I stare, frozen in place. There are no tears now, only gritty, swollen eyes and lips pressed hard together to keep me from shouting out to people who will never hear me—lips that feel numb and bereft and betrayed.
“You’re here. They’re there.” Perses shrugs his massive shoulders, the movement filled with tension and dislike. “You’re not much of a fighter. I don’t know why Zeus thought you could have finished what you started. It all stopped when you did.”
The disgust in his voice is tangible, and I can almost taste it on the dreary air. But I couldn’t care less what Perses thinks of me. What’s the point of caring about anything anymore?
“You lost your favored soldier in the war, but you gave up everything else. Maybe it’s for the best. You? You’re not what anyone needs anymore. But look at them. They fit just right. They’re perfect together, made for each other.”
Perses’s hateful words scrape through my mind like a sharp and rusty trowel digging for roots—the root of something important to me, something I know deep down and forever.
Made for each other?
A blast of heat bursts outward from my chest and nearly ruptures my heart.
No. No, they’re not.
Griffin was made for me, predestined to be my partner in life, and death, and whatever else there could possibly be. He was handpicked by the ruling Pantheon and physically altered for me. Poseidon, Ares, Athena, and Persephone all told me as much. He’s my husband. Mine.
The sudden, sure knowledge that Griffin would never betray me bubbles up through me like a last, lifesaving breath of air before I drown. New pieces fit into place like the rest of the jagged, rough-cut bricks that make up my shaky foundation. Artemis once said that Zeus has plans for me. I guess this is it, or at least part of it. My bloody bastard of a far-removed grandfather saw this coming from months, maybe even years, away. Or maybe he had it planned out with his rotten friends the Fates and all those other conniving Gods before I was even born.
I clench my hands into fists. I want to wring Zeus’s despicable, unfeeling Olympian neck.
“You lost your favored soldier in the war…”
The battle was over, won, but Zeus still sacrificed Kato in order to show me what I was capable of. He delivered an epic slap-down in the form of a God Bolt and then dropped me in Tartarus to teach me my place. He sent Perses with a special blend of pain and heartache to try to channel me into a middle ground, and just leave it to an all-powerful Olympian weasel like Zeus to think that torment and anguish can lead to anything good or sane.
My gaze bores into the deceitful scene of Griffin and Bellanca. I see both red and black, my vision on dark fire. It also clears at last.
With the sure knowledge that Zeus is a scheming toad I’ll never trust again, I howl and launch myself at the treacherous beast of an illusion Perses so heartlessly conjured against the cliff wall.
CHAPTER 26
Hope and wrath ignite, slamming together like two irreconcilables that somehow work as one. I roar in fury. My pulse thunders with the violence of a breaking storm, and I pound my palms against the scene, not even feeling the hard impact of rough stone. Power surges in my veins, awakening with the force of a cosmic blast.
I’m going to get out of here. I swear to the Gods, I will. But first, I’m going to erase the deceit that tore out my heart and threw it down a dark hole. I’m going to eradicate it with my bare hands, destroy it with the force of my own blows.
The shelf of rock rumbles beneath my feet. Fissures form in the cliffside, sending stones tumbling down the vertical slope. Prometheus groans, his chains rattling and his big body shaking to the rhythm of my rage.
The illusion shudders, and Perses grabs my arm to jerk me away from it. I swing around with preternatural speed and strength and punch him in the throat. The ichor-laced Olympian brew in my blood must be worth something, because just like that day I attacked Piers for his treachery, it’s a brilliant hit. Fast. Instinctual. Precise. I strike Perses right where it counts, crushing his windpipe. The Titan’s eyes pop wide open, and his face turns purple from pain and lack of breath. He stumbles back from me, clutching his neck.
He’ll recover quickly enough—he’s a bloody God, after all—but his brief incapacity will give me the time I need to rattle his spell.
I spin back around and pound on the wall again.
“Show me the truth!” Violence and savagery and total shock make me pummel the granite with all my strength. If there’s one thing I should know, should always know, it’s the Gods damn truth!
I should have suspected sooner, or not been so easily convinced. But this is the first time in my entire existence that anyone has succeeded in lying to me. Perses didn’t just get away with a falsehood; he crushed me with one. He used the love of my life to do it. I can hardly breathe—like someone punched out my throat. The gut-awful, heart-wrenching feeling of the wool being pulled over my eyes is completely foreign to me. It’s horrifying. Debasing. Blindsiding. I’ll never lie again.
I don’t know if my Kingmaker Magic doesn’t work in Tartarus, or if it doesn’t work on deities, and I don’t care. I finally truly understand why Griffin went so crazy the day he found out I’d been dishonest with him for weeks. He had faith in me, believed in me, and I stomped all over his trust. I don’t love or trust Perses, but his coldhearted, calculated deception cuts me to the quick. This level of deceit is unconscionable, for anyone, anywhere. Wrong. A thousand times wrong—for humans, creatures, or Gods.
“I want the truth!” I scream at the wall.
My palms split open on the sharp edges of the newly splintered rock, and my blood instantly changes the scene.
I gasp. It’s Griffin. My Griffin. Finally—the truth.
Blood Magic. I’ve never understood it. Didn’t want to. That was Mother’s domain. I know it’s an amplifier. I know powerful blood leaves a trace in the air. I know you can find people with it, but instead of someone finding me, this time, I’ve found my someone.
He’s in Castle Tarva, but not in any warm or cozy family room. He’s in the bedroom we shared. There are no noises around. No fire. No scrolls. There’s no gray in his hair, but his eyes are dull, and somehow, they do seem old. He looks haggard. And terribly bruised. The blows he and Flynn exchanged in Sykouri still mark his face with fading yellows and blues. The cut at the top of his forehead closed messily, obviously without any magical care. Raw and red, the fresh scar flashes angrily from beneath a disheveled fall of hair.
Relief sears my eyes, but I don’t let the heat burn into tears. I don’t want anything to blur my view of Griffin. I know the normal rate of healing, what time does to cuts and bruises and blows. I know that two to three weeks have passed, not half my life in years!
Perses suddenly flings past my shoulder a jug of water he got from only the Gods know where. The earthenware container cracks against the cliffside, its contents diluting my blood and erasing the symbols he drew on the wall.