Like clockwork, I was back to the first place I’d ever heard about Caesar. The dockyard was silent, leary, dark and heavy with shadows that clung to nearly everything. Grimy ocean water washed onto broken asphalt. Human waste and the occasional dead body bumped against the sandbags someone had put up to stop the onslaught of water from gushing deeper into the yard. Old bells tolled as ships rocked on the choppy black waves, lined with snow and sheets of ice. I smelt something rotten in the water, something sickly, as if it was Lower Olympus’ biggest open wound. A water treatment facility wasn’t far from here, still churning and gurgling and pumping black smoke into the sky. Everything here felt greasier, older—reeked more. The industrial zone of Lower Olypus barely existed.
And for some reason, according to what Ava had been able to find out, he was here—waiting.
Hovering high above all of it, Rhea and I, arms folded, scanned the ground below. Distant gunshots popped and echoed through Lower Olympus and her streets. Yelling. Growling. A roar so terribly loud it made me look over my shoulder tore through the night. I guess the party’s already started. Long live the fucking rebellion. I turned back to look at the ground, the warehouses, the towers of shipping containers and the ships. Empty train yard. Empty watch towers. The last time I’d been here, people were still working. Not anymore. Cranes had started rusting. Equipment had been left behind to rot into bits and pieces of brown metal. All I can see down there are shadows, dead fish, and homeless people. Nothing screamed Caesar. Nothing screamed of a man that conquered.
“He hides from us,” Rhea said quietly, unfolding her arms. “Unless the girl you trust has lied.”
“It’s crossed my mind,” I muttered. “But she wouldn’t. She’s got everything to gain from us winning this fight tonight, and I don’t think she’s willing to take a gamble on Caesar taking us out right alongside him just so she can have everything for herself. She’s stupid, she’s ambitious, but she’s also not dumb enough to think that.”
Rhea glanced at me, her golden eyes piercing. “You seem changed. More sure of yourself.”
I chewed the edge of my tongue and kept my eyes on the ground. “I’m tired. I saw you all die a hundred times over in the handful of times I fell asleep since them. And yet here you are, half-dead. Barely yourself. You’re one of my biggest fuck ups because I didn’t hit hard enough or fly fast enough when it mattered. There’s a lot of stuff I need to fix, and I can’t doubt myself anymore. If I’m going to murder someone, I’m not going to think twice about it or weigh my options. I’ll do it.” I looked at her. “But only if I know for sure that I have to. Superheroes in this world have a rule a lot of the time, and that’s not to kill. But I’m really not fully human, so I guess it also—”
“It still partially applies,” Rhea muttered. “You’re half-human, half-Arkathian. Whatever the case, your heart is softer than mine by tenfold, no matter what you tell yourself. You’ll always have your humanity. Cherish it, and don’t let our teachings tell you otherwise. This planet is…peaceful. More quiet. Here, I’m not a slave. Here, my family’s bloodline isn’t forsaken…well, I suppose it is, but nobody has to exactly know who my father was, either.” Rhea’s short hair danced in the wind as she opened her palm, letting snow drift onto her fingers. “There’s so much bloodshed where we’re from, and compared to Earth, our world is a hellscape. I hate that I’ve almost grown fond of it, but the humans don’t know war—their skirmishes would be forgotten in a heartbeat if they fought the Empire.”
“Tonight’s not the night,” I said. She turned her hand and let the snow fall. “Caesar’s the focus.”
“You know as well as I do that they’re coming,” Rhea said. “You can feel it, can’t you, under your skin? Down your spine?” She glanced toward the sky, her nose twitching and eyes narrowing. “Soon, cousin. Very soon.”
