Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

O ne second, drizzle sluiced my hair to my cheeks, the next the dark clouds tore open in a furious downpour and I screamed as wind threw me from the sky. It wasn't an ordinary storm; magic was already heavy in the air, and now it lit up every cloud in ominous sapphire, emerald, and dark, bloodstain red. Somewhere, below, my mates were roaring at the sky. Terror, urgent and barbed, ripped through every one of their souls. Had Wynvail already told Em and Kai?

A shiver went down my spine at the thought of Kai's rage, but I scanned the storm of magic and homed in on a dense shadow stretching across the ground. Cronus. My heart skipped, but I couldn't let my fear get to me now.

We're so close. He's almost dead.

I slammed a wall down on my soul, blocking out the howling panic on the other side of my tethers. They knew the plan. We weren't splitting up, not really. All I had to do was slice Cronus open long enough for Lili and the gods to reach inside him and pull out anyone left alive, and then I'd be back with my mates.

Two minutes, I assured myself, and ignored the delusion in that promise. Five, tops.

I snapped my dark wings to my side and dove towards that enormous dark figure splayed on the ground. A burst of dawn light split the storm for a moment, long enough for me to see two dozen angel soldiers and armoured gods wrestling to keep the titan down. Cronus was wrapped in vines and shadow and silver thorns, scythes and stakes driven through his hands and feet to pin him to the ground, so much magic choking him that I coughed as I plummeted through the rain clouds.

For a second, the wind tugging at my feathers threw me back to the Labyrinth, and I was falling helplessly, unable to save myself or my mates. But I clenched my jaw and fixed my eyes on Cronus's featureless face as he thrashed. I wasn't in the Labyrinth. He wouldn't send me there ever again.

I was close now, so close I could see the individual soldiers as they swarmed around the titan, more and more piling on with magic and weapons. My mates had to be down there. The gods had reached him first with their superior magic, but we'd been on the front line. Fear doused me, colder than the storm.

I snapped my wings to drive myself faster and cut through the remaining distance like a bullet. My attention snagged on a woman stalking through the ranks of gods and warriors towards Cronus's head, a broadsword in her hands. Lili. My wings faltered, my whole body jerking in shock, when she lifted the massive sword above her head and drove it, point down, through Cronus's skull.

It should have killed him. I knew the age of gods was over and he'd crowned this the second golden age of titans, but that blow would have killed anyone. Anything.

Except a monster who'd devoured hundreds of people and their magic. Including my mum's.

Rage clenched my teeth until they threatened to crack. Give 'em hell, Halwen.

Yes, my soul purred, blood pounding in my ears. Justice, it snarled, justice...

I held my breath as the ground flew up towards me, rain-dark and already slick with blood. Would mine join it?

The wind got hold of me when I snapped my wings out, flipping me so suddenly that I couldn't stop it. The whirlwind was terrifying, my mind too slow to correct my course for long, long moments.

My body finally righted itself metres from the ground, and my boots slammed into stone—too hard, too fast. My knees buckled. My stomach flipped. I couldn't afford to be weak in a moment like this.

A gentle hand caught my elbow and steadied me on my feet, and I turned with blood ringing in my ears, staring into an unfamiliar face. The man was younger than me and short, clean shaven and pretty with tanned skin, golden curls, and blue eyes so bright they hit me with a physical heat. He looked like a teen heartthrob.

"Hello, niece," he said with a smile.

I ripped my arm out of his hold at the tone of his voice—the menacing amusement and cruelty of every bully I'd ever met.

I slammed my fist into his stomach when he advanced on me and ripped my volcanic dagger from its sheath, holding it up in warning.

Golden Boy blinked, all innocence and offence. I didn't buy it. "Why would you need a knife? I'm family, after all." He drew another step closer, and then another, crowding me back against—against Cronus's prone form. Shit, whoever this asshole was, he'd trapped me against one of Cronus's onyx ribs until I had nowhere to go.

Well, nowhere to go but through him.

"You get one warning," I told him. "And you only get that because we're apparently family, and I have a serious shortage of that."

The heartthrob smiled, but no matter how pretty he was, there was something wrong with him, evil oozing from those baby blues. "I'm Eros, your uncle. I've wanted to meet you ever since I heard you survived the battle of Olympus. How did you manage it, when even Aphrodite was slain?"

I spat on the ground at the mention of that raging bitch. "Good riddance."

Eros's blue eyes flashed with so much light and danger that I considered crawling across Cronus's body just to escape. It wasn't the same evil I'd seen in Iapetus, but it was the hunger and malice I saw every time I looked at Cronus. He wanted to beat me to a pulp and dance in the gore I left behind.

