Chapter Sixty One
Riven
For three whole seconds after Anton disappeared beneath the Styx, nobody moved.
The river swallowed him without ceremony.
No dramatic final rise. No hand breaking the surface.
No miracle. Just black water folding over his body as he’d never existed at all.
And Nadia was still down there. My heart stopped.
“NADIA!”
The scream tore itself out of me so violently my throat burned. I hit the chains again hard enough to rip skin from my wrists. Blood slicked the restraints. Didn’t matter.
Move. Move. Move.
“Riven-” Roxy barked, but I barely heard her.
The bolt anchoring my chain finally groaned loose under the force. Metal shrieked. Then snapped. I was running before the links hit concrete. The platform blurred beneath my boots as I launched myself toward the broken railing and dove. The Styx hit like a wall of ice.
Cold punched every ounce of air from my lungs. Blackness swallowed everything. For one horrible second, I couldn’t tell up from down. Then I saw her. A flash of leather and pale skin sinking deeper beneath the current. No.
I kicked hard, lungs screaming. Her eyes were open when I reached her.
Not unconscious. Watching. Empty with shock.
I grabbed her around the waist and hauled upward.
The surface exploded over us. Nadia gasped violently, coughing river water into my shoulder while I dragged us toward the jagged concrete ledge beneath the platform.
Above us, chaos erupted. Dion was screaming. Not words, but animalistic noise. The kind a person makes when their whole life shatters at once. Naoya lay dead above him, throat opened to the bone, while Deck finally broke free enough to help us.
I barely looked. All I saw was Nadia. She was shaking so hard her teeth knocked together. Her hands were still clenched around the knife she’d used to kill Anton.
“Nadia.” No response. Her stare stayed fixed on the black river. Like she was still watching him sink. I cupped her face hard enough to force her to look at me.
“Nadia.” Her pupils finally focused.
And then she broke. This was not the Nadia I knew. Not the ice queen who sneered through pain and sharpened herself into something untouchable. This was just a girl. A daughter. A child who had spent her whole life wanting a father who never existed. A broken sound ripped from her throat.
Then she slammed into me so hard we nearly fell back into the river. Her body shook violently against mine as sob after sob tore loose.
“I killed him.” She choked. I wrapped both arms around her immediately.
“I know.”
“I killed my father.”
The words shattered against my chest. There was no answer for that. No right thing to say. So I held her tighter while she cried for the first time in the years I’d known her. Above us, Dion finally stopped screaming. That somehow felt worse. Roxy’s voice echoed down from the platform.
“We need to move. Now.” The station groaned around us, the entire cavern trembling. Floodlights flickered violently overhead. The Styx was rising. Olympus was collapsing. Deck appeared at the ledge and reached down.
“Riven.” I looked up.
His expression said everything. We had to move. Now. I nodded. Together, we hauled Nadia back onto the platform. The second her boots touched concrete, she folded to her knees. Dion stood ten feet away, staring down at Naoya’s corpse. He looked hollowed out.
Not relieved. Not victorious. Numb, like somebody had scooped him clean from the inside. Roxy approached him slowly.
“Dion.” Nothing. Her hand touched his arm. He flinched hard enough to make her step back.
“I killed him.” He whispered.
No one answered. Because what the hell do you say to that? Congratulations? Sorry? Welcome to the club? The station cracked overhead. Concrete split. Water thundered somewhere deeper in the tunnels. Deck grabbed my shoulder.
“The mountain’s giving.” That snapped Nadia upright.
Her face was streaked with tears and river water, eyes red and swollen, but her expression had gone flat again. Controlled. Deadly.
“Then let it collapse.” She crossed the platform to the central control board while the rest of us stared. Her fingers flew across the rusted panel like muscle memory.
“What are you doing?” Deck asked. Her voice came cold and calm.
“Burning Hades’ kingdom to the ground.” The emergency floodgates beneath the station roared open.
The Styx surged instantly. Black water exploded upward through the lower tunnels, swallowing tracks, cages, records, and weapons. Everything Olympus built beneath Stonebridge. Alarms screamed, and red lights flooded the cavern. Then Nadia slammed her fist down on the ignition override.
Gas lines beneath the station ignited. The first explosion rocked the mountain so hard the entire platform jumped. Fire erupted through the tunnels. A second blast followed. Then a third. The whole underworld began collapsing into itself. Nadia turned to us.
“Run.”
Nobody argued. We sprinted. Through smoke.
Through screaming metal. Through the dying skeleton of Olympus itself.
The mountain shook violently beneath every step while fire chased us through the tunnels.
Stone cracked overhead. Water surged at our heels.
We barely made it to the upper mine shaft before Blackwater Falls came down behind us.
The explosion threw all of us into the mud outside.
For a moment, nobody moved. Then slowly, I rolled over and looked back.
The mountainside had split open. Fire poured from the wound like hell itself breathing its last. Olympus was gone, really gone.
Beside me, Nadia pushed herself upright on shaking arms. Smoke curled around her silhouette while Blackwater Falls thundered behind the fire.
For the first time since I met her, she looked small.
Not weak. Just human. She turned to me slowly. And in a voice so raw it nearly killed me to hear it, she asked,
“Did he ever love me?”
The question hit harder than any punch I’d ever taken. I pushed myself up and crossed the space between us. Then I took her face in both hands and answered with the only truth that mattered.
“He should’ve.” And this time when she cried, she let me hold her while Olympus burned.