Chapter 32

“What do we do?” I yell over the crackling of fire and lightning.

Thanatos, face pale, shakes his head. “We can’t do anything. It’s over.”

I gasp, throat clogged by cloying smoke and ash. “We have to do something. We can’t just stand here and—“

A rattling cough tears from my lungs. By the time it stops, I’m hunched forward, spots dancing across my vision.

“It’s over, Chloe.” Thanatos grips my upper arm in one hand. He glances over his shoulder, lips pinched tight. “The fires are spreading fast. Damned thatched roofs.”

“We have to help,” I rasp. “These people are mortals! They won’t survive this, not the way we will.”

He nods, brows furrowed. “But we stay away from the temple. This is Hera’s battle, not ours.”

“And Nyx? She won’t come back?”

“Not so long as Zeus is nearby. She’s spiteful, not stupid.” He tugs me through the alleyway, lit in ghastly reds and oranges by the fires above. Embers and ash rain down like too-dark snow.

We race through streets lit by orange light, both from the dawn sky and the raging fires. As time goes on, we rush people, children, and entire families alike toward Kyma’s sandy coast, every speck of air clogged with acrid smoke. Instead of stopping, we pull our shirts over our noses and mouths, racing against the fires to save more.

Meanwhile, Zeus’ lightning rages on. I force myself to glance at it often, taking in the temple reduced to ruins, the attendants scattered, and statues struck down to rubble. One of the plush curtains Hera insisted on days ago flaps like a battle flag from a slab of broken stone.

In the center of it all, white flashes of lightning bear down on the three sisters, striking against their shield of fire impossibly intertwined with gnarled roots and thick ice. Hestia and Demeter, defending their sister Hera until the very end.

Hera herself stands between them, head lifted high, though I can’t see her expression from here. Even ringed by guards, Zeus venturing closer and closer with each chuck of shield sloughing away, she remains every bit the queen the storybooks promised.

Will she win? Will she survive?

I grit my teeth, facing my work of digging my blistering hands through a pile of burning rubble. There’s no time to waste on thinking.

Nearby, a young mother screams beneath the thick shawl covering half her face, crying for a child last seen before her house collapsed into the mess I’m digging through. No answer. When my fingers hit charred flesh, I know why.

Thanatos and I share a look. He turns toward the mother, mouth already forming an apology. Whatever she sees in his face sends her into wails and shrieks.

With shaking hands, I retreat from the rubble. The scent of ash and smoke will linger on our skin for days, a reminder of all the lives lost, all the tiny failures. Not only the loss of this child, but of the older one two streets over, and of the newly wedded couple close to where we started.

I glance around, cheeks wets, tears streaming through the layers of grime coated to my skin. Kyma, once a proud seaside town, is nothing more than glowing embers and ruined lives, now. A few homes were spared through changing winds and pure luck; they stand, empty and covered in thick soot, another reminder of all that’s been lost.

“Come,” Thanatos says, beckoning me toward the coast. “We’ve done all we can here.”

The mother’s wails dim to wracking sobs. An older man, a neighbor perhaps, leads her away from her home and dead child, toward the lines of people leaving the town for the safety of the beach dunes, where even fire can do nothing.

We trail at the back of the line, pushing the stragglers in front of us to keep moving.

He finds us beneath the cool shadow of a dune. Covered head-to-toe in grime, skin included, I don’t recognize him at first. Then his eyes, warm and brown, shine beneath all the soot. Then he calls us. “There you are! Mother, this is Chloe and Thanatos.”

As if we’ve only just strolled away for a walk, not survived menacing gods and blazing fire.

“Bion!” I say, lurching forward.

His mother, tucked into his side, leaves with a warm, though strained, smile.

Within seconds, I have him in a tight hug, tears prickling at my eyes. He smells of ash, we all do, but beneath there’re traces of paint and spring water. I didn’t dare hope our host would survive, not after we found his home burned down to its dirt floor. Yet here he is, surviving despite the odds, and his familiar shape and smell has tears clogging my throat.

