Chapter 29

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

HALWEN

I froze in the middle of the hideously green sitting room, staring at the unconscious form of Cronus splayed in front of the fire, flames spitting fern-green embers onto the shadows that bled from him. Wane's shadows.

Kill him now. The thought throbbed like an ache in my head, and I crossed the room before I'd even thought to throw up a shield. Kill him, kill him.

I lifted my hand, my heart skipping at the sight of a hundred runes covering my skin like tattoos, each symbol blazing ruby light. It was the only thing that wasn't green in this place; even my skin took on a sick pallor. The sigils covered every bit of skin I could see, scattering crimson highlights over the sofa as I approached Cronus's unconscious form, braced for him to spring up and attack me.

Was he weakened here? Or had coming to this place done the job and killed him for me?

Verena had said catch , and obviously thrown something, casting us into this fancy living room. I felt like a doll in a dollhouse, trapped until some giant kid came to play with me. Speaking of giants—Cronus was back to his normal size, only a few feet taller than me, but for some reason he was still made of deep, menacing shadows. I approached slowly, knife in hand, spiralling into my core of magic and so relieved to sense the now-familiar cocktail of power that my knees weakened.

A dozen different colours burst to life down my blade, thrashing like they were as furious—and terrified—as I was. I saw the blue of Cronus's magic within it, the black of Erebus's shadows, the vivid red of my own blood magic, and the unforgiving gold of Harvey's sunlight. I kept a tight grip on my magic as I crept closer, my whole body tensed.

Looking down at Cronus in the semblance of sleep, my rage flashed higher, but so too did the ancient Fury that lived inside me. How dare he know peace when he'd made so many suffer? How dare he sleep when he'd deprived so many of sleep, of comfort, of food, of life? He needed to pay.

I sucked in a shallow breath as I took the last few steps, my skin tingling with apprehension, a deep primal warning in my gut. I needed to kill him, to restore balance, to deliver justice for everyone he'd hurt and murdered in the name of power.

The age of titans—that's what he wanted. I would rip that dream from him. The second age of titans would never arrive. This was the age of fury.

Instinct made me flex my other hand, multicoloured flame roaring to life in my hand, its fire every bit as silent as the rest of this place. Only my soft footsteps and ragged breathing made noise, the clamour of the battle very far away. Like we were in our own little world.

A jolt of realisation made my heart thump. Our own little world… Wyn gave Verena that golden sphere, rumoured to make a pocket world about as big as a house. Or create an actual house that was its own world?

Verena did this. Weakened Cronus. The Fury in my soul cheered, and my blood quickened with its call to arms. Kill him, kill him once and for all.

I reached his shadow form, my heart beating a rapid tattoo against my ribs, and drove both flame and blade down into his body before I could hesitate. My palm met shadow, the volcanic blade driving into—nothing.

"You can't believe I'd be so stupid," Cronus drawled, his awful voice… not stabbing into my skull in its usual way. My ears didn't bleed, and my nose didn't trickle blood. His words didn't pound through my skull like a drum. But his voice was every bit as wicked and smug, lacking a vital gleam of humanity that made people if not good then human. Made them a person.

I wasn't sure what Cronus was after a thousand years festering in his own rage and self-importance in Tartarus. I wasn't sure what all the unforgivable acts he'd committed made him into. Certainly not a person. Not even a villain. Toxic waste. Something to be incinerated so it could never harm anyone else.

I turned slowly, not giving him the satisfaction of spinning and letting my fear show. But I couldn't mask my surprise when I saw him, not slick with shadow or even grand and dangerous like I'd seen him in the past, Erebus walking the pathways of Wane's misery with me. Standing across the grand room was a man.

A smile curled my mouth, cruelty in its curve. Titans may not die, but men could.

"It was an illusion," I guessed, gesturing with a fiery hand to where he'd slumped on the rug in front of the fire. Where he'd never been. As usual he'd hung back, watching, manipulating me from the side lines.

I took a step, reaching for more magic, pulling so much that my arms shook with the weight of it, the force of it pressing on my bones. This power hated Cronus, itching to wipe him off the face of the universe. I frowned at the bundle of rags in the crook of the bastard's elbow, waiting for him to hurl it at me. What was it—grenades? A hundred throwing stars? Another trickery of time to fuck with my head?

I flexed my hand and speared a thought into my pit of rainbow rage, my smile deepening when the flames in my palm stretched into a circular disk big enough to protect my chest. A shield. 1

"Parlour tricks," Cronus sneered, matching my step. "But I assure you this is not a trick." He tilted the pile of rags until I could see a tiny, screwed up face, closed eyes casting shadows from thick lashes, and the arch of a leathery wing just visible.

Despite myself, I slammed to a halt in the middle of the room. It's not real. I knew that, but I couldn't help the pain that drove through my heart like an arrow.

