Chapter 14

14

SELENE

“ N o, not me,” I said, my voice tight. “I had nothing to do with this.”

Ares stormed toward me. Rage flashed in his crimson eyes. He fisted his hands, and his body trembled so violently that I was sure the floor was quaking beneath his steps. But I stood my ground. When he reached me, I didn’t flinch back. He grabbed my arm and dragged me close, shaking me.

“You did this.” He held me tighter, lowering his face to mine. “You did this, Selene.”

Hephaestus cleared his throat. “Ares, I don’t think she—”

“Quiet! I demand she speak for herself.”

I lifted my chin, glaring up into his furious eyes. An inexplicable heat crackled through my veins. In the calmest voice I could muster, I said, “I did not do it, Ares. If I had, I would be long gone by now.”

He stared at me for an excruciating moment. The tense silence crowded me, pressing in like a suffocating blanket of fog. Suddenly, he growled and released me, stumbling back a few steps and shoving his fingers into his silver hair.

His gaze landed on Hestia’s remains. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then he choked. Shaking his head, he looked around, his expression full of torment.

“Get an urn.” He swung toward the open door. “We must take care of her before the wind finds its way inside.”

A moment later, he was gone. Hephaestus shifted uneasily on his feet, shoved his hands into his pockets, and looked at those remaining in turn. “I’m not sure which of us he was speaking to.”

Apollo held up his hands. “I doubt he wants me getting involved. I wrote a song for Hera a few months ago, and he’s been annoyed with me ever since. Said I was choosing sides.”

“Well, it’s definitely not me,” I said wryly.

Hephaestus chuckled softly. “You think?”

“Now is not the time for laughter.” Artemis shot him a look of pure condemnation. “I’ll go get the urn. All three of you, stay here. When Zeus discovers what’s happened, he’ll want to have a word.”

I, along with the two remaining Olympians, watched Artemis vanish out the door, her soft blue dress billowing behind her. Soon, others would arrive and find the dead vampire. They would likely react just as Ares had. Of course it had to be me. Who else among them would stab Hestia’s heart? And if I didn’t convince someone I was innocent, they’d find a way to punish me, likely by targeting Orpheus.

“I didn’t do it,” I said to no one in particular.

Apollo nodded, his golden hair gleaming beneath the torchlight. “We’re not the ones you need to convince.”

“But do you believe me?”

He exchanged a glance with Hephaestus, then shrugged. “It’s hard to say. You’re convincing. But…if you didn’t do it, who did? Despite all our differences, there’s one thing we all agree on. We love Hestia.”

“ Loved ,” Hephaestus said softly.

Apollo winced.

I trailed across the floor and knelt beside the ash. It intrigued me that they all loved her so much, though I wouldn’t say that out loud. For a group of cunning vampire monarchs who were quick to exploit the weaknesses in others, they had a surprising amount of affection for someone who had been so soft. Hestia had wanted nothing to do with power. If the tales were true, she’d never fought another living soul. Her feeds were gentle, and she spent a great deal of time in the stables tending to horses.

A shimmer caught my eye. Frowning, I leaned further forward and examined the pile of ash. There, amongst the usual blackened grains, were small clusters of red and silver specks.

I pointed. “What’s that?”

Hephaestus shuffled closer and peered over my shoulder. “Um, it’s Hestia, love. I thought that was fairly obvious…”

“No, in the middle of it. There’s something in the ashes.”

“What? Wait, you’re right. That’s odd. What is that?”

“What are you talking about?” Apollo joined us by the ash, his blond hair falling into his eyes when he knelt. “Oh. Huh.”

“Have you ever seen that before?” I asked. “These other specks in a fallen vampire’s ash pile?”

Apollo shook his head. “No, it’s—”

Heavy footsteps pounded the floor, followed by the scrape of a wooden blade against steel. “Get away from her, Titan.”

I swallowed and stood. From the flicker of fear in Apollo’s eyes, I knew without looking that Zeus had a blade pointed at my back. Keeping my body steady, I lifted my hands.

“You speak of duty, but you didn’t even wait a single day to kill one of our own. You will pay for this, just like Theia paid for her own disobedience. In blood.”

I flinched at the sound of my mother’s name on his tongue. What I would give to take a steel blade and cut that tongue out of his mouth so that he could never speak her name again. Suddenly, his weapon tapped the space between my shoulder blades.

“Speak, woman,” he barked.

“As I’ve told Ares and the others,” I said, flicking my gaze toward Hephaestus, who looked worried, “I’ve never killed another vampire, let alone one who was the advisor of a fellow monarch.”

He shoved the weapon harder into my back. “Lies.”

“I speak only the truth. I’m afraid it was someone else.”

“What’s going on in here?” another voice rang out from behind me—soft, feminine, and edged in vicious anger.

Hera .

My body jolted out of its own volition, and the previous night’s conversation echoed in my ears. Hera had made her opinion of Zeus and his allies abundantly clear. She wanted him gone, and she’d do whatever it took to make that happen. Apollo and Hephaestus insisted all the monarchs had loved Hestia, but what if Hera hadn’t loved her enough for it to override her hatred of Zeus?

It was the only thing that made sense. Hera had done this.

“This Titan filth came here and killed Hestia.” Zeus’s voice actually cracked when he spoke Hestia’s name.

Funny , I wouldn’t have expected him to care for anyone but himself.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Now put down the sword before you accidentally stab yourself with it,” Hera snapped.

