Chapter 34
POSEIDON
We all knew the three women had eavesdropped on our talk with Zeus.
The king of the gods played his part well…
spinning self-discovery and promises of being a better god, a better king, a better man.
I had a feeling it was for the benefit of Bronte…
but maybe he truly meant it; or maybe it was just another performance.
Time would prove whether he was full of truth—or full of shit.
And as for the auction? We weren’t blind. We’d known Bronte and Persephone were listening in, waiting for an excuse to drag Cordelia into the fray. So we gave them fifteen minutes. Enough rope to make their choice, enough time to come chasing.
Now we stood outside the venue, waiting for them. Sure enough, a harried-looking Perseus appeared with the three of them in tow, his eyes going wide in horror when he spotted us.
‘Sorry, Majesty,’ he muttered, staring at the ground like a chastised boy. ‘They’re… pretty scary. And persuasive.’
All three women froze mid-step, equal parts startled and guilty at finding us waiting.
‘It’s fine,’ I grunted. Perseus let out a relieved breath as though I’d just spared him from the gallows.
Ajax scowled, and Thanatos grinned at Persephone with something dangerously close to pride.
‘Let’s do this, bros,’ Bronte announced, striding past us as if she owned the damn place. Zeus’s eyes brightened as he watched her, but Hades shook his head, shadows curling at his feet.
‘Before we go anywhere,’ he said, voice edged with command, his gaze cutting to Persephone, and making Bronte’s step falter. ‘You three stay on the upper level. Lookouts only.’
Persephone’s mouth opened, ready to argue.
‘No arguments,’ Hades snapped, voice pure steel. Power wrapped around his words, and the fight drained from all three women at once.
‘Ajax, you go with them,’ I added.
My acolyte bowed and stepped to obey, but Cordelia caught my eyes, lips pressed tight, defiance sparking there. Gods, I was in so much trouble, and damn me, but I almost smiled.
The auction was held in a subterranean vault beneath a crumbling Venetian palazzo—hidden beneath centuries of secrets and sorcery and guarded by layers of enchantments and riddles only divine beings could unravel.
Bronte had peeled back the wards with smug ease, and now we stood beneath gilded chandeliers glimmering above shadow-drenched walls. The flickering candlelight cast eerie silhouettes across masked faces.
I stood beside my brothers, Hades cloaked in shadows as usual, Zeus exuding an arrogant calm that barely masked his unease. Behind us were Perseus and Thanatos, weapons hidden but ready, while Erebus and Hecate had arrived earlier, posing as potential bidders to scope the venue.
The tension in the room crackled like storm lightning—every supernatural present was either hunter or quarry—a mix of divine descendants, dark fae, rogue titans, and a few well-hidden monsters in humanoid skin.
Hecate, in a slinky black gown, gave us a small nod as she stood by us, with Erebus a looming figure of shadows. Perseus and Thanatos fanned out through the space, none of us trusting what lay ahead.
The auctioneer—a lamia whose voice was silk edged with fangs—slid forward to announce the star lot of the night.
‘Lot seventeen.’ Her voice magically amplified through the chamber.
‘From the ancient battlegrounds of Thebes: the teeth of the Theban dragon. As used by Cadmus himself. Artefacts of resurrection and war. Possess them, and birth your own elite Spartoi from bone and blood. Each will spawn one hundred soldiers.’
A collective hush fell over the room. The teeth—jagged, glimmering with ancient power—dark, primordial, and hungry—were displayed in a crystalline case glowing with faint golden wards.
My eyes narrowed. ‘That power should never have left Olympus.’
‘Raising warriors from soil and bone,’ Hecate murmured at my side, her voice cool as ice. ‘Used wrongly, they’ll bring chaos.’
‘Used rightly,’ Erebus growled, ‘they’ll bring war.’
‘Either way,’ Hades said, ‘we can't let them fall into Ixion’s hands.’
I glanced at Cordelia, stationed upstairs, far from this madness. And yet even here, I could feel the tether between us tighten.
‘We get those teeth,’ Zeus said lowly, his violet eyes narrowing. ‘Or we burn this place to the fucking ground.’
The lamia raised a clawed hand. ‘Bidding begins.’
A susurration swept through the chamber as bidders revealed their currency—no coins here, only power.