“Before we fight any battles from above, there’s one we must focus on below,” Thalia said. For whatever reason, she was the only one of us who couldn’t fly. But a lot like me, her people had been taken and bred mostly because they were genetically…how do I put this? Accepted. Not welcomed, but accepted. She had our strength, more than our agility. Good with weaponry neither Rhea and I could probably use combined, but she was trained for hunting, scouting, looking for prey that would hide on planets, thinking they could get away from the scanning eyes that would skim above their homes. Right now, she was crouched atop a looming crane, wearing nothing except baggy trousers and barely a t-shirt. Her eyes glimmered as she scanned down below. “But there’s nothing I can find. Not a trace of anything more than human. I think Rhea might be right—that ally of yours lied to us.”
“Patience,” a deeper voice said, carried by the wind. Andreas. “He wants us to react foolishly.”
“Sometimes being a little stupid works,” I muttered. For now, it was only us four. Icarus and Aster, according to Andreas, weren’t physically strong enough to fight yet. They were alive, or at least as alive as they could be with Frankie playing Frankenstein with their bodies. These guys didn’t have time on their hands. And I didn’t really want them here in the first place. Call it fear. Call it whatever you want. At the end of the day, I’d let these guys die, and every word they spat at me had an edge to it. I didn’t know if they were helping because they wanted to, or because they had to. Whatever the case, I needed Lower Olympus, the entire city—the world—to know that there were more of us, and they were on humanity’s side. Cassie’s just gonna have to deal with it, too.
Rhea glanced at me. “You’re thinking of provoking him somehow?”
“I’m thinking we make this a spectacle. I don’t just want him dead—I want him humiliated.”
Thalia chuckled under her breath. “It’s not quite the honorary Arkathian way.”
“The part where we rip him into slabs of meat very much will be,” I said. “Let’s stop wasting time trying to sneak up on him. Ava’s given me stronghold locations. Ten minutes. We hit them. Tear ‘em down. Rip ‘em apart. Make sure the only thing standing is the foundation. Don’t hold back and don’t fucking hesitate. I wouldn’t ask you guys this on any other night, but I need you to be as Arkathian as possible. But don’t kill. I want hostages and I want them alive, preferably in one solid piece, too. Hit as many warehouses, banks, strongholds, anything that he owns as hard as you can, then come back here after ten minutes. If shit hits the fan, call for help. Nobody’s watching our backs except each other.” I glanced at Rhea, because this would usually be the part where she told me to stop trying to make myself their leader or whatever. Instead, she was nodding, then turned her head to look over at me.
And she was smiling wolfishly, the glint of her teeth caught in the moonlight. “Let’s make him pay.”
“This is reckless,” Andreas muttered. “A man like Caesar won’t take this so lightly.”
“Good,” I said quietly. “I want him pissed off, because it might actually be a fair fight if he’s angry.”
Because this was going to be a slaughter, and the city was gonna watch it.
The others left—I started with the dockyard. I swept through alleyways of towering steel containers, some so tall they felt like giants looming over me, casting me in eternally dark shadows. I’d pause, hover, listen, wait, then keep going, because I had a feeling in my gut, an itch crawling underneath my skin, telling me he was watching. He wanted this to be between us. You think I sent away the others just so we could get his attention? No, that wasn’t my plan at all. Caesar was proud, powerful—the kind of person who’d want me dead by his hands, his way, and nobody else there to interfere. He’d run away for so long, he’d hidden and ducked and used people to get to me instead of actually trying to kill me, that I knew in my heart it was wearing him down. Grinding down his patience, because someone else was giving him orders, telling him how to work, how to act—someone’s little dog.
Ava had said that to me once, and it almost felt like years ago now—but it was true, wasn’t it?
Taking the knee, biting your tongue, swallowing what you’ve got to say—people in this city weren’t wired to work with people that stepped down on their throats and made them keep quiet. I liked to think it was just how we were bred in New Olympus, to be a little more on edge, a little more rebellious. Fuck me, I knew what I was capable of doing, and Caesar knew that too, and he still wanted to fight me. Maybe it was hate, maybe, like a lot of people this year, he just wanted me dead and gone. He should’ve tried a lot earlier, I thought, sliding across the concrete and coming to a stop underneath a sole security light. I breathed in, my nose twitching. My breaths came out hot as I quietly sighed through my pressed lips, curling like smoke into the snow-filled sky. I rolled my shoulders and massaged the back of my neck, shutting my eyes. Because now he thinks he’s remotely got a chance.