"Aphrodite is a thousand times the woman you are, a thousand times the warrior you are. You are nothing ." He shoved me into Cronus's body, and I inhaled a sharp breath when magic lashed me—shadow but unfamiliar, and far more painful to touch than any I'd felt before. He'd twisted Wane's shadow, polluted it with his own vileness. I gritted my teeth and whipped up my dagger, holding it under Eros's chin as he advanced until he was touching me. My stomach twisted.

Who the fuck did this guy think he was? Sure, he was Eros, god of love and sex or whatever the fuck else. I was Halwen, criminal and murderess, and I had a knife that killed gods.

"Aphrodite," he snarled in my face, spittle flecking my cheeks as I dug the tip of my knife into his golden neck, "could wipe you out in a heartbeat, you pathetic little worm. Aphrodite—"

"Got what she deserved," a deep, roughened voice snapped, and a bulging brown arm muscled between Eros and me, dragging the snarling bastard away. "Your mother played with fire and got burned."

I thrust my dagger out in a warning, the back of my neck crawling. My magic howled inside me, throwing itself against the cage of my body over and over, suddenly frantic.

Behind me, Cronus tried to surge up from the ground, and I flinched away when magic saturated the air, squeezing the air from my lungs. They wouldn't hold him down for much longer. I needed to slice him open now.

"You fucking traitor," Eros snarled. He twisted, coming at me again with hatred and something deep, something personal in his eyes. Guessed he blamed me for Cronus eating his dear, old mum.

"Come a little closer," I taunted him, encouraging his temper. His baby blues flared, and he launched at me like a complete fool.

I twisted my hand, driving my knife deeper. Blood splashed, hot over my hand and wrist. "I've got more important things to be doing right now," I bit out, "than entertaining your useless fucking feud."

I wrenched my knife free, kicked Eros until he fell—and paled when I saw the fucking massive man hulking behind him. Shrewd brown eyes followed Eros's body as he crashed to the rain-slick ground, and I caught my breath when that calculating stare rose to me, pausing only briefly on my bloodied dagger.

"So, they really are god killers," he said, his voice loud and rumbling to match his huge, muscular body. The god was draped in rust-red armour, a mix of leather and metal like me. He wielded his own sword in one hand, ten times the size of my volcanic blade, and a shield on his other arm. Dark red hair fell over his powerful shoulders and down his back, drenched by the rain.

"Wow," I said, my ears ringing, breathing racing out of control. "You look just like your portraits. You should tip those artists, they did a great job."

"You have a job to do," he reminded me, his voice deep enough to make me shiver but lacking the violence of the god I just murdered. 1

"Thanks," I snapped. "I'd forgotten."

"That's a good quality blade. It was hewn with intent and care. It will hold your magic; pour it through the knife and into Cronus. You'll succeed in gutting him."

My ears kept ringing. I kept staring at the man, from his red hair, rough-hewn brown face, to his leather armour skirt thing and his shield. Ares. My grandfather.

"You're not going to kill me to avenge this guy?" I asked, waving carelessly at Eros as his body cooled on the ground.

"My son," Ares corrected, and my blood turned to ice. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. "No. He fell in battle, an honourable death. It's his own fault he picked the wrong war to wage."

"You'd know all about that," I said, aware that power raged around us, as thick as the storm, but not quite able to tear my eyes from the god in front of me. My grandfather. My family. I had real, living family, and I was looking at him right now. "War."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "I'm not going to kill you." And with those words echoing around my head, he turned, leaving me to carve my way across Cronus's stomach.

"Wait!" I blurted, my heart drumming so hard my ribs must be bruised. "Do you know she's inside him? My mum. Sofina."

Ares paused and pinned me with a stare so intense my heart skipped. "Sofina is dead."

I shook my head. Shook it again. "No. Phoebe told me." Well, hinted. And if she'd been hinting at something else, I was going to hunt down the prophet and send her to the same afterlife as Eros. "She's inside him."

Ares froze, staring at Cronus as he bucked and fought the magic pinning him down. It had only been two minutes since I landed, but it felt like a lifetime had passed. How much longer could they hold him?

Not much longer, I realised when more shadows flickered from Cronus's dark body, making me flinch with a zap of pain. He was going to overpower them.

Enough. The word rang through my head. I gritted my teeth, grabbed all the magic I'd been harvesting from my core of power all day, and let it bleed out of my palm and down my knife.

