Page 7 of Shadow Fall: Part Two

"He's got Verena," I breathed, cold spreading through my whole body; not cool numbness, but deep, icy rage.

I stopped in the middle of the crowd, and pushed through the nausea of grasping my magic, summoning a storm of shadows. I'd never overpowered him before, but I didn't need to win in a fight. He wanted my magic, wanted another swath of shadow for his collection. All I had to do was lure him away from Verena.

Haley grabbed me when I faced the chasm where the titan’s voice had echoed, her hand fierce on my wrist.

"Same plan as Olympus," I told her, even my voice cold. "I'll bait him, then you all hit him with everything you've got. Don't split up—that's where we went wrong last time."

"No," she argued, guttural with fear.

I paused only long enough to kiss her temple before pushing through the crowd. She followed, fingers locked around my wrist even as shadows poured from me.

Someone shoved at me in a desperate attempt to reach the exit; I glared at them—and my attention snagged on Apollo over their shoulder. We'd had gods on our side last time, too, but another couldn't hurt.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Apollo!" When he appeared in front of me in a flash of golden light, I flinched back but forced my voice steady. "Are there other gods held here? Can you rally them?"

He straightened. "Why?"

"He's got your daughter, dickwad," Haley spat, panic making her sharper, crueller. "So gather every ally you can find, and force them to fight for us. Or she'll die."

She really would. Fuck. We hadn't known Verena long, but from the moment we spoke to her in Aphrodite's cells, a bond formed. We were the same—hurting and lost but defiant in the face of it all. She fit in like there'd always been a place for her, and her potential absence gnawed at me like an open wound.

Cronus didn't get to hurt her. She didn't deserve that; she didn't deserve any of this.

"We should have left her at home," Harvey hissed, right behind us as Haley and I shoved our way back to the chasm and the shattered prison. "So fucking stupid!"

"We'll get her," I promised him, my voice as cold as my emotions. Wrath burned like a glacier, and I dove through it into my magic, gathering every shadow—the pieces of me and the parts tainted by the titan. I'd use all of it against him, no matter how sick the idea made me.

He took Verena. He didn't get to live.

I lifted a hand and parted the frantic crowd around us with a veil of shadow, ignoring their cries and shouts as my gaze snapped to the six-foot-tall, dark haired man standing by the edge of the chasm. So he'd donned his mortal guise today. It didn't make him any less deadly, didn't hide the monster within. This was the face he wore when he tortured me.

Verena was trapped against his body, a blade of shadow at her throat.

My rage stuttered and then exploded. I speared my magic at the darkness in that blade, and my heart skipped at the noxious mix of my power and his cruelty, the magic slimy in my grasp. Sickness roiled in my stomach, fear battling with my fury and beginning to win, but I crushed the shadow knife from existence and stared at the titan, my abuser.

Enough. He'd hurt enough of my family. He'd hurt me enough.

"It's my shadows you want," I told him, flat and frozen. "You don't want Verena."

I prised Haley’s fingers from my wrist and threw my arms up, allowing the storm inside me free reign. Darkness erupted, as black and endless as a void, as true as night. This was Erebus's darkness—the first shadow. Would my ancestor hate me for this, or would he understand?

"So take them."

"You're right," the titan agreed mildly, his hideous voice coming from his lips for once and not slicing through my head.

My family froze on either side of me, magic and panic trembling from all of us.

"I don't want the child."

I drove my shadow storm at the titan, but he moved impossibly fast, his tanned hands slamming into Verena's shoulders, twisting her, pushing her.

I rushed forward with a cry, but he pushed Verena so hard that she tipped backwards before any of us could reach her.

She screamed as she fell into the chasm.

CHAPTER THREE

HALWEN

---