Chapter 15
Sun-flare magic wanted to burst out instantly. Bellanca corralled it, the effort leaving her lightheaded and smoldering. A flash like that would kill everyone around her, including Cleito. It might even melt her own head under the helmet. Still recovering, she shot fire at the guards, aiming low to try to scare them back without doing permanent damage. Unlike with satyrs, one crackling fireball to the wrong—or right—spot would kill them.
“What was ripped apart is reunited!” Cleito called above the roar of flames and the cries of soldiers. Bellanca did her best to clear a path toward the Chaos Wizard without killing the people between them. Eryx dragged Cleito back toward the tall double doors he’d come through. She struggled against him, shouting, “The queen comes! Beware the usurper!”
The queen comes. Indeed, she did. Bellanca charged forward.
Eryx managed to haul Cleito nearly out of the room before Bellanca stopped letting humanity get in the way. With a snarl of frustration, she destroyed the nearest two soldiers trying to block her. “Back off and live!” She stepped over their smoking bodies. “Bring me Cleito!”
A stupid young soldier jumped in front of her, sword raised, eyes terrified. She let out what she hoped was a measured blast of sun-flare magic, concentrating it on him and only him. He didn’t even burn. He went straight to scattered ashes. She forced herself to feel nothing as she walked through his floating remains. Unfortunately, her powerful new magic also caught the two men closest to him and killed them, messier, blood and flesh and bones all oozing together. She didn’t look more closely. What she saw out of the corner of her eye was enough to teach her to aim better and try harder. Another guard got in her way. He died, too, but only him this time.
Satisfaction found a small place inside her despite the carnage. The nuances of her new magic slid into place with practice. This was no fire, though she was beginning to channel it through her body and aim it in the same way. This was pure heat, a blistering, bright-white light that demolished.
The king made a break for it, and Cleito struggled hard, taking him by surprise and slowing him down. She got in a kick, and Eryx backhanded her so hard she spun and fell to the marble. Bellanca’s heart slammed up her throat. Cleito staggered to her feet, and Eryx yanked on the leash, making her stumble after him.
Two more guards looked ready to come at her, and Bellanca lifted her blazing hands in warning. They changed their minds and backed away, leaving her a clear path to the exit. Others threw down their weapons. She glanced around. The dozen or so soldiers who remained alive in the throne room all held up their hands in surrender.
Bellanca sprinted for Eryx. He reached the double doors, and she threw sizzling magic past him. The wood went up in flames, and he turned, hauling Cleito roughly against his chest. His eyes burned as bright as the inferno behind him.
“You have nowhere to go.” Bellanca closed the remaining distance between them.
Eryx looked from side to side, cursing when he saw his guards huddled against the walls. His face twisted in fury, and he lifted his sword to Cleito’s throat, forcing her chin up. “Stop, or I kill her.”
“Kill her and I kill you .” Deadly rage flattened Bellanca’s voice, and she flamed up without meaning to. She exhaled sharply, her head in a forge and her whole body the furnace. The still slightly damp cloth around her head saved her from the hot metal, but it wouldn’t suffice much longer.
Eryx backed a step toward the crackling doors. Sweat dampened his temples. “So if I give her to you, nothing happens to me?”
Bellanca hesitated. Wording could be crucial depending on the circumstances. “Give her to me, and you walk away right now.” She hadn’t planned on eliminating him yet anyway.
A muscle ticked in Eryx’s jaw. He tightened the blade to Cleito’s throat. A bead of blood welled up, and the Chaos Wizard’s golden eyes flared in panic. “Give me your binding word,” he growled.
Bellanca’s stomach dropped. Magic might’ve been gone from Atlantis for several generations, but some people still obviously knew that Magoi couldn’t break a binding oath without horrible—and permanent—suffering. But how much did he know? She chose her words carefully, hoping Eryx didn’t realize just how precise and thorough he had to make her be in order to eliminate the wiggle room she needed. “I vow to leave you alive tonight if you hand Cleito over to me right now. Also alive.”
Eryx’s nostrils flared. Bellanca’s pulse raced, shooting fire through her veins. A torturous amount of time went by, and she feared he’d ask for a more restrictive and paralyzing promise—one she wouldn’t be able to give him, even for Cleito. But then Eryx lowered his sword and shoved Cleito at her.
“She’s useless anyway.” He sheathed his weapon. “I’ll find the fourth ingredient without her.”
Cleito wobbled toward Bellanca and got behind her, hovering close. Just getting the Chaos Wizard away from Eryx brought instant relief to Bellanca’s magic-hot body. She cooled a little as she glanced over her shoulder. The other woman was the main victory she needed tonight. Her triumph over Eryx could wait until they both had magic and it was a fair fight—and a true conquest.
