Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Bloom
Curse Unbound
The fight raged on. Screams tore the air.
The gods’ beastly sentinels swarmed Ravencrux students in a tide of teeth and claws. Over half the Kingsley house students who had retreated now took advantage of the chaos to pick off Ravencrux students, cutting them down when they fell.
Bodies littered the ground. Some still moved, reaching for help that wouldn’t come. Others were already still, eyes fixed on nothing. The sand beneath us was a dark, sticky red.
I tried to weave shields, golden and obsidian threads spiraling from my fingers, but it was nearly impossible to cover all the students from my house, as many of them were scattered far from me, and the hunters rushed me constantly, forcing me back into my own defense.
Their focus was singular and loud:
Kill Persephone. End the cycle. End the threat.
Every time I stretched my shield toward someone else, a chimera lunged for my throat. A serpent snapped at my legs. A harpy dove from above; talons aimed at my eyes. I cut them down, but a dozen more took their places.
And I still couldn’t reveal my weaving fully. To do so now might save a few more students, but it would cost me everything in the end. My final plan would crumble like ash. My enemies would see that Persephone had fully returned, and they would bind my power before I could be free.
They had done it before. Trapped me. Sealed me. Made me helpless.
I needed them to underestimate me a little longer. Only until the moment was right.
But that meant watching students die. Watching them fall to claws and fangs and treachery while I held back the power that could save them.
It was agony. Each death tore something from me.
My gaze shot toward the balcony where Hades fought alone against a circle of Olympians.
He was outnumbered twelve to one, outpowered by gods drawing strength from their domains while he had been severed from his own.
I couldn’t go to his aid. Even if I unleashed everything, that balcony, warded by gods’ blood magic and spells, was beyond my touch, just as he was beyond mine.
An ocean stood between us. Vast. Uncrossable. We could see each other, hear each other’s cries, but we could not go to each other.
And his power was a pale shadow of what it should be. A guttering candle where there had once been an inferno.
The truth gut punched me.
Shit! The curse’s venom no longer touched me. I had broken it. Reclaimed every thread, every stolen piece of power. But its claws were still in my mate. Still draining him with every breath. For millennia he had endured that slow bleed. The constant weakening. The gradual death of what he was.
A lesser male would have been reduced to nothing, would have gone mad.
He had been offered a way out. Many times. Denounce our bond. Take another queen. Be free.
Each time, he had refused. Every single offer of escape, he had spat back and chosen me.
Even when I did not remember. Even when I looked at him with fear instead of love.
He always chose me.
And the curse in him would not break—could not break—not until I revealed myself fully before the gods. Before our enemies. In a declaration that could not be denied.
They had to witness Persephone’s return. Only then would the bindings of the God of Death finally shatter.
Sweat stung my eyes. My hands grew heavy as I cut down another chimera before beheading a serpent, its tail thrashing.
Jus then, the north gate toppled.
Dante charged through in his full archdemon form—horns cutting the air, skin glowing like magma. His battle-ax swung with savage force, carving through the hunters, as he tore a path toward me, a wake of carnage behind him.
Cerberus followed, three heads breathing streams of fire. He took to the air, jagged wings beating back the smoke, and cleared a path straight to me.
Then the minor gods poured through the gate and joined the fray.
Hundreds of them—all hunting me. Their final prize.
I saw the arrow before I registered it, forged by Hephaestus and made to kill gods. The air shimmered in its wake as it flew straight for my hellhound’s middle head, between the eyes. A killing blow.
“Cerberus! Orren!” The scream tore from my throat.
My shield shot toward him, threads of gold and black weaving a barrier in the space of a heartbeat. The hellhound twisted mid-air, hundreds of pounds of muscle moving with shocking grace. One head stretched out, jaws gaping.
He caught the arrow between his teeth.
It exploded on contact, fire racing across his fangs and burning through his thick hide. He howled—all three heads in unison—a sound of agony and fury.
But he kept diving toward me, landing in front of me with a crash that shuddered through the ground, snarling at the onslaught, even as fire ate across his body. I sent him a weave of healing while searching for the third arrow.
Three arrows had been shot at once. A coordinated volley.
One caught by my hellhound. One aimed at me—I deflected it at the last instant, the arrow ringing off my longsword before burying itself in the earth.
The third pierced Sindy’s neck before I could stop it. The tip emerged crimson with blood and divine light.
