Instinct takes over. I haul my knees up to protect my middle and duck my head, screaming as Mother lets go of my hair, and I blast through the hermit’s window with only the crows to hold me up.
Fear and pain storm through me so hard that for a split second everything goes blank. Then I feel each stinging cut from every jagged piece of shattered glass as momentum and the huge birds send me flying out over the pit.
“No!” Griffin roars.
“Griffin!” I scream in terror.
Mother caws a harsh call of triumph from inside the house.
I twist and look over my shoulder, blood in my eyes and my heart in my throat.
Griffin stands like a colossus on the table in the middle of the burning house, his legs braced apart, his hands reaching for me, and his eyes wrecked. Our petrified gazes lock for the space of a broken heartbeat before the injured and dying birds retract their claws, and I drop.
CHAPTER 13
Hot air punches into me from below, but panic ices me over inside. My heart hammers fast against my ribs. I can’t see the bottom of the pit. It’s so deep it narrows and then fades into darkness except for a distant red-orange glow.
“Help!” I scream my terror toward Olympus as I plummet to the center of the world, aiming it at Ares and Persephone, at Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus. But no one came earlier, while Mother was kicking our asses and burning the house down around us. Where are they? Are they all so busy that no one can show up for this?
Fear rushes through me like the sulfurous wind. Heat slams into me hard, increasing along with the fiery glow. I turn my head to the side, squinting. The air flaps so brutally against my face that my eyes dry out, and I struggle for breath.
This can’t be the end. Of Griffin and me. Of Little Bean—who hasn’t even lived.
My heart feels like it cracks wide open in my chest, and I yell savagely, refusing to believe it’s over. I’m alive, and until I hit lava, sink into it, burn, and drown, I will fight. And I will get those bloody Olympian Gods to fight along with me.
“Thanos!” I scream.
The popping sound and blinding light hardly even startle me. I knew he’d come. Deep down, I knew.
“I recommend up, not down,” Ares says, grabbing my upper arms. We slow to a halt, hovering high above the churning magma that’s hot enough even here to burn my toes.
“Up,” I echo dumbly. Seeing him, having his huge, reassuring hands on me, feeling him hold me up… It’s like taking a battering ram to an already weakened dam, and I nearly burst into messy tears. But I don’t have time for that. No one has time for that.
My stomach lurches violently. “We have to get back to Griffin. He’s fighting her alone!”
“So spread your wings, little monster.” Ares lets go of me and disappears.
My shriek gets snatched away by the pounding wind. The bastard dropped me! “Thanos!”
He explodes into existence again, huge and glowering. His power-filled, seafoam eyes roil with irritation. He makes no move to catch me this time, and I grab for him. He twists and keeps just out of reach as we fall together. I try to plunge through the air, frantically reaching for him, but these are currents I can’t swim. I only dip and flail.
“Thanos! Help me!” I cry, the heat nearly choking off my words before they can form.
“Help yourself,” he shoots back.
“How?” I shout into the racing wind.
“Spread your wings,” he repeats, growling now.
“I don’t have wings!” It’s bright now. And viciously hot. The buffeting updraft bakes my dried blood right into my skin.
“Haven’t you felt them? In here?” He pops me hard in the chest, driving the air from my lungs. I list backward, trying to suck down a breath and seeing a dizzying slice of clear, blue sky high above me.
Thanos grabs the front of my tunic and tilts me upright again. When he lets go, I lunge for him, but he neatly evades.
Wings? In my chest? Yes, I’ve felt them, but only when Griffin is with me, making me feel other things. They’re not there otherwise, and they’re definitely not there now. “They’re in my chest, not out!”
Ares’s face darkens. “Then get them out!”
“I don’t know how!”
“Push!” he shouts. “Push with all your might.”
He’s nearly as frightening as the lava bubbling below, so I do as he says. I push, and I have a lot of might.
“Nothing’s happening!” Only panic spasms across my chest.
“You’re not trying!” he bellows.
It’s too hot. I can’t concentrate, and everything hurts. My hair burns my cheeks. My eyes feel scorched. “Thanos!” I beg.
Glaring at me, he rams the flat of his hand into my chest again. A bright light pulses from his palm, and I could swear my heart stops beating. My whole body goes rigid, my back bowing hard. Then pain rips through my shoulder blades, and I throw my head back with a scream. Wings unfurl behind me, catching the wind.
“Now fly,” Ares commands, shadow and light splashing across his scarred features. Sweat beads his brow. The center of the world roars and groans just below, casting us both in a red-hot glow.
Still reeling in shock, I start flapping my arms. My torn skin pulls and burns.
“Your wings,” he snaps, ruthlessly batting my injured arms down and sending me careening off balance.
Instinct rears up and helps me to beat my new wings. Somehow, I start to rise instead of fall. Stabilizing, I glance behind me. White feathers quiver on hot currents of air. The wings are strange and broad and almost as tall as I am.
I hazard a look down into the boiling pit, seeing great, popping orange bubbles letting off steam and heat. My eyes burn just from looking at it. The forge of the Gods, indeed.
“Concentrate!” Ares barks.
My head snaps back up, and I beat hard on the scorching air. I give a bigger push with my wings and shoot upward in a dizzying rush.
Flying is foreign, amazing, and strange. The whoosh of air around me is almost as exhilarating as the surge of relief inside me. Still, as we move farther from the ungodly heat, three thoughts play over and over again in my head: burning house, Mother, Griffin.
Adrenaline pumps through my veins, pounding along with my wings. “Thank you!” I shout to Ares. “How can I ever thank you?”
Floating seamlessly by my side, he shoots me an odd look. “Don’t thank me. Thank Nike.”
What? Now really isn’t the time to be cryptic.
Frowning, I veer toward him by accident and then manage a wobbly rectification—up being key. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
Ares looks at me like I’m unhinged. “You’re the ultimate child of the Gods. Unique in all the worlds. There’s no one else like you.”
My eyes widen, although I’m not entirely surprised. Still, to hear it with my own ears… Straight from a God…
My mouth goes even drier. “No pressure there,” I say.
“Olympus was fracturing. You know we fight like cats and dogs. The competition, the betrayals, the games. Thalyria has always been the glue that binds us, the one place where we all have a stake, the best of all our worlds. Or it used to be,” he adds with a bitterness that startles me. “You carry Zeus’s blood because he’s your ancestor, but there are others who chose to help alter the path of Thalyria through you.”