I turned from Ares, leaving him with that revelation, and drove my wings down, carrying me up onto Cronus's prone form. He was seething, furious—I could feel it from him, sense it in his magic, in every struggling movement he made.

What if he takes us to another fake reality? That thought made me want to cry, but I scaled his massive form, hand over hand, gritting my teeth, until I reached his stomach. Perilously balanced, I drove my knife down and let all my grief and rage fuel my magic. Shit. Resistance met my blade. My arms shook with the impact.

It wasn't a barrier around him, wasn't a shield of impenetrable power, it was—my own arms. They refused to move. Refused to even press the tip of my dagger against his skin.

I pressed my lips thin to trap a scream of panic. No. No! Not this. The bastard had ensnared me in his magic, slowing time. I was in the middle of a maelstrom, with everything happening at lightning speed around me. Gods, angels, and demons blurred like smears of light, moving so fast I couldn't keep track. I was aware of the magic keeping my arms sluggish, forcing even my chest into inertia. Air cut off, captive in my chest, but I needed to breathe, needed to move. I couldn't stop now. Not this close.

I screamed, the noise emerging low and drawn out like a fucking cow mooing. I threw all my weight onto my dagger, willing it to pierce him. My mum was inside there. Lucifer was in there. Our allies and friends and family were. Lucifer gave me a job when I was hopeless, when I had no funds or resources to search for my mates. Without him, they'd still probably be in Alphaven, Wane would be captive, Wyn would be Cronus's puppet, cruel and heartless because he was in so much pain every damn day.

You're not winning this, you fucking asshole, I snarled, and hoped he heard me. You're dead, however many attempts it takes.

Futilely fighting the sluggish pull of my own body, it felt exactly like being in Olympus, unable to wound him no matter how many times I stabbed him. But I couldn't let doubt kill my hunger for blood. I needed to bleed him, to make him pay, to get justice for every unspeakable thing he'd done.

Justice, justice…

I screamed, putting more force behind the knife, but time slowed and stretched until I didn't move even a millimetre. Everything became a cacophonous noise around me, shouts buzzing like bees until I flinched, but my body refused to make even that movement. Frustration made my magic boil inside me, made my soul scream. I was so close. I was—

His descendant. I was Cronus's descendant, and I'd already used his magic once. I'd ripped apart the fake timeline: I brought the whole thing crashing down around us. Thoughts of Kaida made my chest spike with pain, a tear forming impossibly slowly in my eye, but the memories gave me back my strength and renewed my rage.

I'd managed to undo his power once. I could do it again.

I'm coming for you, you fucking bastard. For what you put us through, for what you made Wynvail into, for every single scar and drop of blood you made on Wane. For his horns. His wings. His peace of mind.

Justice, justice…

I sank inside myself, encouraging the flames of my anger. Cronus's control ran so deep I couldn't even close my eyes, but I grasped enough magic to make my skin buzz and my teeth rattle. How did I sort through the tangled mess of it to find a single blue thread? I didn't know how to isolate the magic I inherited from Cronus; it was like searching for a single raindrop in a storm.

I couldn't do this.

I needed my mates. Even when I didn't believe in myself, they believed in me. The only thing I had to cling to for confidence was the sight of Lili driving a broadsword through his skull and Erebus's assurance that I had weakened him. Cronus was already weak long before the gods and titans brought him down, before Lili drove her sword through him.

Like it had in the prison in Olympus, Kai's voice came to me, and a minuscule smile formed on my face.

I swear to every higher being, if you don't find that time magic inside you and kill this bastard, I'll bite every inch of your body until you're high on my venom and so needy it could kill you, then I'll bring you to the edge of climax and leave you there.

He'd threatened me with that before. Had gone through with it, too.

I sucked in a rough breath, ignored how slow it was, and dove back into my core of magic, reaching past thumping heartbeats and merciless sunlight and patient, dangerous shadows. I couldn't see them, but I felt each magic as I brushed past, sensed its heat or ice or chaos or calm. They clashed inside me, but instead of shattering, they fused into something far more potent than anything I'd ever held before.

Where are you? Come on, come on.

I reached through cold, lonely moonlight and volatile emerald, vaguely registering that I held each of my mates' magics inside me, that they'd all contributed to this maelstrom. Roaring alongside them was the violence that had always driven me and the calm that washed over me when things got really, really, bad. The two sides of battle, I realised—howling screams and ringing silence. I surged past it, feeling rage and motherly love and then—there.

I recognised the elusive brush of Cronus's time from the fake timeline, but here it wasn't electric and sharp. It was quiet, unknowable. Changeable.

