Several gods shot him glares. He ignored them.
Well. Time to go meet the God of Death. His eternal nemesis. His unlikely ally now.
Apollo turned to Persephone, leaning close so his whisper reached her alone.
“I can be the messenger,” he said. “What would you like me to tell him, Bloom?”
Her lips curved beneath the skull mask—a look both fierce and intoxicating.
“Tell my love I’m waiting for him to open the final bottle of Nyx’s Vintage, please.”
Apollo’s eyes widened, disbelief sharpened by envy. “He has Nyx’s Vintage?”
The final vintage—made from the grapes of an extinct vineyard, aged in darkness for centuries, bottled only during a total eclipse. Each bottle was worth a kingdom. Each sip was history itself.
“It tastes like home,” she said.
Chapter
Thirty-One
Persephone
The Color of Reckoning
I’d never worn red before. The color of blood. Of war. Of vengeance.
Tonight, it was the color of my reckoning.
I’d discarded the bubblegum-pink gown and rose mask Mother chose. She would be furious, but she’d gone ahead to the celebration while I insisted on arriving later. On my own terms.
The moment I stepped into the banquet hall of The Paramount, every gaze snapped toward me. I lifted my chin and let them look, my crimson gown flowing like liquid flame. Jet-black gloves reached halfway to my elbows—black for the shadows of my realm, red for the power I now carried.
Here, even in the heart of enemy territory, I felt completely in my element.
I swept my eyes across the crowd. The party roared around me—music swelled, gods and goddesses danced and laughed, glasses lifted in perfumed toasts. Their voices were too loud, their gestures too broad.
All of it was a performance. They were beautiful, every one of them.
And utterly rotten.
Only a couple of days ago, they’d watched me fight in the arena. Placed bets on my survival. Hungered for my gruesome end. They’d cheered when I fell and sighed when I rose, turning my agony into their sport.
Now they celebrated. Not my victory over the curse. Not my survival. Buttheirs. They toasted the spectacle of my mate being publicly rejected and discarded while I walked away at my mother’s side.
They believed they had won.
The music rose, shifting into a waltz. Zeus moved toward me with unmistakable purpose. Other gods converged as well, closing in from all sides. Everyone wanted a piece of the returned goddess. Everyone wanted to say they had touched the one Hades could not keep.
Across the hall, Mother watched from behind her mask of wheat stalks and autumn leaves, worry plain in her stance. She had stopped Hades from having me, but that did not mean she wished for anyone else to lay hands on me either. After tonight, she would try to hide me away again. To lock me back in a gilded cage.
I kept my fury at bay as Zeus strolled toward me as if I were his trophy, his right as King of Gods.
I wanted to claw his face to bloody ribbons. To tear that smug assurance from his features.
Then Sebastian was there. He cut in smoothly, whisking me away before Zeus could reach me. I was grateful, in part. Eventhrough gloves, the thought of the God of Thunder, my immortal enemy, touching me turned my stomach.
Sebastian, not Apollo, was the friend who had switched sides, who had saved me. Apollo was the enemy who had watched me die for sport.
