For an alarming second, she saw nothing. Then her vision returned, and her pulse slowed.
Without Athena’s interference, she could’ve put the Shard ofOlympus into Eryx’s hands the moment she felt its sharp, biting presence in Atlantis, or at least told him where to find it, but no… Only aThalyrian-bornhuman could remove the shard from its hiding place. Persephone had provided not one, but two, and Hera had decided to wait for them to find it. She’d actually been…hopeful. She’d started envisioning a queen rather than a king on Atlantis’s throne. She had no love for Eryx. She had no love for the Firebringer, either, but she’d seen human dynasties rise and fall for millennia and knew what was better for the island overall.
Disgustingly, her generosity ended up working against her. She’d kept the coveted shard’s location from Eryx, who might’ve coerced one of the Thalyrians into diving for it. She’d delayed Eryx’s ceremony even though it meant delaying her own rise to power. But weeks turned into months. Nothing changed, so she and Pan set a trap. They only needed one of the interlopers to retrieve the shard. That hadn’t gone as planned, and now she lacked a general and a friend.
Abruptly standing, she walked to a high, arched window and looked southward toward where Pan was killed. Anger and shock still shook her, and she almost wished she were one of the statues of her brethren surrounding her in the great, empty hall of the great, empty palace. A statue had no feelings. No wants. No friends. And a statue didn’t care when feelings and wants were too consuming and friends were nowhere to be found.
She dug her fingers into the gilded window frame, the need to grip something overwhelming her—to grip and squeeze and overcome. She’d gathered fewer supporters than she’d hoped with her little experiment in Thalyria involving Zeus’s favored descendant. It seemed she’d made more enemies than allies by toying with the new queen and her unborn child. There were precious few Olympians she could count on to begin with, and their number had dwindled rather than grown.
She took a deep breath of fragrant Atlantian air, her eyes on the south and her vision on the owl cavern. Hephaestus always stood by her. Hermes, the little weasel, was at leastherweasel. The Titan Perses was doing exactly what he was supposed to, and the outcome of his conniving didn’t concern her. Ares didn’t hate her, his own mother, but she couldn’t trust him and wouldn’t, especially after what she’d done to the Thalyrian queen and her family. Ares cared about Catalia Thalyria more than he cared about her—of that, she was certain. She’d deliberately kept him in the dark, because having the god of war against her could never be in her favor. She’d been whispering in other ears for years, but the results were inconclusive. The Gorgons were dead, so that was it. Her army of few.
Pan failed to secure her a Thalyrian to free the shard, so she sent Hephaestus’s metal harpies to snatch the Firebringer to use as leverage. Contrary to what she’d told the woman the night she took Cleito, the intention hadn’t been to kill. Bringing the Magoi to Mount Olympus would have meant revealing herself sooner than she wanted to, but at least her plans could finally have moved forward. The man would have retrieved the shard in return for the woman. The woman would have staked her claim to the Atlantian throne and used the shard in Hera’s name in return for the man. Hera would have rivaled Zeus in power with the sudden, intense swell of gratitude and devotion from Atlantians bolstering her strength. It could have been a victory for them both. Two crowns for two queens. The throne of Atlantis for one. The high throne of Mount Olympus for the other.
Forher.
She ground her teeth in frustration. The Thalyrians foiled that plan as well.
In all these months, none of Zeus’s allies saw fit to help theirprecious pets along, apparently waiting for Cleito to do it. After the failure with Pan, Hera decided she should simply expose the location of the shard herself—thus maybe even gaining the Thalyrians’ cooperation in a way that spared anyone else’s involvement—but then, Cleito abruptly released the information after all.
A sharp huff emptied her lungs, leaving her chest hollower than ever. Zeus’s timing to unlock his Chaos Wizard’s knowledge couldn’t have been worse. Just when she’d decided to help them, her husband snatched the role of benefactor right out of her grasp.
She hadn’t initially brought Cleito to Atlantis for anything to do with her sister. Until the Firebringer arrived, she’d believed Eryx and the ritual she made sure he knew about were her only way to gain the loyalty and prayers of the islanders. He was a foul scrap of humanity, but he could have given her what she needed, even if it meant overlooking his treatment of women. She’d needed him to end Punishment inhername, but she hadn’t known the location of the final piece of the ritual, either—not until Athena unwittingly stuck the Shard of Olympus right under her nose but then spelled it so that only a Thalyrian could pull it from its hiding place.
She smiled at Athena’s accidentally cruel joke because hers would be crueler.
For a generation, she’d been as anxious as Eryx for crucial information about the shard’s location, but Cleito had resisted—and resisted hard. All that suffering, and ultimately, it wouldn’t even matter. Hera would finally get what she wanted, and better yet, without Eryx.
No, she hadn’t kidnapped Cleito from her cradle for this, but oh what a purpose the unfortunate little seer would serve in the end. There was no way that fiery witch from Thalyria would lether sister die. Bellanca Tarva would retrieve the shard and, when push came to shove, she’d use it in Hera’s name. Atlantis would finally be hers.
Theirs.
Two crowns. Two queens.
An immortal triumph and a mortal one.
And if the Firebringer somehow chose poorly, Hera had a contingency plan she wouldn’t hesitate to use. Eryx still lived—until the Firebringer killed him.
Her eyes narrowed, her heartbeat cold.
Playtime was over. Olympianomachy came now.
Chapter 23
Bellanca watched from the narrow spit of rock as Carver swam toward the cavern. He was fluid in the water, a natural swimmer. She wasn’t. It would take some effort to drown her, but she wasn’t exactly efficient, and she hated putting her head underwater. Washing her hair was one thing. Bobbing around in a large expanse of water with waves and currents shoving at her was entirely another. Water she couldn’t get out of could douse her fire as fast as she could make it. She’d faced down monsters with a grin and, to be honest, savage anticipation a lot of times. She’d known she couldwin.
The sea, though, could beat her.
Her pulse sped up as Carver swam into the shadows under the overhanging owl. He turned and waved once before vanishing beneath the surface. He searched systematically, moving from side to side and deeper into the cavern. The first dozen times he dove, Bellanca held her breath until he surfaced again. As repetition set in, she stopped dreading every time he disappeared and started worrying about not finding the Shard of Olympus.
“I’m going farther in,” Carver eventually called, sounding a little winded.
She nodded, uneasy. He swam away, the cavern’s darkness swallowing him whole as if gobbling him up for dinner. What might’ve been the longest several minutes of her life followed until he finally swam back into sight again. Relief left her shakyas he headed for the edge of the cavern and a sheltered, flattish rock he could sit on.
He hauled himself up, visibly fatigued now. “I saw it!”
She exhaled the air she’d been holding. “Can you reach it?” she shouted back.
He shook his head, wiping his face and eyes. He slicked his hair back. “It’s deep inside a crack at the back of the cavern. I can almost reach it, but the opening gets too narrow right before where the shard is. Your hand should fit. You’ll have to do it.”