“We meet again,” Cleito murmured, smiling at Bellanca as though she were a long-lost friend and not a killer wearing the face of a monster.
Bellanca frowned behind her helmet. They’d never met. Cleito couldn’t know her.
The double doors finally cracked and fell to the floor in an avalanche of sparks and half-melted iron. The blaze faded as it ate up the timber and met unburnable marble. Eryx kicked a glowing plank out of the way and backed out of the throne room, his eyes on Bellanca.
She followed, knowing Cleito would stay with her. She might not be able to kill Eryx tonight, but there was no way she was leaving him unpunished for what he’d done to Carver.
She bared her teeth behind her helmet. No one had ever accused her of settling for anything less than an eye for an eye, and she began channeling the magic to make it happen. She learned it, sculpting it in her mind before trying to turn thought into reality. She’d never seen the use in molding fire magic into weapons or shapes before. People did it for show—and to show off—but why bother when plain old fire always did the job she wanted? Tonight required something different, and Eryx merited the extra effort. She smiled. She was no green Magoi and didn’t fear for a second she couldn’t do it. Eryx must’ve sensed her savage smile behind the harpy helmet, because he paled. It made her smile wider.
Bellanca imagined her usual magic as a long thin line, supple and sizzling. She shifted her focus from thought to action, and fire slid from her hand, unfurling until she held a red-hot whip that would give Eryx a taste of his own cruelty.
The whip jumped and crackled on the stone floor. Eryx’s eyes widened. “No…”
“Yes.” The most feral cry of her life exploded from Bellanca as she pulled back the whip and cracked it at Eryx. She didn’t care where she hit him. She just wanted him to hurt .
Eryx yelped. He flinched and leaped back, a red-hot burn streaking across his forehead. “You vowed!” Holding his head, he scrambled away from her. “You can’t! It’s not possible.”
His panic was music to her ears, his fear her cosmic chorus. Bellanca smiled, cold, hard, and vicious. She believed in second chances. Her whole life as she knew it now was the product of one—one she’d set into motion. Second chances were for people who showed remorse, who took action, who tried to be better, not worse. Second chances weren’t for people who casually tortured and murdered.
She stalked after him, this false king she would dethrone and eliminate. He didn’t deserve Atlantis. “I vowed to leave you alive tonight. Unharmed wasn’t part of the bargain.” Taking Eryx’s island would have to wait. Revenge for Carver didn’t.
She conjured a second fire whip in her other hand and sent it snaking around his ankles. She yanked, toppling him over. Eryx crashed to the floor with a gasp, the stench of burning flesh wafting off him. He flipped onto his hands and knees and started crawling away from her. Bellanca let the second whip dissipate as she lunged, grabbed the back of his tunic with her free hand, and burned it right off him.
“Not a single scar.” His perfectly intact back struck her as an insult to both Carver and Cleito. “Let’s remedy that.”
Backing up, she let fly a second lash. The fire whip hit Eryx’s shoulder blades, and he arched with a loud hiss that echoed into every corner of the entryway. She hit him again, and he cried out, trying to scuttle away from her. She followed. By the tenth hit, Eryx begged for her to stop. His words meant nothing. Teeth clenched, arm hot and ready, Bellanca struck again and again. Eryx dropped flat onto his stomach, howling and moaning. He lost consciousness just as she counted nineteen lashes. It was too bad he couldn’t feel the final hit, but she struck him a twentieth time anyway. Now , she was satisfied.
She shook out her hand, dropping the whip to the stone floor and letting it burn out rather than gathering the tainted magic back inside her. She turned. Cleito still shadowed her, and she definitely had an audience, but none of the remaining soldiers looked interested in interfering.
Taking a settling breath, she reached for Cleito’s hand with her now cool one. “Come with me. It’s okay. You have a friend waiting for you.”
Cleito didn’t hesitate to slip her hand into Bellanca’s and follow her, though she muttered, “Wrong. Not a friend. Usurper.”
Bellanca gave Cleito’s hand a light squeeze, trying to reassure her. “Eryx doesn’t deserve his throne. I promise to do better.”
“Usurper,” Cleito repeated.
Bellanca sighed. Yes, she planned to steal Eryx’s kingdom, but she’d imagined herself more as a liberator than a usurper. But maybe that was what all conquerors believed? Right now, she didn’t care. She couldn’t possibly be worse than Eryx unless she changed so drastically she didn’t even recognize herself—revenge whippings aside.