A djinn prince offered vials of Lethe water, the liquid memories whispering softly in their glass prison.
A witch from Carthage placed a basilisk egg upon her table, its shell veined with gold and death.
Armies of shades answered with a low hum, bound by spectral chains.
A dark fae rose from her seat—tall, ageless, her skin faintly luminescent beneath a crown of thorns and frost. The room seemed to bend towards her.
‘A tear from the veil itself,’ she murmured, holding aloft a crystalline drop that shimmered between the realms, flickering from blue to black to impossible light. ‘One cut, and the worlds bleed together. Use wisely.’
The crowd stilled, a collective shiver of awe tippling through gods and monsters alike. Hecate’s gaze flickered to the fae with wariness.
‘We need to grab that as well as the dragon’s teeth,’ she muttered, worry etched across her face.
Across the hall, the vampire envoy countered by cutting his palm and letting the blood sizzle into runes mid-air. ‘Ten centuries of fealty,’ he declared.
The bidding escalated, the chamber thickening with power. Each new offer rippled through the room like a psychic shockwave—telepathic bids clashing beneath veils of diplomacy, sigils flashing and fading as fortunes changed hands.
Erebus leaned to Hades, his voice barely a whisper. ‘Ixion has sent someone. I can feel their rot in the aether.’
A hooded figure in obsidian robes raised a gloved hand and offered something unspeakably rare. ‘The breath of Moros,’ they intoned, ‘sealed in stygian glass.’
A silence fell. Even the shadows recoiled.
Hecate hissed. ‘That breath was sealed by my hand. Whoever holds it is a traitor… or worse.’
The psychic war reignited—runes flared, oaths shattered, gods and monsters vying through glamour and deceit. Beneath it all, the air itself seemed to pulse with a single truth: whoever claimed the teeth would command not just armies… but destiny.
Then the hooded figure snapped their hand, trying to rip the teeth from the plinth, and chaos erupted.
Thanatos’s dagger pinned the relic down, divine seals locking it in place.
Perseus slammed into an assassin mid-lunge; Hades’s shadows surged, battling half-seen spectres.
Zeus hurled lightning, shattering the illusion around the hooded bidder, but their face remained cloaked by an enchantment of anonymity—one that even divine sight couldn’t pierce.
I grabbed the teeth just as the enchantments began to unravel. ‘I’ve got them!’ I shouted.
The hooded figure hissed in frustration and cast a blinding curse that blew out all light in the room—total darkness, even for gods.
When vision returned seconds later, the figure was gone. Only a smear of ichor and a single broken scale remained—iridescent black and vibrating with malevolent energy.
Hecate stepped forward, holding the tear in the veil, her fingers brushing the broken scale. ‘This... this is from a drákon. And not one of ours.’
Zeus looked to his brothers, his jaw clenched. ‘They’re killing drákons behind the veil?’
Hecate lifted a shoulder but looked perplexed. ‘Killing drákons removes a check on nature, meaning fewer apex predators, ecological imbalance, or more dangerously, a release in chaotic magic. If they’re drinking the blood…’
The words turned my stomach to stone.
Shadows rippled at the edge of the vault. Bronte and Persephone appeared, panic etched into every line of their faces.
‘Cordie…’ Bronte began.
My heart stuttered, ice flooding my veins. ‘What?’
‘She’s gone,’ Persephone gasped, her voice splintering, shadows lashing out uncontrollably. Her hands trembled as she dragged in a ragged breath. ‘And so has Ajax… I—I tried to hold my vines to her, but—’ She broke off, eyes wild, panic cracking through the goddess’s usual poise.
Hades was at her side in a heartbeat, shadows swallowing hers, steadying them.
His hand closed around hers, firm and grounding, though his own jaw was clenched tight enough to crack.
‘Breathe, my queen,’ he said low, a command threaded with desperate tenderness.
His gaze snapped to me, darker than the abyss.
The dragon’s teeth nearly slipped from my grip.
Pain lanced through me so sharp it stole the breath from my lungs.
It wasn’t fury—it was something far worse, a hollow ache splitting me open from within, brutal and raw…
as if my chest had been torn wide and the sea ripped out of me, leaving nothing but the echo of her absence.
Ixion had Cordelia.