“Oh, don’t cry,” he says in a thick voice, awkwardly patting my back. “I can barely handle my mother crying, let alone you.”

Thanatos rubs a hand along my spine before tugging me away. “It’s good to see you alive. After we found your home, we didn’t think…”

Bion chuckles, quieter than I’m accustomed to from him. “Takes more than fire to kill me. Besides, Agathe would yell at me if I showed up in Nekros too soon.”

Silence settles over us, not unlike the ashen cloud over Kyma at the mention of Nekros, the realm of the dead where those who lost their lives this morning will soon go.

The sirens haven’t flown over to collect souls yet, and why would they? No one expected the entire town to go up in flames. No one expected so many to die.

Bion sweeps a look along the beach, forcing my mind back to the huddled people pulling their scant layers close to fight off the morning chill.

Apollo, his golden hair dull with soot, moves through the crowd. He pauses on each person injured, whether it’s with a sluggishly bleeding wound or a blistering burn, and places his hands over the injury. A flash of golden sunlight beneath his hands, a wound vanishing with the light, then he moves on. I only hope his energy stores survive however many wounded wait in the masses.

Aphrodite stoops in front of a woman, deftly hemming her tattered dress with shaking hands. Hephaestus stands nearby, speaking with an older man.

Nymphs glide through the crowd, offering food they must’ve scavenged from the town: half-charred fruit and hunks of blackened bread. Meanwhile, satyrs work on building fire with wooden debris, driftwood, and shrubby plants alike, striking embers while shivering mortals watch on. Soon, the dry wood catches flame, and the warmth draws the people close. Some reach out their hands, warming them over the flickering flames, while others simply lean close with relief painted on their faces.

How can they find comfort in fire despite the same element destroying their homes an hour past? I swallow, my mother’s face flashing through my mind. My mother always moved forward. She gave love so easily, even to me, a reminder of the crimes committed against her. But maybe that’s it; I was never a monstrous reminder. I was her beloved daughter.

For all their fragility, mortals have power in their resilience, an inherent strength the gods can barely touch.

And now, with Hera and her sisters gone, her half of the court is aimless. How will they move on? Will one of them step forward to take her place, bargaining with the Moirai who could decide to kill as easily as help?

The satyrs turn their heads back toward the town, nostrils flaring. If exhaustion didn’t weigh down every thought, every fear, I might be afraid to look. But I’m not, so I do.

Lightning, soundless yet blinding, arcs between two dunes, heading across the beach toward the sea. Apollo curses, filling the sudden silence, hands glowing with sunlight. People shriek, dropping to the sand, domes of light halfway formed above them. The lightning strikes one, then two, but the makeshift shields of light hold.

And Zeus’ voice booms above it all: the screams, Apollo’s cursing, the lap of sea against shore. “All dissenters of the Olympian court are hereby exiled. Should you dare venture into Athansi, I’ll strip your immortality and execute you myself.”

A scream filters through the edges of his words. “Let me go!”

Hera.

She doesn’t cry, doesn’t plead. Her voice turns commanding, the sort of snapping and cold I expect from her. “Let me go now, Zeus.”

There’s the muffled noise of skin against skin, like a slap. She falls silent.

Aphrodite crosses her arms over her chest, entire body shaking now. Apollo ducks his head, the grief on his face quickly hidden behind his golden hair.

Thanatos pulls me close with an arm around my shoulders and only then do I realize I’ve taken two steps toward the lightning paused at the shoreline.

The lightning shifts, finally touching the sea. A burst of brown flashes at the corner of my eye. I turn, expecting Dionysus, already readying myself to pull him back from fighting Zeus. But it’s Hestia and Demeter, racing across the beach, dodging around fires and people.

Don’t, I try to yell, but it gets caught in my throat.

The lightning flashes. White light blinds me for a blink.