Tonight wasn’t a fight. Tonight was a declaration. Rebellion. He’d had enough of listening to Cassie’s orders.
Caesar wanted something of his own, to show her, Lower Olympus isn’t yours, and you won’t control me.
He wanted to be the next biggest name the people of this city would whisper right alongside Titan, and if you told me that a few weeks ago, my blood would’ve cooled underneath my skin to a bitter chill. But now?
Now, I folded my arms, opened my eyes, and said, “I can smell you, Wraith. Stop hiding.”
For a second, nothing happened. The dockyard remained deathly silent. Then the shadows rippled to my right, and out came a thin, pasty outline of what might be a human without a single ounce of meat on his skeleton. Wraith skulked out of the dark, stopping in the light’s pale white corona. He looked at me through his greasy black hair, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks ghastly in the dimly lit night. But there was no…feeling to him. Nothing that screamed of the boy who’d been a pain for me just a few months ago. He stood still, frozen in place, hair swaying in the wind and his mouth slightly slack, revealing his swollen black gums. I turned to look at him, unfolding my arms and walking closer and closer until we were just a few feet apart. I looked him over, then saw the sigil on his neck.
Cadaver had that same symbol burned into the meat of his flesh dozens of times over, and out of all the people I hated most, he was cresting the top three. Wraith, though, only had the one. Then he lifted his eyes to me. Tendrils of vile, hot, foul-smelling breaths poured through the gaps in his rotting teeth, then his fingers twitched.
The same split-second a length of shadows shot toward me, I planted my fist into his face, crushing the side of his jaw into meaty red bloody oblivion and throwing him into a thick blanket of shadows behind him. I shot into the air. Spun in a circle, panting and heartbeat racing. Where the hell did you go now? I shot through the dockyard, skimming over frothing puddles of shadows and darkness that festered with the same, Kaiju-smelling stench that filled my throat with bile. I was holding onto my electricity, using my flight and nothing more, leaving my body so hot that flakes of snow steamed and hissed and evaporated as soon as they fell against my shoulders and back. By the time I stopped, a veil of steam clung to my costume and poured onto the ground like a sheet of clinging souls.
Because, for whatever reason, the voices in my head were deathly silent now. Completely silent.
For the first time since I almost died in that hellish underground hospital, my head was clear.
Every sound, every movement, every inkling of noise was acute, defined, so sharp I could pinpoint it in a heartbeat. My ears twitched as I hovered in the air, forcing myself to calm my heartbeat and my erratic breathing.
He’s playing a game with me, I thought. He wants me on edge. He wants me thinking I’m afraid.
I smashed into the concrete, cratering the asphalt of the dockyard with a dull crackle of stone. Still crouched, I slammed my palms together so hard a gust of wind erupted from my hands, a shockwave of vicious air that punched into the towering shipping containers and sent them collapsing and crashing into the ground. There. Wraith flew through the air, windmilling wildly. I shot toward him. A tendril of darkness followed after me. I spun around and watched, inches away from my face, as it skimmed through the air and sliced open my costume from gut to shoulder. It grabbed hold of Wraith and swallowed him whole. A thrill of ice ran down my spine the next instant. I spun once more, still in hovering, swore, and skimmed through the air, dodging and weaving as spears of shadows followed me like hounds in a slaughterhouse. Then pain, searingly hot, terribly bright, shot through my ankle and up my leg. I screamed and bared my teeth. One of the tendrils had me by the ankle, simmering and writhing and so impossibly cold it felt searingly hot against my skin. It tensed, then threw me back into the crater I just created.
