Page 106 of Shattered & Returned

Zeus refilled my empty cup, steam curling like deceit. “Must we quarrel over women, however lovely?”

I crushed the porcelain teacup in my grip. “Where are the Moirai?”

His fucking sigh was all the answer I needed.

The realization struck like a blow to my head: there were no terms. Just a ploy to draw me away from the academy.

Ice spiderwebbed through my veins. My shadows twisted like hanged men as the truth opened my chest. I’d been played. Thecup’s remnants clattered to the floor. For the first time in eons, I, the god of death, knew the greatest fear, the loss of the only thing that mattered to me.

The hunters were gunning for Bloom while I was having fucking tea with my two-faced brother.

I kicked the table at Zeus, sending his fucking tea set toward his face. He snapped his fingers and summoned his shield, the table and teapot crashing against the wall behind him.

“The Moirai aren’t fucking coming, are they?” I growled.

“Afraid not, Uncle.”

Ares emerged from behind an ice column, armored in war itself. His crimson armor plates breathed like a living battlefield, engravings writhing with massacre. The plume of his helmet licked the air like fire. In his grip was a spear still wet with the blood of ages.

“Your charm offended them,” he said, grinning.

I bared my teeth. “Fuck the sisters. Fuck all of you.

Ares chuckled. “Declined.”

Chapter

Thirty-Four

Ravencrux

War of the Gods

“You fuckers tricked me again!” I roared. “Just like when I drew the short stick and ended up with the Underworld.”

“Will you ever stop playing the victim?” Zeus snorted, his face twisting in mock distress.

I didn’t waste another breath on him. He’d lured me here, away from my mate, leaving her exposed to the hunters.

I turned to leave, but Ares and a squadron of armored guards blocked my path. They formed a semicircle of gleaming metal and divine arrogance, each one handpicked for crushing defiant gods.

“Rude to leave so soon, Uncle,”Ares drawled, spinning his bloodstained spear in a lazy threat. “I insist we have tea and talk like a civilized family.”

“Quit playing alpha male, pup,” I said. “Poseidon might fall in line and think you’re cute, but you only bore me.” Ares’s face darkened with fury, but he wasn’t worth my attention. I turned back to Zeus. “I should’ve let Cronus devour you. Then your whole wretched brood would’ve never existed.”

I struck first. My shadows lashed out like serpents of living darkness, swift and merciless.

The throne room erupted. Zeus’s lightning clashed against my shadows in a thunderous detonation, the shockwave shattering every window in the palace. The Atlantean architecture trembled. Walls of enchanted ice fractured and reformed in a relentless cycle, struggling to withstand the force of our warring powers.

Ares closed in on me, war given flesh, a blade without restraint.

Once, no god could rival me. That was why Zeus and the Moirai had targeted my mate. Now, my power was a ghost of what it had been. My army remained trapped in the Underworld. My forces, reduced to three.

Dante burst in from the courtyard, twin axes slick with the ichor of fallen guards. Hellfire wreathed the blades, their smoky trails curling in the air. Orren struck from behind, a hellhound of nightmares—three jaws snapping, venom dripping, tail lashing hellfire hot enough to scar even the divine.

At the room’s heart, lightning and shadow collided again, a maelstrom of opposing forces. Where they met, reality fractured, flickering with glimpses of the void between worlds. Zeus fought at full strength; I did not. But wrath and centuries of battle experience nearly bridged the gap. The King of Gods had spent eons lounging on his throne, commanding others to fight hiswars. He had never faced something as feral as what I had become since the fall of Cronus.

Zeus hurled a bolt that could have vaporized a mountain. I coiled my shadows around myself, absorbing the impact, though the force still rattled my bones.

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