Chapter 30
THIRTY
Aria
The transition was instant. There was no vertigo, no lurch of the stomach, no sensation of falling through the world’s floor.
One heartbeat I was moving through the damp, suffocating darkness of a subterranean root system; the next, the soles of my boots slapped against polished white stone, and I was blinded by the searing brilliance of two suns.
The light was aggressive, a physical weight against my retinas after the gloom of the cavern. I threw a hand up, squinting through my fingers as my eyes watered, trying to adjust to the assault of gold and azure.
The air here was thin, making my lungs work harder to draw a breath.
It smelled impossibly sweet, cloying like nectar and overripe peaches left in the sun too long.
But underneath that divine perfume lay a sharp, jagged edge of rot, the scent of meat spoiling in the heat.
It turned my stomach, a visceral warning that despite the brightness, something here was dead.
"By the stars," Elias breathed.
We had emerged in the center of a sprawling circular plaza lined with colossally scaled statues of the Olympians.
It was breathtakingly beautiful, a testament to an arrogance that spanned millennia, rows of fluted marble columns, fountains where water floated in impossible spheres, and hanging gardens that defied gravity, trailing vines of silver and gold into the open air.
And it was cracking.
A jagged fissure, wide enough to swallow a horse, zigzagged through the pristine white pavement of the plaza, leaking a terrifying gray mist. The statue of Apollo, fifty feet tall and carved from sunstone, had been sheared off at the neck, its head lying shattered near the base of the plinth.
The water floating in the fountains was flowing backward, retreating into the stone as if afraid to touch the air.
"It’s broken," Flynn whispered, his voice low and guttural. He was turning in a slow circle, his nose wrinkling as he scented the air, the hackles of his shaggy hair rising. "The whole place, it smells wrong. Like a wound that didn't heal right."
I looked past the immediate ruin to the horizon.
The sky in the distance wasn't the calm violet of the paintings in the Citadel archives.
It was bruised, choked with roiling smoke that almost blotted out the strange twin suns.
The main part of the city, that gleaming white metropolis I somehow recognized, was under fire.
But there were no armies, no siege engines, no soldiers scaling the walls.
It was being besieged by the sky itself.
A vortex of absolute, light-devouring blackness swirled at the edges of the horizon, a funnel cloud of destruction.
Lightning, silent and blood-red, arced from the storm, striking the golden domes of the distant palaces.
Where the red bolts hit, stone didn't shatter; it simply ceased to exist, erased from reality.
"By the Fates," Elias whispered, his turquoise eyes wide with a sorrow that looked ancient. "It isn't attacking the city. It's digesting it."
"We need to move," Kaelen snapped. The Dragon Prince had already shifted into a combat stance, his golden eyes darting across the desolate garden, analyzing angles and cover. "The stability of this plane is failing. If we’re caught in the open when that storm touches down, we will be unmade."
We started to move, threading our way through the wreckage of the plaza, stepping over chunks of marble that had once been the faces of gods. But we hadn't taken ten steps when a sound stopped us cold.
It wasn't the silent thunder of the storm. It wasn't the roar of a monster.
It was a voice. Sharp and imperious.
"Intruders!"
The shout echoed from a terrace high above us. I looked up, shielding my eyes. A squad of Sentinels, smaller than the behemoth we had dismantled before, but clad in the same armor, was rushing toward the marble railing, their spears lowering in unison to point at our hearts.
"Hold," Kaelen ordered, stepping in front of me, his body becoming a shield. His hands began to glow with that terrifying, molten heat.
"No," I said, my voice quiet but firm. I moved past him, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from Flynn.
I felt the bond between us surging, a tangled knot of fire, wind, and lightning begging for release. We may have been hiding before, but not anymore.
Now, we needed to be loud.
We needed to be undeniable.
I looked up at the Sentinels on the balcony. I didn't see threats to be feared. My logistical mind disassembled them instantly: elevation advantage, superior numbers, restricted chokepoint. They weren't soldiers. They were obstacles.
I raised my right hand, palm open. In my mind, I reached for the bond, channeling Elias’s perception to lock onto their spiritual anchors, and pulling deep on the reservoir of Kaelen’s raw, domineering power.
"Kneel," I commanded.
It wasn't a suggestion or a plea. I made a localized gravity well, an edict amplified by the resonance of the Titan blood I apparently still carried in my bones.
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
The Sentinels didn't just kneel; they were slammed into the marble floor as if the atmosphere had suddenly turned to lead.
Armor crumpled inward with the screech of tearing metal.
Spear shafts shattered. They were pinned flat, unable to even twitch, crushed by the sheer weight of my voice.
"We aren't here for the guards," I declared, my voice unnaturally magnified by the magic, echoing off the crumbling towers of the gods and rolling like thunder across the plaza. "We want the Queen. We want Hera."
A boom of actual thunder answered me, shaking the very foundations of the floating city and sending dust raining down from the cracked columns.
At the far end of the plaza, the massive golden doors of the central palace blew open, twisted off their hinges by an unseen force.
"You really should have stayed in the basement, little mouse," a feminine voice drawled from behind us.
The dust cloud from the doors was a distraction. It was just more Sentinels pouring out. The real threat had flanked us.
We spun around.
Sitting on a fallen column, casually peeling a golden apple with a wicked little silver paring knife, was a woman.
She looked terrifyingly unaffected by the apocalypse happening around her.
She wore armor not of metal, but of woven starlight that shifted and shimmered with her breath.
A helmet, crested with owl feathers, sat on the debris next to her sandaled feet.
Her hair was dark, but her eyes were the flat, unforgiving grey of storm clouds before a hurricane. They were fixed on me with a terrifying, dissecting intelligence.
"Athena," Kaelen hissed, the name dripping with millennia of hate.
The Goddess of Wisdom stopped peeling the fruit. She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. It was a smile full of malice, sharp as the knife in her hand.
"Hello, brother. I see you brought another pet to the slaughter." She gestured toward me with the blade, a dismissive flick of the wrist. "Does this one bite? Or does she just break things with loud noises?"
Heat flushed up my neck, but I didn't flinch. I stepped forward, the golden markings on my armor and skin flaring in response to my anger. The magic hummed in my blood, eager.
"I do both," I said, my tone clipped and cold.
Athena let out a short, unimpressed laugh. She stood up, tossing the half-peeled apple aside. The small knife vanished into thin air, instantly replaced by a spear that materialized in her grip. It was a weapon of pure white energy that pulsed with a divine, headache-inducing light.
"Good," she said, spinning the spear with a lazy grace that spoke of supreme confidence. "Because Mother is very disappointed in you, Kaelen. Dragging strays into the Royal Court."
"And I'm disappointed in her," I snapped back, surprising myself. "Though I suppose poor parenting explains why her children are rotting from the inside out."
I felt the men beside me wince. Even Kaelen stiffened. Apparently, one did not insult the Queen of Olympus, even during a coup.
Athena stopped spinning the spear. Her grey eyes narrowed, losing their amusement. She ignored me entirely then, leveling the glowing tip at Kaelen’s chest.
"I've been waiting a thousand years to see if the Dragon actually breathes fire, or if he's just smoke and mirrors," she said softly. "Let's find out."
Then she blurred, and chaos erupted all around us.