Glass rained from every building. Temples, homes, shops, clubs—everything collapsed in a wave of ruin. Screams rose from every corner, a chorus of panic.
I felt no pity. Not a flicker. There were no innocents here. They were all rotten, greedy, and cruel.
Now they tasted my wrath.
Booms. Explosions. Thunder. Red lightning tore across the twilight sky.
Destruction spread like ripples in a pond, unfolding exactly as I’d designed.
Beautiful chaos.
With a ground-shaking crash, the city gates toppled. The wards were completely down.
Through the breach, I heard Hades’s roar of triumph and rage as he led his army into Olympus, the city that had denied him for an eon. Demons, monsters, and the dead poured through, a tide of long-awaited reckoning.
“Look what you have done!” Mother screamed, staring at me in pure terror and denial, as if she no longer recognized me. But at last, she was trulyseeingme—perhaps for the first time.
I rose into the air, and in one fluid motion, I ripped away the red gown.
Beneath it, I wore the black armor of the Death Goddess—adorned with black roses and thorned vines, fitted perfectly to my goddess body. Ready for war.
Zeus led the retreat. The gods scrambled back.
I laughed, a bright, vicious sound that rippled through the crumbling world around us.
“Run, rabbits,” I called after them. “Fucking run. But you won’t run far enough. You cannot hide deep enough. The army of the Underworld is here. And Death has come to collect what is owed.”
I leapt off the edge of the floating tower.
Chapter
Thirty-Four
Persephone
The Fall of Olympus
The armor of Death settled against my skin.
My discarded red gown whipped in the air like a splash of blood against the twilight sky before tumbling toward the ground far below.
I did not fall.
Threads of wind that I’d woven held me aloft.
Then a dark shape shot toward me, moving faster than thought. My ride had arrived.
The hellhound’s jagged wings stretched wide. One of his three heads snarled toward the retreating gods, a stream of hellfire scorching the air. Another turned to me, eyes alight with adoration and a fierce, unbounded joy.
The third remained ever watchful, surveying the chaos and destruction around us.
I alighted on his back.
A cloud of dust and shards of glass billowed upward, swallowing the sky. The Paramount that had stood for eons broke apart.
The hellhound banked away from the devastation like a flash, my thighs gripping his strong body.
“Don’t you like the view, Cerberus? Or would you prefer I call you Orren?” I asked, stroking the powerful curve of his neck.