Change into something that can rip me out of this immobility, I snapped.

But it didn't work like that. I needed to direct it, shape it myself. I didn't know what I was doing, but that wasn't new. I'd never known what I was doing. And yet … this time I was driven by instinct and thousands of years of knowledge, passed down through the magic inside me.

That's not daunting at all…

I held tight to that electric blue thread of time, coaxed it into my free hand, and when my palm gleamed blue, I exhaled roughly. My breath left me in a plume, rapid and cold and all at once. Not excruciatingly slowly.

It was working.

Instinct, don't let me down, I pleaded as I twisted the blue cord of time into a knot, the tangle of thread resembling a Celtic knot. I didn't waste time, shaking too hard now, terrified Cronus would crush my tiny progress like he'd crushed Wynvail into nothing.

I drove my palm at his chest as hard as a punch, and my eyes fluttered with visceral relief when my hand actually collided with his chest.

Time began to resume around me with a jolt I felt deep in my bones. I flinched when shadows writhed over my hands and up my arms, hitting me with shocks that made me gasp, made my whole body tighten. So that was how he'd frozen me in time. His shadows were full of malice and dark magic, and I hoped he choked on them.

The moment I could rip my right hand free, I drove my volcanic dagger into the space under Cronus's ribs, gritting my teeth at the pain that rattled up my blade and through my arm from his magic.

"I don't think so, asshole," I panted, the flare of agony making my whole body tense. "I'm used to pain at this point. I've lived through it, trained in it, all thanks to you."

I twisted the knife deeper and pulled more magic from my core, so much blowing out of me that my hair danced around my face even soaked wet. My wings fluttered as more and more power gathered, stroking the sensitive skin beneath feathers.

I shuddered as a shiver rippled down my spine like a premonition. I ignored it and poured the maelstrom of power through the blade and into the bastard, praying Ares was right. I actually prayed to Ares, like that would do any good as I gripped the pink hilt in both hands and heaved my dagger sideways, cutting a tiny slash.

Blood pounded in my ears. Sweat beaded on my upper lip and dropped onto the titan's writhing shadow form. I fed more and more magic through my dagger, cutting a deeper slash. Noise erupted around me when time snapped fully back into place, and my head spun. Were my mates' voices among those shouting? I wanted them here, wanted them beside me. This no longer seemed like a quick, easy task before returning to their side. I sought them through the bond, my soul immediately flooded with panic and love and violent rage. It gave me the strength to push more magic into the dagger and cut Cronus's enormous stomach deeper, further.

"Keep going!" someone yelled. Lili?

I kept going. I didn't stop until there was a slash from edge to edge of his gut, and my head spun dangerously. Magic rampaged through my chest in a storm without end. Even now, there was more. My magic was a bottomless well, and it scared me. My conviction weakened; my power faltered.

But it was done. Cronus was cut open, and when I fell back onto his hip bone, hands were already ripping the gap wider. Hands from inside.

The gods fought their way free. I watched in fascination and disgust at the viscera, my head spinning faster, faster. Heat roared like a whip crack through my body, and I inhaled sharply. This wasn't heat cramping my pelvis like the mating cycle, but razing through my insides, burning through my core of magic until there were only ashes inside me.

For a terrifying moment I thought Cronus had infected me, somehow got inside me. But in those ashes, I felt something stir, like a phoenix reborn. Stronger. Far more deadly than any magic I'd grasped before. Like it had been waiting for me to plummet through my core of power, brushing each kind. Awakening it from slumber.

With the heat came weakness, dizziness. I slumped against Cronus's hip with a groan and gravity, that opportunist bitch, seized her chance. Too weak to stop it, I slid from Cronus's body, racing towards the ground at an alarming speed.

No, a primal panic screamed inside me, and I twisted my body, curling around my stomach. I can't fall. The baby…

When I tried to manoeuvre my wings, to catch air and stop my fall, they struggled to respond. I'd triggered something dangerous by funnelling magic into Cronus, and now with ashes and sparks of something deadly inside me, my strength waned. Like whatever was happening in my core of magic needed every last iota of strength.

I fell and could do nothing to slow myself, nothing to stop the inevitable impact. All I could do was twist myself to protect the precious life inside me. The life that should have been a priority no matter how scared I was, no matter how convinced I was that they wouldn't survive.

I fell into darkness that wrapped around me like a soothing blanket, like familiar arms, like a promise to keep me safe.

When those shadows stopped my descent, I could breathe again. But then Cronus roared, the magic that had gagged him shredded, and he regained control of his body.