She waited for remorse to hit. It didn’t. With a last glance at the burned and bloodied king, she turned and led Cleito from the building. No one dared get in her way, and the two of them walked out of the castle as easily as she’d walked in. What she chose to not look back at was the throne room. Regret was there for that, and heavy. She hadn’t planned on leaving dead soldiers behind her. They’d only been doing their job, and most of them had done it admirably.
But there were bright sides. Cleito was safe from Eryx. She’d avenged Carver. And she understood her new magic better. She could differentiate it from her fire magic now and use the two simultaneously. Conjuring the fire whips had only helped her concentrate and separate things further. She’d consider this a win for everyone except for the dead soldiers and the families she’d just left in mourning.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, wishing guilt could be exhaled as easily. Cleito stumbled beside her, and Bellanca stopped, remembering that the other woman was barefoot and weakened by abuse and deprivation. She used a dagger to slice through Cleito’s leash, letting the rough rope drop in the courtyard, and then moved forward more slowly, passing under the still-raised portcullis. Holding Cleito’s hand, she guided her toward the smoothest part of the road leading away from the castle. Slowing more wasn’t an option. An indefinable feeling urged her on. She’d won, but tension still whipped through her, building. Cleito looked this way and that, maybe sensing it, too. Her head swiveled constantly even though she should’ve been watching where she was going on the uneven cobbles. She seemed to search for something, and yet her wide eyes stayed unfocused and swirling with too much knowledge.
Cleito suddenly moved closer, as if seeking shelter. “The queen comes,” she whispered.
A chill scraped over Bellanca. On edge, she retrieved her bag from behind the laurel bushes but kept her helmet on. She’d remove it when she was farther from the castle and sure no one had followed. She swung down a side street and then circled back to where they’d been, getting behind any potential danger, but as they walked, she didn’t see anyone else on the dead-of-night streets of Atlantapol. Trying to shake off the unease gripping her, she guided Cleito down a long empty road parallel to the one she really wanted. When she was certain they were alone, she cut down an alley, got on the wider street going along the waterfront, and headed straight for her building, finally letting go of Cleito’s hand and removing the harpy helmet. She hid it in the bag again.
As they walked, Bellanca threw her head back to the star-smattered sky. Gods, it felt good to breathe without that metal thing shoving her heat back at her. She unwrapped her head and tossed the long cloth over the sandstone wall. The next high tide would gobble up what was left of the half-burned fabric. Cool night air filled her lungs, and she savored the deep breath, letting it out only to take another. Traces of night-blooming jasmine and orange blossoms rode a salt breeze. Waves gently lapped at hulls. Ropes creaked and bells chimed in the harbor. They’d become the scents and sounds of home.
Cleito suddenly stopped. Bellanca stopped with her, frowning. She lightly tugged on Cleito’s arm, but the other woman dug in her heels, her infinite gaze seeming to focus as she looked straight at Bellanca and spoke to her instead of muttering into the space around them. “Four. His ritual requires the four. He’ll have three. Ceremonial knife. Chalice. Virgin blood.” Her voice dropped to a low, shiver-inducing whisper. “Amulet.”
Goose bumps sprayed across Bellanca’s skin, and she touched her chest even though the medallion Persephone gave her was stashed at home under a floorboard. “The Shard of Olympus…” she murmured around her shock of receiving such a clear message from the Chaos Wizard.
Cleito glanced at the night sky then back at Bellanca. “Under Athena’s owl,” she confirmed just before a terrible crack rent the air above them. Both women ducked. Bellanca’s pulse surged, and she grabbed Cleito, tucking the other woman against her. Magic sizzled in her veins, and her eyes sharpened on their surroundings as she swiftly moved them toward the harbor wall to at least have their backs protected. A dull hum blunted her hearing, and she shook her head to clear it. It stopped, and her heart thudded loudly in the new silence. Was Zeus about to smite her? She looked skyward, but no lightning flashed. No thunder followed. Everything was suddenly too quiet.
Wary, she let fire race just under her skin and waited. If not Zeus, then what? Bellanca pulled Cleito deeper into the shadows, stuffing the Chaos Wizard between a cypress tree and the sandstone wall. Standing in front of her, she watched the street for movement.
Something in the distance grew bigger and brighter, and her head snapped up, her eyes narrowing. It came from the north, from Mount Olympus, and her flaming-hot blood suddenly froze solid. Only two things came from that direction—magical creatures or gods. Dread spiked inside her.
“The queen comes,” Cleito murmured.