I shook my head, hair in my face, grit lining my teeth, and without getting up, sent a shockwave of golden light through my body, banishing the shadows looming over me. I panted and spat, knuckling the saliva off my chin as I got onto my feet. Soot was smeared on the stone around me, some of it melted into hissing and spitting puddles of pulpy concrete. The wind bathed me in icy gusts, sweeping away the smoke coming off the asphalt.
I glanced at my costume, at the lashes and the cuts that had gotten to my skin. No wounds.
But my flesh was pink, some of it angry and red, almost bleeding.
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He’s been doing his homework, I thought, squinting at a cut across my forearm. Speckles of gold on my skin that I couldn’t do anything about except brush off. I looked around and swallowed, then smiled to myself.
“This is how you’re gonna do it?” I asked, spreading my arms. “Tire me out? Fight me weak?”
Nobody answered. My voice echoed.
“You’re no king,” I said, walking out of the crater. “You’re a coward. A dead man walking. You better kill me and rip the heart right out of my chest if you even think you’ve got a shot.” I flew onto an upturned piece of heavy machinery, balancing on its edge. “Because if you keep giving me breaks like this, all you’re doing is pissing me off and wasting my time. And trust me, the last thing you want to do is give me a sec to cash my breath.”
The snow stopped falling, the wind stopped blowing, and the world seemed to freeze in an instant. My brows furrowed as I looked around. Flakes of snow hung suspended in the air, spiraling but not falling. Sounds dulled, became blunt. Everything felt…off. Oily. Vile against the fleshy wounds not protected under my costume.
“I thought,” a voice said, cutting through the silence, “that the future would have killed you.”
I shut my eyes and quietly swore. I glanced over my shoulder. “I’m pretty hard to kill.”
Thirteen sat on the edge of a container, legs dangling off the side of the towering pile, his tie snapping in the wind over his shoulder as he adjusted his dark sunglasses. Overseer Two said he handled him. What the fuck has he been doing out all this time? I hovered and backed away, just enough to give myself some room. I knew what he was capable of, I knew what he could do without a moment of hesitation. But I couldn’t help but wonder how Caesar had even got his hands on him in the first place. He didn’t have the mark Wraith had on his body. What he had was a presence to him, a coldness that surrounded his body that made my blood run cold. I flexed my fingers, letting a spark of golden electricity jump from my index to my thumb. The light glinted off his sunglasses as he looked me up and down, then slowly stood up, teetering on the edge of the containers, feet halfway off the metal.
Behind me, the shadows poured Wraith onto the concrete, sticking to him like liquified flesh still clinging to his bony skeleton. He stared at me, a cadaver with barely a heartbeat and nothing in the way of normal breaths.
“This is the best he could do?” I asked, looking back at Thirteen. “I’m kinda underwhelmed.”
“Oh, there’s more. A lot more.” He slid his hands into his pockets. “But he’d like to see you first.”
The air underneath me broke apart, but I had Thirteen’s throat in my hand before he could even think about taking me anywhere. Saliva and surprise shot out of his mouth like a gasp. I squeezed, digging my fingers into his throat until veins bulged and the chaotic beat of his heart fought hard against my fingertips. Then I threw him. Hard. Wraith vanishes. Thirteen slammed into the ground. I followed him down, landing on his chest with my feet.
Or I would have, if he’d been there in the first place.
