Chapter 2

2

SELENE

M y mother clutched my shoulder, pulling me back into the shadows of the nearest building. Her face was hard, and her eyes had a sharp glint in them I rarely saw. Not from High Queen Theia, who ruled with such an empathetic hand that I’d never met anyone who disliked her.

“I know, my love.” Her palms found my face, cupping my cheeks. “I know.”

“All of the humans here, they live like this?”

“Some, but not all. This is just the farm. Others are kept in the marketplaces, back in the wealthy district we passed through. He also keeps favored mortals in homes near his palace, but if they displease him, they end up here. Others are used for breeding to keep the blood supply going. The breeders are kept in secure buildings. I’ve never been inside those.”

Her face blurred before me as unshed tears filled my eyes. I was horrified. All of those lives and the suffering they must endure at the hands of their king. And they were hopeless against him. It was the closest I’d come to crying in years.

“But why? Why would he treat them like this?”

“This is what you must understand about High King Zeus. Mortals matter nothing to him. Nothing but what they can give him, which is blood. To him, they’re merely food, for his kind and the vampires who live under his rule. But these mortals…they are real people with loved ones, hopes, desires, and fears—and with thoughts of their own. Rebellious thoughts. Olympian vampires don’t try to control their bloodlust, so they often kill when they feed. That makes mortals yearn for escape, for freedom from the vampires. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I nodded, still silent. Zeus wanted to control the humans and use them for whatever he wanted, so he chose the easiest route and threw them inside this wretched farm. If they died, it didn’t matter. The blood was still good for days.

Wrinkling my nose, I turned away. “This is barbaric.”

“It is Zeusian ,” she whispered fiercely. “And there is far worse in the city than this. The Bull—he throws rebels inside a metal contraption shaped like a bull, and then lights a fire beneath it. They burn to death inside, but it takes hours.”

“ Fuck ,” I said, hissing the word through clenched teeth.

“This,” she said urgently, “this is why I have done whatever it takes to keep our people safe. It’s why I’ve been a part of the Thirteen Crowns, despite all of this. I thought as long as I kept out of his way, as long as I participated in Nekros every year, I wouldn’t catch his attention. It is our duty to protect them, Selene.”

I winced and looked away, back toward the bend. Beyond it, the mortals of the Kingdom of Elis suffered. How many? How many lives had Zeus ruined?

“But what about them?” I asked softly.

“If I’d tried to save them, I would have failed,” she said frankly. “And then Zeus would have come for Troy. He would have brought his fellow Olympians and the strength of their armies. Twelve kingdoms against our one. To help them would have been to doom our own people.”

“There must be something we can do,” I whispered, the haze seeping back into my eyes—this time from the anger rather than the thirst for blood. I rarely allowed myself to lose control of my emotions. Composure had been drilled into me since birth. But this... this whole thing . How could anyone remain stoic in the face of so much cruelty?

My mother’s gaze grew distant. “There may well be one day. But for now, I must show you the Bull, and then we need to make haste for the ruins. By the time we circle back around, the sun will have begun to set.”

Indeed, the sun was directly overhead. We’d been in the city for hours already. And when evenfall arrived, the vampires would emerge from their homes and find us loitering in their streets. Cloaks or not, they’d likely scent something off about us. And while Zeus could not kill us due to the treaty, he could take us captive and find all the ways to make us regret stepping foot inside his city without an invite.

We took off through the streets again. Soon the scent of blood and death faded, and the sweet taste of marigolds and sea salt thickened the air. We were approaching the coast, where Zeus resided in his infamous palace. Already, I could catch sight of it through the maze of smaller buildings. His palace rose majestically above all else, a sprawling, four-story home supported by white stone columns. Vines draped across the roof, winding around the columns and forming a carpet near an entrance darkened by ebony silk banners. To keep out the sun, no doubt.

Several images were carved into the side of the building. The first one I noticed curdled my stomach. Zeus, with his thick beard and mountainous frame, stood tall in front of a cowering mass of crowned men and women. They were on their knees, hiding their faces beneath black cloaks embroidered with the symbol of the Titan god, Gaia.

The original vampires—the thirteen Titans first created by Gaia—had once walked these lands, living in harmony with mortals despite their vampiric natures. For one hundred blissful years. Until another god created his own thirteen—Erebus, the god of night.