Bellanca brutally beat down her panic and stood taller, trying to hide the smaller woman behind her. She could see more clearly now. A goddess flew toward them, her luminescent skin brightening the long, full gown floating around her. She grew bigger and more visible, beautiful and frightening details coming into focus. Tight curls. Somber visage. Cylindrical crown. Bellanca swallowed. She’d know Hera from any statue in this world or her previous one.
Her heart raced like never before as the goddess hovered above them, an icy stare hardening her terrifying countenance. Despair warred with recognition inside Bellanca. She understood now. Queen. Usurper. Cleito hadn’t been prophesizing about her at all. She’d been warning her about Hera, Queen of Olympus.
A queen trying to seize control over her husband’s kingdom.
Bellanca’s already pounding pulse intensified to a sickening hammering. This was who was behind the Olympianomachy. Zeus’s own wife was angling for his throne. She wanted to supplant him and was pulverizing innocents in the process.
The goddess landed softly despite her height and obvious strength and the solid gold scepter she carried. Her golden necklace, armbands, and girdle alone probably weighed more than most grown women. She carried them effortlessly.
Bellanca refused to even acknowledge her rising terror and straightened her shoulders.
“Surprised?” Hera glided closer, almost serpentine in her movements, and Bellanca half expected her to hiss like a snake because this woman was cold, cold-blooded.
“Yes,” she admitted, anger and fear roughening her voice. “I expected the protectress of woman and children to protect them, not gamble with their lives and happiness for her own profit.”
“It’s time to get over Thalyria. Everything worked out for your precious Cat and Griffin in the end.” Hera’s lips thinned. “I wasn’t quite ready to reveal myself, but you forced my hand. Your sister holds all the information Zeus wants you to have, and I need that information working for me, not him.”
“My sister?” Confusion wound through Bellanca’s horror and rage. Two sisters were dead, and the other was in Thalyria. There was no way Lystra was passing along information to her here in Atlantis.
Despite Bellanca’s efforts to hide Cleito from Hera’s view, the Chaos Wizard came out from behind her and scraped a bare toe along the cobbles. Bellanca threw her arm out, still shielding her—or trying to.
Hera glanced back and forth between the two women in front of her, her hard but perfect features utterly expressionless. “Did you not notice the resemblance?”
Goose bumps shattered over her again. She had noticed. Still, it was impossible. She’d never laid eyes on Cleito before tonight, never met her. “You can’t be serious. She’s from Atlantis. I’m from Thalyria.”
“Cleito was supposed to tip Eryx in the right direction and eventually gain me Atlantis and its people, but Zeus has a hold on her mind I can’t seem to break, and Eryx hasn’t proved successful, either. She wouldn’t give him the final ingredient, and now that I finally know where it is, Athena’s made it inaccessible to anyone but a Thalyrian.”
Anyone but a Thalyrian? Confirmation that the Shard of Olympus was truly meant for her and within reach got lost in the frantic, fiery rage erupting inside her for Cleito. The beatings. The whippings. The fear and humiliation. “You let him abuse her? You? The goddess meant to safeguard women?” And where had Hera been since Punishment? Definitely not intervening on behalf of anyone in Atlantis.
She suddenly wondered if her sun flare could kill an Olympian, because she was ready to try it.
Hera shrugged, the thick gold around her neck glinting in the moonlight. “That was his choice, his method. I had nothing to do with it.”
“You didn’t stop it,” Bellanca growled.
Hera’s long, serious face remained impassive. “Don’t you wonder? What happened? How I did it?”
Bellanca didn’t answer, but curiosity burned inside her along with magic. Cleito’s shout in the throne room jumped back to her. What was ripped apart is reunited! Those seemingly random words had meaning now, but Bellanca could barely accept it. How could they be sisters?
“I see the question in your eyes, the curiosity, and even though you’ve been a thorn in my side in two worlds, I’ll answer it.” Hera stepped closer to Cleito, and Bellanca’s heart leaped in fear. If she’d just found a sister, she did not want to lose her. “The new princess was one day old. You said hello to her in the nursery in Castle Tarva. You were old enough to remember. Do you?”
“That baby had blue eyes. That baby was Lystra.” Bellanca held as still as she could because inside, she rattled . “There was no kidnapping. No child went missing.”
“Almost all newborns have blue eyes. They can change later, even if they’re fated for chaos magic and the swirling gold of infinite knowledge.” Hera’s gaze flicked to Cleito. “She was a little bald bag of flesh. No hair color yet to mark her. Eyes just like most infants. I found a little bald bag of one-day-old flesh in Atlantis and I… switched the babies.” Hera’s expression changed for the first time. She seemed delighted with herself, and Bellanca wanted to vomit. “The Tarvan royals got a Hoi Polloi child, and an Atlantian family got the most powerful seer alive in all the worlds. It was obvious Eryx would find her.”
