Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Persephone
Seven Circles
Blood flowed from my fingers, but I didn’t let a single drop fall to waste.
It wrapped around my hands like living silk. Other droplets hung suspended in the air, held by will alone, ready to be woven.
I began the working—the one I had learned from the Fates themselves after stealing their knowledge, after burning their archives and taking what was rightfully mine.
My fingers flexed nimbly, moving faster than the sisters’ ever had. Each motion was flawless and full of intent. I drew the blood into threads, weaving gold with crimson, darkness with light, death with life in impossible patterns.
The first circle took shape before me, intricate, beautiful, deadly.
Then another inside it—concentric rings of power.
Another, and another, until seven circles hung suspended in the air, each more complex than the previous, each packed with enough power to level mountains.
The threads glowed as the pattern locked into place, humming with purpose, my will made manifest.
I spread my arms wide and flung all seven circles forward.
They shot away from me, passing through steel as if it were mist, through glass without a crack, through stone walls without touching them—intangible and unstoppable.
The circles slammed into Infinite Throne—Zeus’s throne—at the heart of The Paramount, where the ward’s core was anchored. Where all the protective magic of the city of the gods originated.
My threads began to unwind the wards, unraveling ancient blood spells woven by the twelve Olympians together, undoing what should have been impossible to undo.
The first aftershock hit instantly.
The tower rumbled beneath our feet. Marble cracked with a sound like breaking bones. Glass shattered and rained down in a glittering cascade.
The crowd erupted into panic. Gods and goddesses who had been watching the siege unfold now scrambled for cover, rushing from the rooftop in a frantic search for exits.
I turned and smiled behind my mask as chaos broke out around me. My death mask stared at the fleeing immortals.
“Run, rabbits, run!” I called out, my fingers never ceasing their work, twisting and weaving a fresh sequence of threads. “He is coming for you. The Death God does not forgive. He does not forget. And neither do I.”
Zeus and Poseidon led the elite circle of gods toward me as the lesser deities fled. They stalked forward, power rippling off them like heat from a forge—predators in their domain.
Some of the fleeing gods forgot to clear a path for their betters in their panic. They bumped and jostled against Zeus and Poseidon in their desperation to escape.
Poseidon snarled and shoved them aside. When they didn’t move fast enough, he drove his trident through them. Bodies fell. Blood spread across the spotless marble.
Zeus flicked his fingers. Lightning carved a path, incinerating those too slow to duck.
Mother stood frozen between me and Zeus, staring first at me, then at him, as if her mind could not reconcile the scene before her.
The others had scattered. Now it was only me against Zeus and his big boys, with Mother caught, useless, in between.
I could feel my mate’s fear for me through our bond. He and Dante were throwing themselves against the ward, desperate to reach me.
On the walls, the gods’ soldiers grew frantic, volleys of flaming arrows streaking down.
The impacts echoed across the distance. The sight heated my blood, set my heart racing with savage anticipation.
But my fight was here. Inside. Where I could do the most damage.
Zeus glared daggers at me. “What have you done, girl?”
Girl. He thought I was still a pawn in his game against my husband. They’d never seen me as anything more than Hades’s pretty bride and his weakness.
They had no fucking idea of the power I now wielded. Not even my mother understood. Not even my mate knew the full depth of what I had become.
Hades had sensed it beginning, an eon ago. Then the Fates intervened. The curse, the reincarnations—all to keep me contained. To stop me from becoming the power they could not control.
“Weaving,” I said pleasantly. “Hades came to see me, but your wards are in the way. I am simply helping him along.” My fingers never ceased their intricate dance.
“He owes me a dance, and the music was so romantic.” I frowned theatrically.
“When did it stop? Professor Kingsley, be a dear and tell the musicians to resume. I’m a sucker for romance after my years as a mortal. ”
“Dumb bitch!” Poseidon barked. “We are under siege! His army of demons and the dead is at our gates!”