I dodged backward and flipped into a crouch as slabs of concrete flew past me. They stopped, hanging suspended, then came hurtling back at me. I lunged for them and slammed my fists through each of them, showering myself in choking dust that— Fuck! They superheated in a split second, glowing blindingly white hot, sucking the air out of my lungs, then exploding in a ferocious fist of energy that threw me through one, two, three containers before I slammed into a crane that buckled, weakened, then collapsed halfway into the choppy ocean waves. My head rang. I shook it and groaned. Couldn’t hear anything. Blurry vision. I stood wobbled, and fell against a yellow support beam. Blood trickling down my neck, coming from my ears. I cupped them and shut my eyes, forcing—
A shadow blotted out the moon. I looked up. A container slammed down on me like a sledgehammer. Darkness. Dust. Come on, Ry. They’re doing this on purpose. He’s wasting your time. I dragged my forearm closer to me and rested my head on my arm, stuck underneath the unbearable weight that pressed harder and harder against me. I groaned with pain as the asphalt cracked and the container collapsed in on itself, the psychic energy rippling through the metal, the concrete, my entire body, felt like a constantly building pressure that made my head whine and whine and the blood roaring past my ears rage louder and louder until I screamed and scrambled and stopped.
I caved into the weight and let my body go limp, my skull pressing against the stone.
Then the weight stopped. I shut my eyes, breathed through my mouth, and lay still. I was already bleeding and cut open. My ears were fucked. My balance was out of the question until I could heal. Ambrosia in your blood and now that’s gonna take a while. The container stayed put above me for a handful of seconds. I let my heartbeat slow down until it was rhythmic, pulsing, a thud against my chest instead of a bang. The dirt underneath me felt like sandpaper against my cuts and bruises. Then, at once, the container vanished, like it was never there in the first place. I felt the shadows pour into the crater, slithering down the sides and snapping, touching, feeling my body. I tried not to move. Kept myself still as their poisonously cold ends singed my skin as they slithered over me and pulled me out of the depression Thirteen had used me to make. They left me in the air, arms raised, hair loose, blood trickling out of my mouth and nose and smeared my golden lightning bolt. At least, that’s the image I had in me.
“All that talk of her getting stronger,” Thirteen muttered, “and she’s still so insistent on her own strength and nothing more.” Silence, the sound of crunching gravel, then: “Caesar was right: too many fights in too little time. Everybody, even things like her, wear down eventually. Let’s depart before the others of her kind arrive.”
Nothing happened.
Thirteen’s voice pitched slightly into annoyance. “I gave you an order.” Again, nothing happened. The tendrils wove themselves a little looser around my wrists and waist and legs, enough for me not to cringe in pain. “You are a subject of the House of One and I demand that you follow the orders given to you by your Master.”
Oh, sweet, sweet, child, a voice said in my head. And then, right then, my eyes nearly flew open. I had to stop myself from smiling, from having my head snap upward so I could search for her voice. And from the sudden spike in his heartbeat, I’m guessing that Thirteen just heard her, too. He does not listen to his Master because his Master is very thoroughly, and very surely, in the midst of someone he has run away from for so, so very long.
I allowed my eyes to open, just enough to see Thirteen nearly slip as his foot grazed the edge of the crater. His head snapped around, the snow now falling and the wind now bitterly cold. “Impossible. Caesar killed you.”
A man, kill me? There, behind him, stood a woman drenched in a scarlet dress that poured down her body and pooled around her legs. Thirteen’s breath hitched in his throat. His heartbeat stuttered and sweat dampened his collar. He backed away, nearly tripping over his own feet as he flung his hand at her and threw dozens of containers in a hail of shrieking, crumpled metal faster than any baseball. She barely lifted her hand to pause them in the air. She barely moved as they dissolved, warped, and turned into an obelisk of a dead man with no head—Hekka. But no, that wasn’t right. His head was there, she’d just made sure Thirteen was holding it. That, darling, is impossible.
The sound of silence hollowed the world for a handful of breathless seconds. Thirteen stared at the bust of his father’s head, hands shaking, brows climbing his forehead as his sunglasses fell from his face and clattered onto the ground. Witchling stared at him, not smiling, not moving—letting him see the fleshy, grotesque stump of a neck she had filled with blood that spat on his white shirt and dribbled onto the ground, splattering onto his dull shoes.
