Page 104 of Shattered & Returned

“Colorful language, Hades,” Zeus said. “But I’d tone it down when the sisters arrive. They aren’t your biggest fans.”

He spoke as if he were on my side. I sneered. The bastard loved playing the fucking noble king of the gods. Hell, he actually believed he was fair and just. Mighty, too.

He gestured for me to follow him into the palace. I gave Dante and Orren a nod, signaling them to guard the door.

The throne room was spectacular, though not as magnificent as the one in the City of the Gods. Columns of ice supported an abyssal ceiling painted with scenes of Atlantean history: their rise, their fall, their eternal watch between worlds. The throne itself was carved from a single massive pearl, glimmering and hypnotic.

I hadn’t set foot in that golden city for an eon. Not since the curse on me and my mate. Now, its wards were woven specifically to keep me out, spells laced with blood magic, too strong to break. The only way in would be for a powerful god to shatter the wards from within, and that would never happen.

Not in a million years.

The Olympians stood united against me, convinced I was the villain while they turned a blind eye to their citizens hunting my mate through her mortal lives. For millennia, it had been their favorite blood sport.

Zeus parked his ass on the throne and gestured for me to take the chair opposite him, a round table between us. As I sat, he poured red tea from a steaming pot into two delicate cups. The gracious host act didn’t fool me. My guard stayed up. Between us, battle could break out at any moment.

“Relax, brother,” he said. “We’re just here to talk. So you found her before anyone else this time.”

For a century, I hadn’t searched for her, hoping the hunters would forget her if I stayed away. Maybe she’d grow old in peace. But they always found her. Even after I slaughtered them by the hundreds, new ones rose, dumping her corpse on my doorstep.

The twelve major gods had never killed her themselves. No, they were too clever for that. They orchestrated it from behind the golden city’s wards, untouchable, laughing where I couldn’t hunt them down.

Hatred for all the Olympians festered in me, but Zeus, Poseidon, and the Moirai? For them, I reserved something far worse.

“Yeah, I found my queen,” I said. “Call off your dogs, or I’ll bring your world down around you.”

Zeus laughed into his tea. “You can’t touch me. How long have you tried? I almost pity you. Nothing you do works. Never has.” He set the cup down with a clink. “But as your big brother, I’ll offer some free advice. This mortal shell of hers—Bloom, is it?—is already broken. They say she’s sick, weak, her mind broken. She won’t pass the trial.”

“What trial?”

Zeus took another sip of tea.“The eleven major gods voted. A mandatory trial at Forsaken Academy for all first-years.”

I saw red.“The fuck you mean,myschool? There’ll be no trial, no bloodsport under my roof.”

“Huh.”He smirked.“We agreed to stay out of your academy on one condition. One event. A trial in your arena, where we can watch the descendants prove themselves.”

“She’s not a fucking descendant!”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, exasperated. “She won’t survive. And if she dies before her twentieth birthday this time, she won’t return. This is the end. No rebirth. No more second chance. Only the void. Eternal stasis.”

Long ago, one of the Moirai had prophesied an endgame between the second era and the third—this era. Even the Fates had grown weary of the cycle. One of them delivered the final warning, and the outcome did not favor my queen. Or me.

My heart burned. Rage boiled my blood.

“Have you ever considered your own role in this?” Zeus sighed. “It’s your fault, isn’t it? You began it all the day you stole Persephone, the purest maiden. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t wronged her and Demeter.”

I couldn’t deny his accusation, even if I wanted to.

Before Persephone, I had been a bad, brutal man. I didn’t know love—only possession. So I seduced her. Stole her. Tore her from her sunlit life. When she begged to return, I tried to break her. To force her to stay, to be mine. I had warped her fate, yet I could never bring myself to let her go. The thought of her vanishing from my existence was unthinkable.

Zeus narrowed his eyes on me as if I was a very twisted man. Maybe I was.

“Your obsession is poison, brother,” he said, shaking his head. “No one clings to the same woman for eons, especially not after she has become mortal. Fragile. Flawed. Finite. And yet, in every lifetime, you still hunger for her.”

He wasn’t wrong. I would always crave her. And in this life, the hunger was worse than ever.

“It’s not an obsession,” I snarled. “It’s a primal need, like the air in my lungs and the oxygen in my blood.”

My existence had been nothing but the weight of the dead, the endless dark of the underworld, until her. She was light. Life. The only thing that made eternity bearable.

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