The veins of shadow in my shield throbbed, silently screaming. I sensed its urgency, felt its panic all the way through my body, and forced myself to take another step, to choke back the pain of losing Kaida and so many others. My hands shook harder, both with the weight of pulling up so much magic and with the emotional strain. I blinked and a tear rolled free, but I took another step.

"Parlour tricks," I snarled, teeth bared. My breath came in short pants. "She's not real."

Cronus looked down at the small winged baby girl, a smile softening his tanned face. "Isn't she?" he taunted, an eyebrow lifting when he shot me a wry glance. "Can you take that risk?"

My mates fought his endless army in the Damned Realm. Verena was there too, in the middle of all that slaughter. And here, a fragile seed of life had begun to grow within me. That was what I couldn't risk. That was real, and vital, and the whole reason we'd walked back into this war—to protect it. To fight for a better life.

Cronus expected me to falter. He was so assured of it that he had a smug little smirk on his angular face. I blew it off when I brought my dagger around, winding it up like I was about to throw a javelin, and let out a blast of magic, using the blade's tip to direct its flow. I didn't even throw my knife; magic shot from me in a rapid explosion and caught the titan off guard.

When he stumbled back, I tore across the room to press the advantage, hitting him with burst after burst of multi-hued power so fast he couldn't escape it. Each blow hit its target: his chest, his arm, his throat, his head.

His snarl of fury lacked its usual agonising effect and I grinned. Whatever Verena had done, we were evenly matched here. Without his usual parlour tricks, as he called them, what was he? A man with immense power, certainly, but my power was immense too. I carried the magic of all my mates and more. Magic that travelled through my family line, tracing all the way back to Cronus. No, further.

Erebus was one of the first beings to walk any realm, and I bore his shadows—in my pit of furious magic, in my shield and dagger, and in my womb where that fragile life grew. That was what he told me: any descendant of Wane would inherit his shadow. Magic that was so raw and potent that Cronus had spent a hundred years torturing my mate just for a sliver of it. He collapsed cities and rebuilt them, he formed an entire army, and he imprisoned and tortured an incalculable number of people with a sliver.

How much shadow did I have?

Cronus's eyes narrowed as I drove him across the room, pushing him back step by step, flame by flame. There was a never-ending supply of it within me, and by the flaring of his nostrils he knew it too. He was livid, murderous, but there was no hiding the unease that rippled through his eyes as I drove him out of the living room, through a door that gaped open, and into a hallway papered with expensive forest green patterns—a jungle of lush leaves, trees, and exotic animals. I swore I saw a toucan move but I narrowed my eyes on Cronus and ignored it.

He never took his eyes off me either. "Do you really think you'll win against me?"

"I know I will," I replied, hitting him with another blast, so hot that it sent ripples through the air and blew my hair back off my face.

Cronus knocked it aside and laughed, a soft whisper that scared me more than any loud rumble. "Wane fought me for a hundred years and never won, and you think you can fight me for a scant number of weeks and triumph?"

"Yup." I whipped my knife through the air, discharging a blazing line of fire that he annoyingly sidestepped. The bundle of rags he'd tricked me into thinking was Kaida had vanished, proving he was just fucking with my head.

He walked backward, uncaring that the hallway dead-ended a few feet away. His eyes fixed on me with deep, seething hatred. 2 "I broke Wane apart piece by pathetic piece, until I saw his inner workings. And do you know what I found?"

"I'm sure you'll tell me," I hissed, jumping when movement blurred down the wall to my left. A capuchin monkey leapt from tree to tree in the wallpaper. I slammed my shield into it, leaving a scorch mark before it could attack me, and swallowed my guilt. Sure, it was an illusion, but I still felt bad for hurting an animal.

"There is nothing at all remarkable about that runt you call a mate," Cronus laughed, his face twisted in jealousy he couldn't quite hide. He was still glaring at me, walking backwards, unwilling to look away. "He bleeds like any demon, screams like any prey, and begs for mercy like anyone given the right leverage."

"He's remarkable to me, you piece of shit," I hissed, my next pulse of magic blowing me back three steps with its power. I needed more space, needed somewhere I could release this maelstrom of magic and fury without bringing a fucking house down on myself.

"I suppose the one remarkable thing about him is that he never broke." Cronus's next smile made my stomach curdle. "Until he sensed you, of course. Then he folded like a house of cards."

Horror made my stomach roil. I'd suspected as much, but hearing it laid out like praise by the monster who tortured my mate was a whole other thing. I curled my hands into tight fists around my shield and dagger, only the knowledge that I would miscarry if I brought the house down holding the wave of lethal power at bay.

