It wrapped around my hands like living silk. Other droplets hung suspended in the air, held by will alone, ready to be woven.
I began the working—the one I had learned from the Fates themselves after stealing their knowledge, after burning their archives and taking what was rightfully mine.
My fingers flexed nimbly, moving faster than the sisters’ ever had. Each motion was flawless and full of intent. I drew the blood into threads, weaving gold with crimson, darkness with light, death with life in impossible patterns.
The first circle took shape before me, intricate, beautiful, deadly.
Then another inside it—concentric rings of power.
Another, and another, until seven circles hung suspended in the air, each more complex than the previous, each packed with enough power to level mountains.
The threads glowed as the pattern locked into place, humming with purpose, my will made manifest.
I spread my arms wide and flung all seven circles forward.
They shot away from me, passing through steel as if it were mist, through glass without a crack, through stone walls without touching them—intangible and unstoppable.
The circles slammed into Infinite Throne—Zeus’s throne—at the heart of The Paramount, where the ward’s core was anchored. Where all the protective magic of the city of the gods originated.
My threads began to unwind the wards, unraveling ancient blood spells woven by the twelve Olympians together, undoing what should have been impossible to undo.
The first aftershock hit instantly.
The tower rumbled beneath our feet. Marble cracked with a sound like breaking bones. Glass shattered and rained down in a glittering cascade.
The crowd erupted into panic. Gods and goddesses who had been watching the siege unfold now scrambled for cover, rushing from the rooftop in a frantic search for exits.
I turned and smiled behind my mask as chaos broke out around me. My death mask stared at the fleeing immortals.
“Run, rabbits, run!” I called out, my fingers never ceasing their work, twisting and weaving a fresh sequence of threads. “He is coming for you. The Death God does not forgive. He does not forget. And neither do I.”
Zeus and Poseidon led the elite circle of gods toward me as the lesser deities fled. They stalked forward, power rippling off them like heat from a forge—predators in their domain.
Some of the fleeing gods forgot to clear a path for their betters in their panic. They bumped and jostled against Zeus and Poseidon in their desperation to escape.
Poseidon snarled and shoved them aside. When they didn’t move fast enough, he drove his trident through them. Bodies fell. Blood spread across the spotless marble.
Zeus flicked his fingers. Lightning carved a path, incinerating those too slow to duck.
Mother stood frozen between me and Zeus, staring first at me, then at him, as if her mind could not reconcile the scene before her.
The others had scattered. Now it was only me against Zeus and his big boys, with Mother caught, useless, in between.
I could feel my mate’s fear for me through our bond. He and Dante were throwing themselves against the ward, desperate to reach me.
On the walls, the gods’ soldiers grew frantic, volleys of flaming arrows streaking down.
The impacts echoed across the distance. The sight heated my blood, set my heart racing with savage anticipation.
But my fight was here. Inside. Where I could do the most damage.
Zeus glared daggers at me. “What have you done, girl?”
Girl.He thought I was still a pawn in his game against my husband. They’d never seen me as anything more than Hades’s pretty bride and his weakness.
They had no fucking idea of the power I now wielded. Not even my mother understood. Not even my mate knew the full depth of what I had become.
Hades had sensed it beginning, an eon ago. Then the Fates intervened. The curse, the reincarnations—all to keep me contained. To stop me from becomingthepower they could not control.