She stood perfectly still, her hazel eyes wide with shock. Her hand rose slowly, fingers trembling as they brushed the shaft. Blood pooled in the hollow of her throat. More welled from her mouth when she tried to speak to me.
“No!” The cry tore from me. “No, no, no!”
My blood turned to ice despite the battle’s heat.
I had shielded her. I’d woven a protection around Sindy. But it wasn’t enough against that god-damned arrow. I should have woven a blood shield. Should have been faster.
This was my fault. My failure.
Sindy’s knees buckled, then she fell sideways, the arrow stuck in her throat. I couldn’t even cradle her as she fell.
My friend, the girl who’d welcomed me, who’d stood by me, was dead.
And the battle still raged on, not caring. Screams and steel and tearing flesh assaulted my ears.
Dante and Cerberus were a tapestry of wounds. Cerberus’s left wing hung broken, the hide on his shoulder blistered. One of Dante’s horns was cleaved in half. Yet they fought on, cleaving through the onslaught with relentless fury, guarding me on either side.
More gods and creatures poured through the gate, trying to overwhelm us by sheer numbers.
Then I saw Demeter framed in the gateway, one hand pressed to the stone as if for support. She was yelling something lost in the din. Her face was pale, eyes wide. Her gaze found me across the chaos. And in them, a mournful horror. Recognition of what she’d helped create.
It was too late.
We were losing. The math was brutal and simple: too many enemies, too much power arrayed against us.
On the balcony, my mate roared in rage as lightning struck him down again. Zeus’s bolt took him full in the chest. He crashed to the marble, and before he could rise, they swarmed him—all of them at once—lightning and beams and forged metal combining to keep him pinned.
I screamed in rage, and a wildfire answered in my veins, consuming everything in its path. I would not lose them. Not Sindy. Not Dante, Orren, or the surviving students.
Hades’s power was still bound by their curse. But I was free.
And I was done watching my enemies beat my husband. Done pretending to be weak, mortal, helpless.
Done pretending to play by their fucking rules.
It was time to spin the wheel. To flip the board and scatter every carefully laid plan.
Hundreds of gods watched from the stands, so sure they had won.
Fuck them.
Blood tears streamed from my eyes. I threw up my hands to the sky, palms open. Power gathered in me—not a trickle but a flood. Every drop reclaimed from the Fates. Every ounce of a hundred lifetimes.
It built like a tsunami. Wave after wave, multiplying, crashing inward and outward at once.
“Rise!” I roared.
A dark wind tore out of me. Within it, hellfire spun—black flames, cold as the void and hot as the sun’s heart. They burned without consuming me, whipping sand and blood into the air.
The final lock turned in my mind.
The ground trembled. Cracks spiderwebbed from where I stood, glowing with gold and black light. Life and death intertwined.
The earth split open with the sound of reality breaking.
And then the dead rose.
Hades could no longer summon them. Not when he’d been cut off from his source, from the Underworld that fed his power. The gods had made sure of that when they designed their curse.
But his Queen of Death had awakened. And I knew no such limits.
They rose from the rift. From the cracks I had torn between worlds. From the silence where spirits and phantoms wait.
First a few—skeletal hands grasping the edges, hauling themselves through. Then dozens. Hundreds.
Skeletal warriors in ancient armor, bronze and iron stained with time. Fallen soldiers from forgotten wars, still clutching the weapons that had killed them. Roman legionaries with shield and gladius. Greek hoplites with spear and crest. Warriors from empires turned to dust millennia ago.
Spirits given form and purpose by my will. Not mindless husks, but warriors—their skill, their memory, their loyalty intact.
They took up arms and turned toward the living tide. For their queen. For the goddess who had called them back from beyond.
The gods watched in horror, their perfect faces no longer amused. Minor gods scrambled back from the audience seats.
Necromancy on this scale shouldn’t be possible. No one—not even Hades—had thought of commanding an army of the dead.
My mate, the King of the Underworld, roared with laughter. The sound carried across the arena, cutting through screams and steel. Rich. Full. Edged with madness.
He was drunk on revenge and pride and joy. His queen had finally awoken
I led the army of the dead toward the centaurs who had fired the arrow that had killed Sindy. Who had tried to slay me and my hellhound.
They’d shot down fleeing students and laughed as bodies fell.
Now it was their turn.