Led by Zeus, those thirteen called themselves the Olympians, and they banded together to trap the Titans, forever binding them in Tartarus. My mother had been the only one to escape. And through some trick of the gods, she was able to convince the Olympians to join her in a pact of peace.

A pact whose threads were clearly fraying by the minute.

A figure strode from the depths of the palace, broad shoulders hidden beneath an onyx cloak far denser than ours. He came to a stop at the summit of the marble steps and gazed across the city. It was impossible to see his face, or even anything about him at all. But there was something in the way he moved that exuded violence.

My mother spotted him, grabbed my arm, and yanked me behind a looming statue of a horse. We pressed ourselves against the statue, peering beneath the whipping tail at the Olympian vampire striding from one end of the palace steps to the other. He was clearly gazing across the city, as if he were looking for something.

“Is that Zeus?” I whispered.

“No, Zeus is bigger. That’s likely Ares, his closest ally.”

If he was Zeus’s closest ally, he was just as terrible, in my opinion. He not only let all of this happen, he likely approved of it. He probably had one of these farms inside his own kingdom, too.

“Why is he here? Shouldn’t he be in Pergamon?”

Ares’s kingdom bordered our own, and it was nowhere near Olympia. In Troy, we were at the very northern tip of the Hellas continent. I knew the Olympians liked to consider us an entirely different world altogether, and none of them deemed our kingdom worthy of a visit. And it was something my mother counted on. If the Olympians ever ventured inside our city’s walls…they would not like what they’d see.

The skin around my mother’s eyes tightened, and she muttered something beneath her breath I couldn’t make out. Then she said, “I’m not sure. It’s probably nothing. Just two cruel kings enjoying each other’s company.”

But the way she said it…there was an odd tremor in her voice. I peered around the statue at the High King of Pergamon, and I swore he was staring right at us, even if that was impossible. We were at least half a mile away, hidden amongst the winding streets. He was only clearly visible to us because he stood at the top of the steps leading into the palace.

After a tense moment, he whirled on his feet, tossed the silk curtains aside, and vanished into the palace.

“That’s it, then,” my mother said sadly. “We must split up.”

I jerked my head toward her. “ What? ”

“Something has made him uneasy. He won’t risk the full sunlight himself, but he might send other guards to patrol the streets, or send word to those at the wall. We must split up. You return on the path we took here. I’ll meet you back at the ruins.”

She started to turn away, but I grabbed her arm, my heartbeat as thunderous as a lion’s roar. “Mother, no. We’re in an enemy city. We have to stay together.”

“You agreed to this,” she said sharply. “You agreed when I told you that no matter what happens in this godforsaken place that you will do as I say. And I’m telling you to return the way we came.”

Her voice was full of fury. Swallowing, I took a step away from her. I’d never seen her like this.

“Good.” She gave me a curt nod. “Now go. And Selene…you’ve made me proud today.”

Shaking my head, I went against my every instinct and left her there beside the statue. By the time I’d vanished around the corner, she hadn’t moved. Something was wrong. Ares shouldn’t be here, judging by my mother’s reaction, and she wouldn’t ask us to split up unless she really thought it necessary.

But what did that mean? What could possibly be happening?

With unease churning in my gut, I retraced my steps through the city, passing the human farm, then the wealthier vampire districts, and then the abandoned section where we’d entered. I reached the wall without incident. Ducking beside it, I shielded my eyes against the sun sliding closer to the horizon. Two guards still stood at the archway, and there were no others patrolling the streets that I could see. No alarms. No shouts. Nothing seemed amiss at all.

That had to be a good sign. I couldn’t bear to believe anything else.

I made it across the wall and to the ruins just as night returned in all its shadowed glory. A full moon glimmered overhead, its brilliant silver light swallowing up the stars. It was enough to illuminate the ruins, and I found the stretch of wall where we were to meet. My raven perched on the stone, waiting for me.

But my mother wasn’t there.

A thickness filled my throat as I knelt and waited. Hector came to sit on my shoulder, keeping me company. I found her absence didn’t surprise me. Deep down, I’d expected it. She’d seemed off the moment she’d spotted Ares. Something was wrong.

“Don’t move,” came a voice from the shadows behind me. The rough edge of a wooden blade pressed against the back of my neck, pinning me in place.