Bellanca’s heart battered her ribs, and her breath sawed in and out, loud in the night silence. Lystra was still her sister in every way that counted, but she had another. She had one here , in Atlantis. “How could you?” Disgust, disappointment , pushed acid up her throat and a sting toward her eyes.
“I did nothing to the children that wouldn’t have happened to them anyway. Do you think Cleito would have had a better life with your family? She was fated for abuse. It didn’t matter in what world or in what household.”
“She would’ve had me !” Magic pulsed out of Bellanca, destructive and concentrated. She pushed it forward and away from Cleito. The street around the goddess brightened with blinding, white-hot light, then darkened. Hera’s robes softly wafted in the heat of Bellanca’s temper.
“My…” The goddess laughed coolly. “You’re as fiery inside as out. I’m almost glad my automatons didn’t manage to kill you.”
Bellanca’s jaw dropped. Zeus had more faults than she could count, and she’d started hesitating to support him, but if a curse-wielding, baby-snatching, ice-cold goddess who’d tried to kill her was the alternative, Zeus had Bellanca’s full support and then some.
“Maybe Lystra would’ve been happy and safe in Atlantis.” Her poor sister had suffered atrociously for her lack of magic.
Hera scoffed. “Is any woman truly safe in Atlantis?”
“You tell me, goddess of women and family,” Bellanca snapped, loathing Hera with all her being.
Hera’s stern face tightened. “Bitterness coats your tongue. It’s unbecoming.”
“Kidnapping, manipulation, and attempted murder are unbecoming. I might’ve chosen someone other than Zeus. I do not choose you,” Bellanca said hotly.
“You’ll change your mind.” Hera didn’t bother to give a reason.
Bellanca shook her head. In a convoluted way, Zeus and his core allies had brought peace and true leadership to Thalyria after centuries of violence and injustice. They’d given Bellanca new hope, a reason to fight, and people to fight for. They’d provided hands-on help and magic when needed. “I don’t care if you hate your husband. Figure it out yourself. Don’t drag innocent people into it.” Like her sisters .
Bellanca moved closer to Cleito, fear churning in her stomach. It turned out, she’d had two seers in her family, one extremely powerful and one all-knowing . Not to mention her parents and other siblings—fire wielders and earth shakers and snake conjurers. Her bloodline was mighty, and yet here she stood, defenseless when she had so much to defend. Her new sun-flare magic, the most powerful weapon she’d ever possessed, had made Hera chuckle.
“Enough.” Hera suddenly vanished. She reappeared next to Cleito and yanked her into the folds of her gown, trapping her there as though the pleats had tentacles. “My patience has limits, and you’ve caused me enough trouble.”
Cleito looked at Bellanca with wide, shining eyes. “I remembered you from the nursery, just like I remember everything, past, present, and future.” Her smile turned brilliant. “I knew you’d come for me.”
Bellanca lunged for Cleito just as Hera swept her out of reach. Through rage and searing eyes, she hissed, “Give me back my sister.” Her throat burned with a thousand screams and a flood of tears she’d never shed.
“Weave your right threads for a pretty picture.” The golden flecks in Cleito’s eyes swirled like stars speeding across the cosmos. “Tug your wrong ones and destroy the tapestry.”
Bellanca understood instantly. Cleito was talking about the balance between fate and free will, about destiny and making the best choices within its predetermined framework. But what was Cleito trying to tell her? What were the right choices? Fight Hera and likely die? What good would that do anyone, including Cleito? Beg? The thought galled her and soured her magic like poison.
“Please,” Bellanca rasped out anyway. Somehow, Cleito had just been woven back into her life. She wouldn’t destroy the new tapestry. “Please give me my sister.”
“The power of the Shard of Olympus for your sister,” Hera demanded coldly. “Find the shard and use it in my name to restore magic to Atlantis. Give me its grateful population, its rejoicing worshippers, and you can have your little oracle back.”
A fresh swell of fury and shock rose inside Bellanca at Hera’s ultimatum. Her eyes darted to Cleito. Her sister looked at her intently, her endless gaze heavy and steady as though carrying a message.
Bellanca turned back to Hera, dread throbbing inside her like a heartbeat. “And if I don’t?”
“If you give Atlantis’s worshippers to my controlling, adulterous husband, I’ll drop your little sister from the heavens, just like Zeus did to my Hephaestus.”
Hera’s chilling words iced the night air as she abruptly vanished, taking Cleito with her.