s feet. Persephone reached out, scratching behind an ear. “Look at those bloody chops,” she crooned. “Good girl.”
Bellanca sagged in relief, but Zeus’s thunder-dark aura echoed Hera’s.
He swung on Dionysus. Fury boiled from him, and his lightning eyes bored into his son. Loosening the tether enough to haul Dionysus to his feet, he snarled, “Why?”
Dionysus blanched in fear. “Pan,” he finally ground out. “You gave those humans the power to kill him.” His hate-filled, crimson eyes flicked to them, and Bellanca scowled back at him.
“Ah, revenge for your friend.” Zeus nodded, frowning. “Except Pan should never have been in Atlantis doing what he was doing, and especially not trying to capture or kill humans who were here forme, onmymission, onmyisland.” He glanced over at them. “And I didn’t do anything other than choosenotto stop them from coming together, months ago, in Thalyria.”
“You know there was more to it than that,” Dionysus said, seething. “You had to unlock the bond.Letthem understand. And then you even granted him immunity to her magic.”
Zeus’s blinding-white stare returned to his son. “Which has nothing to do with any of this—a token reward they could havelived without. It simply felt right to reward their loyalty to me and my island.”
“Your island?” Dionysus’s brows shot up. “Atlantians worship Poseidon above all others, even though he can’t be bothered to show up.”
“We work together,” Zeus growled, his patience with his son clearly at an end. “Something you can learn about while you help Sisyphus with his boulder for a hundred years.” A god bolt burst in Zeus’s hand and engulfed Dionysus. The other god disappeared in a flash of light and a boom so deafening it rattled Atlantis.
Her ears throbbing with a thick, dull hush and her chest hollowed out, Bellanca leaned into Carver, trembling from the shock of power that just exploded from Zeus. Carver leaned on her just as hard, and they held each other up as Zeus swung on Hermes and sound came pulsing back to her ears.
“I’ll have to grant your wings and passage to and from the Underworld to someone more deserving now. I didn’t see you any more than I saw Hera, and that means I failed you just as much as you failed me.” Zeus stepped forward and gripped his son’s shoulder, his fingers paling from the pressure. “You also lost your son, Pan, which I’m sorry about, even though the blame lies squarely on Pan himself. I think a long human lifetime in Tartarus is what you need to consider your actions. You watched humans being bombarded with stones and did nothing? Let stones fall on you until I come fetch you in a century.”
Terror flashed in Hermes’s eyes. His mouth opened in protest, but a big, bright god bolt swallowed him whole before he could utter a sound. The roaring impact hollowed Bellanca out all over again, and Carver flinched away from the blinding flash.
“Hephaestus.” Sighing, Zeus turned to the son that wasn’t his by birth.
The smith god lifted his chin and stared down his false father. “I’d do it all again for my mother. So do your worst.”
“No, Zeus! Not him!” Hera used all her strength and then somehow found more to haul herself in front of Hephaestus. A sickly pallor dimmed her complexion. Her lips lost all color, and even her eyes dulled to a barely there blue. She panted and shook, visibly diminished. The lightning ropes still bound her, but she’d stretched them to their near-breaking limit out of fear for her son. “It’s my fault. I asked him to serve me, and you know he’d never refuse.”
Bellanca sucked in a breath, Hera’s desperate plea moving her more than she ever could’ve imagined. Maybe because her mother had never offered anything even resembling that for her. Her throat constricted fast as she watched mother and son, hope growing inside her for a future Hera, one day. ForthisHera—one who physically shielded Hephaestus and took the blame for him. No one was truly lost if they loved this way.
“Which is why you can stay together,” Zeus answered solemnly. “Consider it my parting gift to you. I punished Hephaestus once unjustly. His debt was paid in advance, it seems. And you, Hera Olympus, who I callwifefor the last time, can have a son but not a husband. I grant you your wish to be free of me. I end our marriage.”
“You…” Paling further, Hera stared in shock, going as still and stone-faced as any of the millions of statues of her across the worlds. “Youendour marriage?”
Zeus’s brows drew together. “Did you do all this to get my attention? Did you want me to fight for you? For us?”
She stiffened, lifetimes of rage painting a crimson splash across her cheeks again. “Of course not.”
