Page 78 of Invoking Ruin

His smile is black as I drive the blade through his neck, cleaving his head from his shoulders.

The god of blame shudders, his body breaking apart into nothing but ash, sparking as it catches on the air. The sparks fade. The Void, with nothing to feed on, inhales. Then, with a shattering boom, explodes outward.

One second, I’m watching Momus’ body break down. The next, I’m blinking up at clear sky.

Until Eris steps into view, peering down at me like a child studying an insect.

“What the fuck just happened?”

Chapter eighteen

Dionysus

While our arrival was unceremonious, what with Eris dragging her own daughter in chains and forcing her to kneel with arms cuffed behind her back, Olympus looks much as it ever did. With the same bright marble and tall, fluted columns the Hall itself is just the same, lined with marble thrones, each with a sigil for the god it belongs to. The only changes are the occupants of those thrones.

Hera’s and Zeus’ seats are no longer at the head of the great hall, but Apollo’s and Eris’.

There are fewer gods in attendance, too. Those who remain show signs of aging, strange and unsettling on once-immortal faces I’d come to know. Even my brother, Hermes, the first to greet me upon my inauspicious return, has glints of silver in his honey hair.

What hasn’t changed is how much I hate it here in the great hall. The marble walls are too high, the air too close. Chatter from my fellow gods sets my teeth on edge. It’s all formal, sterile. There’s none of the wild vitality I find amongst mortals.

More points in Atê’s column. She just had to be exactly right, didn’t she?

I hate it all.

Or perhaps it’s just the sight of the goddess in the center of the hall, facing trial for her actions, that I hate so much.

I shouldn’t feel sorry for her.

She’s made her own bed, handing over the blade to Nyx. Choosing the one outcome everyone was trying to prevent. I should be furious, and I am.

Really, I am.

If she’d let me take the knife when I offered, this never would have happened. If she’d been more careful with where she placed it. If she’d never taken it to begin with.

Atê is the architect of her own destruction. No one can argue against that, certainly not me.

But the rage and blame I keep reaching for isn’t wholly there.

She’d handed over the knife to save me. Hadn’t hesitated to put herself between me and certain death. And for the weakness of loving me, she’s been brought low.

A spectacle, like barbarian kings brought before a Roman Triumph.

Will they kill her to satisfy their need for vengeance?

I’ll rip them to pieces if they try.

My precious family mills around, buzzing like a disturbed hive of hornets, growing angrier and angrier as gods wheel in more and more of Atê’s stolen trove on golden carts Hephaestus must have crafted. The only thing missing is the bronze chariot and the chest she’d kept within it. An oversight, as some of Atê’s most precious treasures are inside that chest. I’m in no hurry to point it out.

After Nemesis and Eris saw the destruction wreaked in the pavilion, they’d wasted no time restraining Atê and dragging her to Olympus. My—no, the—usually talkative goddess hasn’t said a word since, bearing the ignominious treatment like a stoic.

I experienced the opposite reception. They’ve all been treating me like a long-lost puppy finally come home. I’m back in my usual chair, and every few minutes, one of them comes over to greet me, to tell me how much they’d missed me.

It all reeks of falseness. I’m sure some of them did miss me, but that’s not why they’re here. They’re here to throw jeers at Atê, treating this like some sort of spectator sport.

A terrible waste of time. Nyx is out there with the knife, but instead of searching for her, they demand their bloodletting.

“So do you regret it?”

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