Cracks in the fabric of the air itself began appearing around him, like mirrors were shattering soundlessly through time and space. My heartbeat picked up. Witchling looked at me and smiled. By all means, he’s yours.
The shadowy tendrils loosened. Thirteen’s head snapped to look into the air at me.
By the time he did that, though, I’d put his nose, his jaw, and most of his skull into the back of his head. Blood gushed onto my face as we slammed into the ground. I straddled his chest and brought my fists down like jackhammers, again and again. His hands grasped at the air. Stones pinged off my skin in wild, stinging attacks.
I cupped my hands together, threaded my fingers, bared my teeth and brought them down hard.
His body jerked once when I slammed his face into the asphalt, nearly making them one.
Then he stopped moving, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I raised my hand to his heart and—
Witchling snapped her fingers, and his body vanished. I was suddenly on the ground, surrounded by blood and pulpy gore and sheets of blood interrupted by dashes of snow. I was panting hard, my chest aching. I looked at her and was in her face in two seconds, the gust of wind that followed me strong enough to make her red hair snap.
“Where,” I growled, “did you fucking take him? He’s a threat. This needed to end today.”
She smiled and brushed her thumb against my cheek, smearing blood on my jaw. Your fight with him is over. He is a threat to nobody but himself. Life is much more useful alive than it is dead. What a waste of a soul if it slips through your grasp. Before I could yell at her, maybe even try to punch her, she said, He is with his father.
I paused, then frowned, dragging my forearm over my mouth to get the bitter taste of blood off my lips. I’d forgotten how bitter and vile it was. It had been a while since I’d nearly killed someone. “Hekka is dead, though.”
No, not quite. Like your father, where they are is much, much worse than any kind of hellscape.
“And where’s that?”
I’ll tell you soon, she said. But first: Caesar. Quite a lot of people want him dead. He stole my book from me, the one you sold your soul for, and with it, your life will only get much harder. Lucas, so ambitious, was his test. He allowed him to read, to understand, to bind himself to this plain of existence until his goal was met.
“Lucas only ever had one goal in his life,” I spat, and literally—brain matter between my teeth. “And that was me dead at his feet. But you’re a little too late, Witchy. I killed the bastard and turned him to a charred head.”
Oh, child. Not him, she said. I speak of Caesar—his goal is much more than just you.
I frowned. “What is it then?”
To change history as we know it, she said. To erase you permanently.
I stared at her, eyes narrowing, as Wraith stood behind us, his mouth slack, his eyes dull, staring into the crater behind me. “You’re gonna have to start explaining this to me, and you better make sense. Two minutes.”
I only need a few seconds, Witchling said. Because it’s quite simple—The Book of Two can do all.
“That thing you fucked me over for?” I asked her. “The one you disappeared with?”
She nodded, her lush hair wild and unruly, like a bouquet of scarlet wildflowers. I knew he longed for it, I knew what he would try to do with it—I wanted the book in my hands to ensure that what he plans doesn’t happen.
“And you never thought to fucking tell me?” I said, jabbing my finger against her chest. “All this time, you kept it to yourself, because, what, you kinda just wanted to? You really just wanted to screw with me so bad?”
Clairvoyance is a blessing and a curse, she said, waving her hand. I am blind to what is in front of me but see clearly what is ahead, and what arrives soon is a path that ultimately, for you, leads to…well, I suppose I can’t quite tell you that right now—too much will change. The night of the bank robbery was just the first of many small meetings. But now it begins, and it begins with Caesar's death, and nobody but you can claim his heart, Rylee.
I hated hearing her say my name, but if she was telling the truth, then…
“Bullshit,” I said, stepping back. “You screwed me over before.”
How? she asked. By giving you another chance at life?
“I wouldn’t have done that in the first place if it wasn’t for you, anyway!”
Rylee, she said flatly, her eternally black eyes chilling. In the past several months since our last encounter, how many times have you come close to death? So close, in fact, it’s almost as if you have cheated the Reaper?
