Fear and rage boiled in my blood. I couldn’t watch this. Couldn’t stand here, useless, while they tried to murder my queen.
I struck.
My shadows lashed out toward the arena, black tendrils of death aimed at the hunters tearing through students in my house to reach Bloom.
The shadows hit an invisible barrier.
The realization hit with sickening clarity. The entire arena was warded against the spectator stands. Against interference from me. They’d predicted I would try to intervene. That was why they’d banned me from the construction, why they’d used the same spells and runes that barred me from Olympus.
The only way in was through the gates. The same north gate the hunters had used.
I needed to get there. Now.
I turned to leap from the balcony.
Both of my brothers lunged for me.
Zeus seized my left arm, his grip like forged iron. Lightning crackled across his skin, searing where he touched. Poseidon locked onto my right shoulder, his ice and water magic a flood of cold, leaching the warmth from my limbs, stiffening the joints.
Then the others descended.
Ares charged from the right balcony, his war cry fracturing the air. He smashed into me like a siege weapon, all brute force. His fist hammered into my ribs. Something cracked.
“Contain him!” Zeus commanded, his voice thunder. “Do not let him interfere!”
I bellowed, thrashing against the weight of them and their combined powers. Shadows erupted from me in a violent wave, lashing at any god within reach. Death magic roiled out, but it was thin. Drained.
I’d been away from my realm for too long. Cut off from the Underworld, the source that fed my power. For millennia, I had lingered here, in the mortal realm, refusing to leave.
Even for a moment.
Because if I left, I’d miss her rebirth. I’d not be there when she needed me. And I’d hate myself with all my black soul for losing a single, precious moment with her.
So I had stayed. And my power had bled away. Until I was a ghost of what I had been.
The King of the Underworld, reduced to this. Weak enough for my brothers to restrain me.
I fought anyway, throwing every shred of strength I had left at those motherfuckers.
My fist cracked against Zeus’s jaw. His head snapped back, blood spraying from his split lip. I twisted, driving my elbow into Ares’s temple. He staggered but held his ground.
Poseidon’s water magic coiled around my throat, a vise of cold. I seized his wrist and poured pure death through thecontact. His skin blackened, fissuring like dry earth. He hissed but didn’t release me.
Hermes had my arms locked. I threw my head back, felt his nose crunch against my skull. He cursed, grip slipping.
“You will watch,” Zeus snarled into my ear, his breath scalding. “You will watch her die, and you will know it was your weakness that allowed it.”
I tried to shatter the balcony itself, gathering every last ember of death magic and channeling it down into the marble beneath our feet.
Nothing happened.
The balcony was meticulously warded, too, shielded against any magical assault from within. They had planned for everything.
All I could do was trade pain for pain.
I broke Ares’s nose with a savage headbutt. He repaid me by driving his knee into my kidney. Agony exploded up my side.
At the attack of my shadows, Zeus’s lightning struck me point-blank. Electricity locked my muscles, searing my nerves. I roared through it and seized his throat, squeezing until his eyes bulged.
