Poseidon conjured a spike of ice and impaled my shoulder. The cold was a fire all its own. I ripped it free and buried it in his thigh.
Hephaestus emerged, a chain from his forge already whipping through the air. It wrapped my wrists, searing my skin with unbearable heat. I strained against it, muscles corded, but the links held.
Dionysus hurled wine that turned to acid on contact. It ate into my thigh. I tossed my death magic back at him, and he screamed and leapt back.
Five Olympians piled on me, grinding me down. A unified front against my solitary rage.
I kept fighting furiously, determined to break free to reach my mate. Because in the arena below, the pack of jackals hunted her.
“Will you watch your daughter be slaughtered just to spite me?” I screamed at Demeter, my gaze locking with hers across the chaos.
She stood apart, her face ashen, torn between loyalty to Zeus and the frayed remnant of her love for her child.
“IS IT WORTH IT?” I roared, blood spraying from my lips. “Is your hatred for me worth her life?”
Every lifetime, I had been too late. Every time, they had orchestrated it so I arrived only in time for her final moment. They let me watch the light go out of her eyes, the last breath leave her body in agony.
I had held her as she drowned, water streaming from her blue lips.
Cradled her charred body, flesh blackened and split.
Dug her out from the earth where they’d buried her alive, dirt packed in her mouth.
Caught her as poison tore through her.
Cut her down from the noose, her neck broken.
Pressed my hands against the fatal wound, trying uselessly to keep her life from spilling into the dirt.
And now, they were doing it in front of me. While they pinned me. While they forced me to watch, helpless.
The darkness within me deepened, growing colder than the void between stars. My hate burned hotter than the sun, blinding me until all I saw was red.
Not again.
Not again.
NOT AGAIN!
I gathered every last scrap of power I had left, the dregs of death magic, the clinging shadows, the pure, undiluted rage. Letit coil inside me until my bones threatened to splinter from the pressure.
Then I unleashed it.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Bloom
Curse Unbound
The fight raged on. Screams tore the air.
The gods’ beastly sentinels swarmed Ravencrux students in a tide of teeth and claws. Over half the Kingsley house students who had retreated now took advantage of the chaos to pick off Ravencrux students, cutting them down when they fell.
Bodies littered the ground. Some still moved, reaching for help that wouldn’t come. Others were already still, eyes fixed on nothing. The sand beneath us was a dark, sticky red.
I tried to weave shields, golden and obsidian threads spiraling from my fingers, but it was nearly impossible to cover all the students from my house, as many of them were scatteredfar from me, and the hunters rushed me constantly, forcing me back into my own defense.