“Do not forget the creatures, Professor,” I added sweetly. “My husband commands those as well. Diversity is important in any modern force.”
He glared at me with pure loathing. I answered with a sugary smile. I’d never sink as low as he.
I kept weaving like a busy bee.
“What are you weaving, Persephone?” Aphrodite demanded from behind Zeus, her beautiful face tight with confusion and fear.
“Destruction, lovely,” I said. “I am in the mood for some serious damage, since I want to be a good wife by inviting my husband in. Think of me as the Trojan horse.” I flashed a bright, terrible smile at Zeus and Demeter.
“You never realized what you welcomed back, did you? I am unraveling your wards from the inside. This golden fortress, so carefully warded against Hades and his legions. You all treated him badly, and none of you treated me nicely either just because I’m his beloved queen. Well, I look forward to our reunion.”
Zeus bellowed, “Stop her!”
His lightning shot toward me, the bolt thick as an ancient oak, charged with enough power to vaporize mountains.
I could hear Hades’s roar of rage in the distance, feel his terror through our bond.
“No worries!” I shouted.
I’d prepared. My woven light caught Zeus’s strike effortlessly. It absorbed the energy and fed it into my own working.
“No one can stop me, bitches,” I said, sweeping my gaze over the gods and goddesses glaring at me in disgust and shock. “The Fates can no longer bind me. I torched their cave. Consider that your memo.”
“Eons of their work—gone?” a voice asked, aghast.
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” I confirmed with a smile. “Reduced to cinders.”
Then they all threw their power at me, desperate to shatter the blood-forged shield I’d woven around myself.
Lightning from Zeus. Crushing water from Poseidon. Forged metal from Hephaestus. A piercing arrow from Artemis. Even Aphrodite’s love magic, twisted into something sharp and cruel.
All of it scattered against my wards. The entire elite pantheon, led by Zeus himself, could not get through to me.
Shock hardened their flawless features.
“Impossible!” Even Mother stood stunned. She alone had not joined the attack, though she had done nothing to halt it. She wasn’t the one who called the shots anyway. She never had been.
“Impossible?” I laughed. “Because I was supposed to remain the quiet minor goddess who never raised her voice? Who never objected?” I scoffed.
“You all expected me to stay a doormat. Some of you even wagered Hades would tire of me within months of our marriage. But he never did. Because he was the only one who ever truly saw me, who stripped away my every pretense and forced me to face my fierce self buried beneath the ashes. And he still sees me.”
My hands moved faster now, spinning new patterns into being. Threads of darkness, light, and death spiraled from my fingertips.
Black threads that drank the light. Golden threads blazing like captured stars. Crimson threads of blood magic, pulsing with raw life. All woven into patterns too complex, too terrible to look upon directly.
The threads spread like a web across the sky, reaching for every corner of the city, seeking each anchored point of the wards.
“What abomination is this?” Poseidon demanded, his voice trembling with rage or fear; I could not tell.
I had always been treated as lesser. The weak goddess. The stolen maiden. The eternal, tragic victim.
But now I’d left those days behind.
My power had grown vast during my confinement. Unleashed after an eon, fed by the accumulated wrath of ninety-nine brutal deaths, it had become monstrous.
“Tell you a secret,” I said with a sardonic smile.
“The Fates—your allies—held back the truth. You worked together to curse me and Hades, believing the goal was to break the King of the Underworld.” I let the pause hang, sharp as an ice spike.
“But the sisters’ true target was always me.
You were never in their confidence. While you thought me your pawn and sport, you were merely pieces in their long game. ”
“No one but the Fates can weave fate,” Hephaestus murmured, not in accusation but in awe. He understood craftsmanship, magic, weapons—he recognized what he was seeing.
“You knew this,” Zeus seethed, his face purpling with wrath, “and you deceived us?”