The green carpet blackened beneath me as I took an enraged step, then another, then another. Cronus laughed, but I saw his fear. I brought both my dagger and shield around and slammed the blade into the disc of magic. There was no noise, but a storm of flame exploded down the hallway, burning everything it touched, curling the wallpaper until its creatures screamed. The carpet melted to a river of fire that should have burned me but only caressed. Ruby, sapphire, silver, and rose rushed around my boots and towered higher, flames forming an arch around me.

Cronus stumbled back. I was so surprised to see him stumble that I nearly dropped my dagger, but his falter gave me enough time to rush across the hallway on a wave of furious magic and drive my dagger at his throat, intending to cleave his head clean off his shoulders.

Metal rang.

My blood sang a moment before I saw what he'd used to counter my blow—my second volcanic dagger. A grin pulled at my cheeks. There you are, my soul seemed to sing, like the knives had become part of me.

"You truly think you can win," Cronus laughed, scraping the knife in his hand against mine until the wavy blades locked. Stalemate. "I reached into your mate's chest and ripped out his heart. I burned my magic into his soul. I stole his darkness. I am the great titan who leashed a child of Erebus. And you, child of nothing, think you can beat me?"

"Child of nothing," I breathed, locking eyes with him, the two of us terrifyingly close. "And here I thought I was a descendant of Ares, and Rhea, and you. If I'm nothing, so are you."

"Do you think the life I showed you is the first time I've played games with Wane's mind?" He smirked even as I drove him back, slamming my shield into his stomach. "I've showed him a thousand lifetimes, and I've ripped every thread of happiness from him—every single time."

He did that to Wane. My Wane.

I sucked in a painful breath, my eyes burning. It was enough for Cronus to shove me back, to rip his knife away from mine. But the dagger vibrated in my hand, resonating with the one in his, pulling like a magnet. Like Cronus felt it too, his words grew sharper, hitting my bruised soul.

"Wane killed you in each lifetime," he gloated. "He killed you, and his brother, and those other mates of yours. And if you had children, he killed those too. A hundred years I had him, but he lived thousands of lives, broken in the dark of that room, ever bleeding, ever suffering. A killer."

Killer. God-killer. I glanced at the knife in my hand.

I shook my head hard, flinging tears off my cheeks, my throat so tight that my words were guttural. "You will pay. You will die." They were the words of the Fury, the decree, his sentence. His crimes had been weighed, his punishment set, and justice would be done.

He was trying to break me. And it was working. The thought of Wane being cut apart and physically tortured for a hundred years had killed me, but this? No wonder he wouldn't speak about what happened in that prison. No wonder he was so terrified that I'd find out.

You will pay. You will die.

Kill him.

I sank down, down into the pit of my power, deeper than I'd been before, and bathed myself in its bright, limitless magic as I repeated the words. Kill him.

I flexed my hand and the shield unravelled itself from existence. Flexed it again and my second blade shot out of Cronus's hand and into my palm. I wrapped my fingers around the pink hilt, breathing fast, half of me there in that burned corridor facing the titan, half of me submerged in so much magic that I couldn't breathe.

Kill him. Help me kill him.

Erebus said I had something Cronus would never have, said my magic was pure and raw enough to do anything, that it could be anything.

Use your power, Halwen. All of it, every kind that lives inside you.

Every kind of power that lived inside me, carried through my line, through my mates' families, through my child's.

Magic flashed along the wavy blade of my second knife, and Cronus's smile fell. But I'd hit him with this magic over and over, and no matter what Erebus believed, it hadn't killed him.

All of it, every kind…

I sank to the bottom of the pit, reaching out to every colour and flicker, to every emotion it carried, every purpose it held. There was more than I'd sensed before, not just mine and my mates' powers, but others I didn't recognise. Battle calm and lightning and love. Earth and sky and daylight and darkness. And tucked into a tiny pocket, protected, were chaos and the night, like they'd been waiting for me to discover them.

Now. I need you now.

Familiar shadow rose around me, encouraging, proud. I called up every glimmer and shade, every swath of inherited magic, and when I focused on the hallway again Cronus was running—not towards me, but away. Like he felt the power I exhaled with every breath, like he'd seen what now covered both my blades and glowed from every symbol and sigil on my skin—not blood-red or a thousand rainbow shades, but pure, deathless gold. A gold so complete and bright that it was like no magic that had come before, and yet forged from all of them.

I blinked, gold dripping from my lashes, and took a step down the burned hallway. Cronus leapt at the wall, blasting a hole through the bricks, but I wasn't worried. Wisdom, grace, and a steady calm—neither furious nor peaceful—filled my soul as I carried this new magic through the house. I flicked my dagger, somehow knowing that was all I needed to do to open a door in the wall that Cronus had leapt through.

I thought of the halo burning red at Lili's brow, and the dangerous aura that hung around her as ropes of fire wrapped her arms, the otherness that clung to her, and I wondered if I looked similar as I strode through the open doorway and kept Cronus's retreating form in my sights.