The council had arrived.
Calliope’s face went from pale to ashen, and her grip on Henry slipped. I didn’t think. In that moment, I memorized the feel of my son’s tiny hand in mine, and I let go.
As fast as I could, I hurtled toward Henry and Calliope, knocking him out of the way. Grabbing her fist, I smashed her knuckles against the wall to make her let go of the dagger. She wasn’t human though, and just like me, she couldn’t feel pain. No matter how much force I used, it was pointless.
But I had to buy Henry enough time to grab Milo and leave. Together we struggled, goddess against goddess, and I let out an enraged cry. Something inside me took over, something primal. As Calliope fought, so did I, with everything I had.
“Cronus!” shrieked Calliope, but he vanished into an eerie fog. His true form. With a dozen screaming gods surrounding the castle, no matter how powerful he was, he had no choice but to fight. He wouldn’t be any help to her now.
Calliope must have realized the same thing, because with a surge of power, she shoved me, and we toppled to the ground. She twisted my neck, and I scratched her face, attempting to gouge out her eyes, but neither of us could hurt the other.
“You bitch,” she snarled. “You conniving, useless bitch.”
“Can’t kill me.” I worked my fingers around the handle of the dagger and struggled to pull it from her grip. “I die, you die, remember?”
“Father won’t touch a hair on my head.”
“Are you willing to bet your entire existence on that?”
She screeched and wrenched the dagger from me. I had no chance against her immense strength, and I watched in horror as my grip slipped and the tip of the infused blade plunged into my arm.
White-hot pain ripped through me, burning everything in its path, infinitely worse than the brush of fog against my leg during my botched coronation ceremony nearly a year before. This was inside me, fusing together with my very being, choking it until only a few pitiful gasps remained.
I was dying. Two more seconds, and I’d be—
A black blur slammed into her. As the weight of Calliope’s body disappeared, the choke hold vanished. Agony burned inside me, leaving me breathless, and fire replaced the ice of the blade as I bled freely. What was happening?
I opened my eyes, half expecting to see wherever gods went when they died, but instead all I saw was Calliope’s maniacal grin as she lay on the floor beside me.
No, that wasn’t all. Henry hovered above her, pressed oddly against her body at an angle I didn’t understand. His eyes widened, his mouth dropped open, and his hands clutched something against his ribs.
“I win,” whispered Calliope. And as she pulled the bloody dagger from Henry’s chest, I finally understood.
Chapter 3
The Darkest Hour
For four years, I’d stayed by my mother’s bedside and watched her fade away. Her once strong and healthy body had withered into a poor imitation of the woman I remembered, and not an hour had passed without me imagining what it would be like the day death claimed her.
I’d lived in constant fear of waking up and finding her gone, a shell where my mother had once been. I would watch the clock flip over to midnight and wonder if that was the date I would mourn each year for the rest of my life.
I knew what it was like to lose. I knew what it was like to fight the inevitable.
But none of that had prepared me for watching Henry die.
Blood spurted from the wound in his chest. He fell to his knees, one hand clutching his rib cage, the other reaching for me. I’d never seen such real terror in his eyes. Gods weren’t supposed to die. Not unless they wanted to.
I reached for him with my good arm as the life drained from him. Was the blade strong enough to kill me, too? Once it was over, would we be together on the other side, wherever that might lead?
Was there even another side for the Lord of the Dead?
The moment our fingers met, my body lurched. It was a familiar feeling—much more jolting than I’d ever experienced before, but the instant it happened, I knew. We were going home.
One second, I was only feet away from Milo as he cried. The next I lay in a heap with Henry, and silence surrounded us. We weren’t in Calliope’s palace anymore. We weren’t even on the island. But we weren’t in the Underworld either, or at least any part of it I’d ever seen.
Instead we were in the middle of a massive room devoid of anything but a sky-blue ceiling and sunset floor. The golden walls seemed to stretch out forever, and with the sun in the middle of the ceiling as if it were a real sky, everything glittered with light. It should’ve taken my breath away.
But Milo was gone. Wherever we were, I knew instinctively he wouldn’t be joining us, and unspeakable pain spread like acid inside me. I would have gladly been stabbed a thousand times over rather than feel this for even a moment.
There was nothing I could do, though. My mother was on the island with him, along with James and the rest of the council, and that would have to be enough. The only person I had a prayer of helping now had me pinned to the sunset floor.
“Henry.” Even though the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him, I had no choice but to roll him gently off me. Blood soaked through his shirt, and I pressed my hands against his chest in an attempt to stop the flow, but it was useless. After everything we’d gone through together, after everything he’d done to protect me, I couldn’t do a damn thing to save him. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.
“Kate?” His voice was thick and hoarse, as if he were ill, but he wasn’t. He was dying. “Are you—are you all right?”