I folded my arms. “Enough times to know that I deserve to be alive.”
You don’t. Not naturally, she said. You met the others—the versions of yourself that survive. You were meant to be amongst the many that do not. But I ensured that you do because, as I said, what comes next requires you and you alone, and by the goddesses themselves, don’t you think you deserve some kind of reparation for all of this sweat, this bloodshed, this constant exhaustion? Doubt me all you like, child, but your story needs to be told, to be heard, to be learnt from—they will never love you, not nearly as much as they ever should, but they will understand you, and they will change. Until then, your fight isn’t over. In fact, up until now, it hasn’t started.
I shut my eyes and massaged my temples, trying to stop the headache. “I’ve done this for years, and—”
Tonight, Witchling said, is the night Olympia will be born, but only if you succeed.
“Thought you could see the future,” I muttered. “Don’t I win this round?”
Witchling smiled, as if someone had taken that hooked blade on her thin belt and slit her face open just enough to peel back the flesh of her lips. A child whose life betrays the story written into the annals of reality itself has no story set in stone once their life ends. That night when you sold your soul, your future was put firmly into your own hands, and even now, I can see so, so many outcomes. Some great. Most tragic. One, however, heroic.
“Yeah, but…” I sighed. “What about the one outcome when things go my way?”
When I’m rested, happy—when I can look Bianca in the eyes again and smile.
That, Witchling said, is the one you have to strive for, and the one I’ll give you.
“Why?” I asked skeptically, stepping back. “You’re a supervillain.”
And the same person who explained to your father his own death.
I blinked. “He knew—”
He knew, she said. He always knew. Witchling squeezed my shoulder. But he also knew that someday, the child he neglected would grow to erase his name from the same fabric of reality she writes her own story into. He hated me for it. Removed me from all official meetings and teams. Made me an outcast. But I knew, and he knew, that the day he fell to his knees, that you were watching, and that his story had ended—it was time for yours.
I shrugged her hand off of me. “I don’t give a fuck about what he knew. He’s dead, that’s that.”
Exactly, she said. So why not make sure the world understands they don’t need him anymore?
“You’ve got it twisted, Witch,” I said, hovering. “I’m not doing this for my dad, to prove to anyone that they need me more than they need some old dead bastard—I’m doing this because my city is falling apart and a guy they put into the dirt ten years ago isn’t going to make sure it gets better. It’s my turn now. Enough Zeus. Olympia. So the next time you try to sell me a fairytale of how you can see the future, of how and why you did everything you needed to do to make it to this point, then remember one thing: I live because I’ll be damned if I die before New Olympus sees a Golden Age again. If my old man was the standard, then that wasn’t the Golden Age. That was the facade. The warm up.” I turned around, ready to fly off, but looked over my shoulder. “I’m getting the book, and I’m keeping it this time, and that means you work for me and on my terms. I don’t want to have to murder you.”
How sure are you that you can? she asked, folding her arms and smiling devilishly. Your father—
“I just told you,” I said. “The new Golden Age is starting now. Nobody talks about the Bronze Age. Nobody talks about the Silver Age. And this time next year, mark my words, they’ll never say his name ever again.”
Witchling’s eyes glimmered with something…hungry, starved. Impossibly famished. You might not remember, but I, as well as others in the Olympiad, watched you grow up. Watched as you wailed in your mother’s arms and watched as you struggled under your father’s glare. And to think, the same little girl became you is…
“What, heartbreaking?” I spread my arms. “Sorry I’m covered in blood, aunt Clementine.”
Witchling slowly shook her head. Amazing, she said. Think my name—my real name—if you need my assistance taking his heart. Otherwise, Rylee, I’m sure you are more than capable. Rebel against fate. Carve your own destiny. And for the love of all that resides within the known and the unknown: make us all bear witness to this new glorious age.
