Page 177 of Blood of Olympus

My brows twitched. I guess I didn’t want to be proven right. I didn’t want him to have to face this yet.

Mmm, she rumbled, her sentence cut off by the quick snapping of her head to our right. She sent me the foreboding image of darkness on the horizon. Darkness that seemed to ooze from the ground itself. In one giant leap and a few cracking snaps of her wings, we were airborne, soaring over our patchwork army.

They had come. Every single one of the pledged kingdoms had sent warriors, if not members of their ruling families. Legions from Lunaris, Caldris, Cytheros, Meloidia, and a handful from Kardia led by the young Queen Isadora, smattered the ground in various hues, distorted by the colours Velira was able to see. They cheered as she flew over them — a symbol of freedom high in the skies, unrestrained by the burdens of gravity — and the only challenge posed to Kronos’ nightmarish mount.

They cheered until she roared across the sky, alerting them of our incoming foes — our incoming fates.

Caelus? They’re here.

We’re ready. I’ll see you after?

A panic-filled breath seized in my throat. After. Here, in Theris… or on the Isle. It should have calmed me, filled me with some small measure of peace, that whatever fate either one of us faced today, the other was assured to follow.

But it didn’t.

Because Hyperion had already bested me once before.

Kronos had taken Charon without breaking a sweat.

And both of them together? Likely with the aid of other escapists from the abyss?

I feared we were doomed before the battle could even begin — but to step aside and let him claim each realm for his own, let him destroy each of them because they didn’t fit with his oppressive narrative, was a coward’s game.

And I was no coward.

So, I tied Evadne’s symbol, her promise of future peace, across my haunting eyes, and joined Velira in a war-cry. I raised Nightbreaker high in the air, summoned her dual powers of shadow and electricity, and roared.

I raged against oppression.

I screamed against murder.

I cried for all the innocents lost and those still yet to die.

And then, I fell silent. I listened to the chorus of those on the ground — those preparing to wage war against true tyranny — and I let their song fuel me.

Over our dead bodies, we seemed to sing.

For that is what it would cost: the death of every moral man, woman, and child.

But I knew that Kronos would have no qualms about our price.

He would gladly pay it.

I just had to rob him of the means to do so first.

CHAPTER 43

Caelus

“A messenger! A messenger comes!” a scout shouted as he sprinted back to the bulk of our forces. He pulled up short, wary of Lykos’ enormous snow-white paws, removed his helm, tucked it under his arm, and looked up. And up. And up. All the way to where I sat, cinched into the harness atop my giant wolf’s back.

The scout gulped, shielding his eyes from the glare of Helios’ sun at its zenith, and explained. “Two black-shrouded figures are headed this way. They appear to be men, though it’s hard to say from a distance. They also appear unarmed, but⁠—”

“But that means nothing when our foes consist of turncoat Olympians, overzealous Titans, and pets from the abyss,” I finished with a snarl.

The scout nodded with a quick grimace, his gilded armour and arm bands glinting as he moved.

Say what you want about Hermes, but his people are fast. And they’ve got style, I commented, noting the symbol emblazoned across his cuirass in the shape of the thief god’s talaria.