“Don’t you tell me what to do. Hestia is dead, and—”

“Tire of her already, did you?”

A strange crackling sensation skittered across my skin. The pressure between my shoulder blades vanished, and an eerie silence pressed down on the room like a lead weight. Sensing Zeus had shifted his attention elsewhere, I slowly turned in place, careful not to move too quickly.

Zeus was staring Hera down. A long wooden sword shook in his hands, the hilt gilded in gold. His voice was dark and deep, the bottom edge of his bushy beard scratching his ruffles on his white shirt. “What I’ve tired of is you and your jealousy.”

Hera laughed. “Jealousy? Oh, you poor thing. I wouldn’t touch you with a ten foot column.”

“My memories of you bouncing up and down on my cock say otherwise,” he said with a sneer.

Hera bristled. She stalked toward Zeus and flicked the end of his wooden sword with her sharp nail. “That was before I learned what a bastard you are. Now leave the neophyte alone. She hasn’t done anything.”

She sounded more certain of that fact than she should. I tried to catch Hera’s gaze, but she was too busy glaring at Zeus to notice. Had she truly done this? And if so, was it down to simple jealousy, or was this her first play in her game against Zeus?

As they stood there, glaring at each other, Artemis bustled into the room with an onyx urn and quickly gathered Hestia’s remains. When she was done, she gently placed it on the table. Everyone stood there staring at it for a good long while.

“All right, we can return to this later,” Zeus eventually said. “We have to go to the amphitheatre. Erebus is expecting us for the sacrifice.” He whirled back toward me and shoved a finger into my chest. “You do anything I don’t like during the ceremony, Orpheus is dead. Do you understand me?”

I swallowed and nodded once. It was just as I’d suspected. They’d go after Orpheus, since they couldn’t retaliate against me.

“Good. When we’re done with the sacrifice, I’ll decide what to do with you.”

He tossed his sword, and Poseidon caught it before it hit the ground. Together, they strode out of the megaron, barking for everyone else to follow. Silently, I fell into step beside Apollo and Hephaestus, careful to keep some distance from Ares, who walked near the front with his head down.

I pondered my predicament. If I could get Orpheus out of here, I might be fine. As long as we were on this island, Zeus would have to stay his hand, or else it would ruin the sacrificial ceremony. He was clearly intent on doing whatever it took to make sure Nekros didn’t fail, and he seemed terrified of angering his god…I could use that to my advantage.

We weaved through the maze of corridors. Orange light splashed across our faces, cutting sharp edges even sharper. In the distance, the crash of thunder tore through the twilight, quickly followed by the crackle of lightning. The doors in the distance pulsed with the light, and cool air washed inside.

Dionysos appeared on my left, his head cocked. “Curious. Erebus doesn’t normally send storms during Nekros.”

Erebus was considered the god of night. He could control the skies once darkness washed away the sunlight.

“He won’t be happy about Hestia’s death,” Apollo said from my other side. “He was fond of her, just like we all were. If this sacrifice doesn’t go smoothly…”

“He’ll retaliate, even though she wasn’t one of the thirteen,” Dionysos finished for him.

A dark thought for a dark night. When we stepped out on the front steps, a tunnel of wind whorled around us, tossing my ginger hair into my face and whipping my gown against my legs. I tipped back my head to gaze up at the inky sky. There was no sign of stars, but a full moon blazed red behind the clouds.

Hephaestus let out a low whistle. “It’s a blood moon tonight.”

“Odd. It was a full moon just last night,” Dionysos said with a frown. “This, plus a storm? What is Erebus up to?”

An eerie chill caressed the back of my neck. The blood moon hung low overhead, and the soft slash of rain looked like droplets of blood. Fitting, I thought. It was as if the storm knew how this night would go, and it wanted to reflect the brutality back onto us.

Silently, I followed the Olympians down the hill toward the amphitheatre. The towering structure hunkered menacingly in the dark, the jagged wall rising and falling like a broken set of teeth. Centuries ago, these ruins loomed tall and pristine, the onyx stones polished daily. I’d heard you could even see your reflection in them.

That was before the Olympians had attacked this place. Circe had done her best to fight back, aided by Medea. Their magic, amplified by the power embedded in the soil here, had been too volatile to control. When they’d used it against Zeus, it had exploded into the amphitheatre. One side of the structure had almost completely crumbled while the other side lost chunks here and there along the top.

Zeus had never rebuilt it. I’d heard he liked to view the ruined structure as proof of his might. Not even the most powerful witches in the world could defeat him. No one could.

Even Gaia’s amphitheatre had crumbled before him.

My hands fisted as the ruined half of the wall came into sight. The clouds momentarily cleared, and crimson light illuminated the broken onyx haphazardly tossed across the side of the hill. They were forever stuck in this limbo, never buried and never repaired, like corpses strung up on a city wall as a warning.

We walked through a break in the outer columns and passed into the ancient amphitheatre, where Gaia had created the Titans all those years ago. As my feet hit the ground, the steady hum of her power raced up my legs.

It set my teeth on edge, the force of it. And the rush of burning energy through my veins wasn’t much different from the heady satisfaction I felt after a feed. Like it was pushing me to become more than what I was.

As we approached the statue erected in the center of the arena, I risked a glance at the Olympians. None of them had reacted to Gaia’s power. Surely they could feel it, too. But if they had, they gave no indication of it. Instead, they were all intensively focused on the statue.

“Here we are,” Zeus said, reaching the monument first. “Nekros officially begins.”