“Why not?” I shot back. “You are all so easily fooled, even as you spin deceit for others. Like when you tricked my husband and banished him to the Underworld, while you claimed this golden city for yourselves. There is one concept beyond your comprehension: love.” I slanted a glance toward Aphrodite.
“And you, darling? You don’t understand it either.
Since none of you know true love, you cannot fathom what Hades would do for me. What he has done for me.”
I smiled at their confusion. “You called it obsession. Sickness. Madness. And what I feel for him—that, too, lies outside your understanding. So allow me to show you what it looks like when the helpless rise. When the powerless strike back.”
My voice carried across the crumbling rooftop. “Today, I—Persephone, Mate of Hades, Goddess of Death and Spring, Queen of the Underworld—will show the hunters what it means to be hunted. To become the game. Today, I repay every wrong.”
I tore off my death mask and let it fall. Grinned at my enemies with savage delight.
They stared as if seeing me for the first time. Perhaps they were.
“Karma is a bitch, even to gods,” I said. “I only regret it took this long for karma to bite your butts. But the debt has interests. And now, you shall suffer my wrath. Every ounce I have saved for an eon.”
Fury seethed in my veins, power rolling off me in waves. Crimson threads spun from my blood magic splashed across the sky like strokes on a messy canvas, branching and reaching every corner of the city in seconds.
My power hammered against the ancient wards no one had ever breached. Wards I could never have broken from the outside.
But I was inside—the poison within the cup they had drunk from in triumph.
“Seize her!” Zeus and Poseidon roared as one.
Their combined power crashed down upon me, heavy as collapsing stars, crushing as event horizons. Thunder quaked the sky. Lightning speared toward me from all sides, joined by a maelstrom of elements, every magic the elite pantheon could command.
“Oops.”
They were too late.
Zeus’s throne, wrought of priceless gem and gold, melted, and the core ward it anchored crumbled to dust.
Zeus howled. Poseidon’s cry joined his, a duet of rage and disbelief.
I smirked. “Does this frustrate you? How unfortunate. But you have not yet suffered a fraction of what my husband has endured.” I tsked. “Look how naughty you were, barring him from the city of his birth.”
I inclined my head. “But don’t fuss. He has no interest in claiming this rotting place. He’s only going to add his signature over my destruction. Consider it a love note.” My voice dipped, pleased with myself. “Did you know Hades is also a musician? It’s a hobby of his. He’s quite gifted.”
“Demeter, command your daughter to cease this madness!” Zeus roared.
“Persephone, stop!” Mother’s voice strained, nearly lost beneath the thunder of clashing powers. “Stop this! Do you hear me? I order you!”
“I hear you, Mother,” I replied, my voice bright and chilling. “But I outrank you now. My power surpasses yours. It surpasses all of yours combined.” My gaze drifted to Zeus and Poseidon. “You are small men standing before me.”
Their faces tightened with outrage.
“Shh,” I whispered, a finger to my lips. “Listen. Can you hear it? The sound of my threads unraveling your wards—like a symphony of tearing silk. Terrible, isn’t it? And beautiful.”
I tilted my head as if savoring the noise. “I could stop it. But I don’t want to. My king is coming for me, and I look forward to our… hot date tonight.”
“My daughter has gone mad,” Demeter gasped.
“Perhaps,” I said softly. “Olympus must fall. Centuries to build a city. Seconds to unravel it. Loyalties are the same.” I let my eyes rest on her, cold and final. “Take care what you sow.”
“You are not my daughter!” Demeter hissed, her face a mask of betrayed fury. “You are not my Persephone!”
“Farewell, Demeter,” I said, already turning away. “I hope you survive what comes next.”
My blood threads cast a final, searing net over the entire city. The wards shattered everywhere at once with a sound like a wildfire crackling, amplified a thousand times.
My power tore through The Paramount. The immense structure rumbled, then began to break apart. Marble cracked and sheared away in great slabs. The spire tilted, its foundations failing.
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 truly seeing me—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.