The sisters splash into the water, throwing themselves into the lightning without hesitation. A moment later, the lightning flashes again. When light clears from my vision two blinks later, it’s gone. Zeus, Hera, Hestia, Demeter; all gone.

The last of my hope vanishes with them.

Clouds clear from the sky. The sun emerges. Winds whips from the Akri Sea, pushing hair out of my face. Stam and Atia curl close to my neck, chasing the warmth of my skin. Life moves on. It always does, no matter how great the loss.

The day of my mother’s murder, I wandered across the islands, humming and talking to my animal friends for hours. I never saw her blood spilled across the cavern stone. Never saw my aunt’s tears. Never saw Perseus, her killer, retreat on his flying horse with her head in a bag like a mere item, not a life taken.

I returned hours after her death. The blood already scrubbed from the stone and a neat mound waiting in the dirt nearby. No marker besides the damp staining the mound, as if my aunts wept over it for days, not hours. I was young, so young, and they met my questions with nothing but grief, then rage.

I can’t say how long the beating from my aunts lasted, only that when my thoughts began forming solidly again, night had fallen dark across the realm. I picked myself up off the dirt, shuffled to the room I shared with my mother, and stared into the dark until the wounds healed and my mind fractured.

I’m familiar with loss and grief, hatred and rage, but there’s always been hope.

Not now.

A buzzing layers over my senses. Through it, I barely register the creatures arguing amongst themselves. I barely notice Apollo openly weeping, saying his sister Artemis’ name over and over, a chant mixed with utter desperation. He can’t see her again, not now that he’s exiled, and she remains in Zeus’ court. Aphrodite keeps close to her husband Hephaestus’ side, too pale with eyes void of anything but tears.

Dionysus. Where’s Dionysus?

I open my mouth, voice squeaking out his name. The growing arguments drown me out. Panic squeezes my throat. My skin goes clammy, then numb. Thanatos, as if from eons away, says my name.

Staggering, I head toward Aphrodite, hearing myself ask where Dionysus is with a croaking voice.

She lifts a hand to her throat, clawing at the skin there. “He was inside the temple, heading toward Hera when…” She stops, tears dripping from her quivering chin. “When Zeus came.”

My body locks, frozen in place. The buzzing settles into my bones, becoming a jittery sort of energy. I’m through the dunes in an instant, toeing the edge of town before I can blink tears away. Then I’m in front of the temple, climbing over the debris surrounding it, and kneeling in the ruins.

I watch from far away as my hands dig through piles of stone until they hit dirt. Fingernails break, then lift, then tear free. Blood stains the ash-streaked stone.

One of Bion’s murals, the beady eye of a vermilion octopus, stares up at me. The rest of its body lays in shards nearby, and its tentacles are long gone among the destruction. Was it only yesterday this mural stood whole? Only hours ago?

“Dionysus!” I scream.

A long, silent minute.

No answer.

The first sob rattles in my chest. The second breaks free. The third wails, torn from my heaving lungs.

Someone stops beside me, prying my bleeding hands from the ruins. He pants, breaths warm against the side of my face, and leans closer. Even panicked, I know the shape of his body next to mine.

“He’s immortal. He’s okay,” Thanatos says. “We just have to find him.”

I could cry from the waver in his voice if I wasn’t already sobbing. I stifle my sobs by biting into my clenched fist, forcing out a response. “He ran toward Hera. Zeus might have…”

He passes trembling hands over my brow, swiping away clumps of sweat-soaked hair. “I would’ve known if he died.” His voice cracks, laced with uncertainty.

I lean into him, biting my tongue until blood fills my mouth. Anything to stop grief from overwhelming me. Why didn’t I think of Dionysus sooner? He’s my friend—a friend I failed.

“Chloe,” Thanatos says. “Do you hear that?”

Pressing a hand over my mouth, I muffle my cries. The lapping of sea against shore, the distant cry of gulls, a bleating goat, then—

A weak call, but a voice I know.