The marble halls of Olympus had never been so quiet.

  I followed Father—Hermes—down the corridor, barefoot, silent. He didn’t know I was there. He’d moved too fast, his mind too full of noise. I hadn’t meant to follow. But I could feel it: something was wrong. The gods were tense. Their thoughts were sharp-edged and afraid. I’d been trying to stay out of their heads like he asked. But it was hard.

  They were loud.

  He ducked into the high council chamber, and I crept after him, stopping just behind the tall column by the doorway. Their voices rose immediately.

  “Apollo has confirmed the reading,” Athena said. “If thirteen demigods stand united, the gates will open.”

  “That prophecy has plagued us for years,” Hera snapped. “And now there are only twelve alive on Earth. Twelve children raised together.”

  “All the other demigods are dead, Zeus made sure of that after Cole turned them all against us.” Hermes said, but his voice wavered.

  “Cole isn’t dead.”

  It was Hades.

  His voice rolled in like thunder, slow and grave. “One of Thanatos’s children tampered with the boundary. I don’t know how, but Cole’s soul never crossed. He’s alive.”

  Silence.

  And then the shouting started.

  “If he’s alive, then we’ve failed!” Hera said.

  “Not yet,” Athena replied. “There is still time.”

  “Time for what?” Apollo asked quietly.

  “For a thirteenth,” Hera whispered.

  No.

  I leaned forward. My wings trembled.

  “We only need to prevent thirteen,” Athena said calmly. “We reduce the number. We make it impossible.”

  Hermes moved to the center of the room. “You’re talking about killing a child.”

  “A necessary sacrifice,” Hera said.

  “No,” he growled. “Absolutely not.”

  “What about the girl?” Athena asked. “The other daughter of Hermes. She is the oldest of the twelve.”

  Cassie.

  I knew her name. I had seen her once in a mirror. I had watched her play.

  “She’s not involved,” Hermes said quickly. “She’s hidden. Untrained. She poses no threat.”

  “But she exists,” Hera replied.

  They were going to kill her.

  I stepped out from behind the pillar.

  “You can’t.”

  The room froze.

  Six gods turned to face me.

  “You can’t kill her,” I said again, voice shaking. “She’s just a child.”

  “Zoe—” Hermes stepped forward, horrified. “What are you doing here?”

  I ignored him. My eyes were on Athena. “There’s another way.”

  “Zoe,” Hecate, my mother, said softly, appearing beside the others like a shadow. I hadn’t seen her enter.

  “If the prophecy says thirteen demigods,” I said slowly, “then… then what if there are only twelve?”

  Athena narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”

  “I’ll go,” I said. “I’ll take her place. You send me to Earth instead. Bring Cassie here. Keep her safe.”

  “Zoe,” Hermes warned, stepping closer.

  “I’m strong,” I said. “Stronger than her. I can help them. And when I’m old enough, I’ll defeat Cole.”

  Silence fell again.

  “Impossible,” Hera said. “You are a goddess. The prophecy speaks of demigods.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “What if I make myself one?”

  They stared at me.

  “I have power over memories. Over the mind. What if I block my own memories? What if I forget who I am—forget my magic, my life, Olympus? What if I live as they do? Learn as they do?”

  Athena tilted her head. “You’d be helpless.”

  “For a while,” I said. “But when the time comes, I’ll remember.”

  Hermes’s voice cracked. “You would forget me.”

  “I’d rather forget than let you lose another daughter,” I said quietly.

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  Hecate stepped forward, placing a hand on my shoulder.

  “She could do it,” she murmured. “If anyone could.”

  Apollo watched me, eyes unreadable. Athena folded her arms. Hera’s face was still a mask of doubt.

  And Hermes—Hermes looked like he had aged a hundred years in a breath.

  But none of them said no.

  So I knew.

  The choice had already been made.

  And I had made it.

  I face Cole now.

  And I can feel it—every thread of my godly power, alive and awake inside me. It pulses through my veins like it had always been there, just waiting for me to remember. My mind is clearer than it’s ever been. Sharper. Steadier. Fortified and impenetrable. A temple that not even Cole can breach.

  He tries anyway.

  I feel him slam against the walls of my mind, his power crashing like waves against rock. But he can’t find a way in. There’s nothing for him to twist. No cracks. No doors. Just stillness. Just strength.

  Frustrated, he switches tactics. He casts an illusion—his best work, no doubt. Panic in his eyes. A flicker of motion. A blurred shape of himself running away, a false path peeling open like an invitation to follow.

  But I see right through it.

  I don’t flinch. I don’t shout.

  I walk.

  Slow. Steady.

  Toward him.

  Angelina steps in between Cole and me, her stance wide, her eyes burning with the echo of someone else’s will. Her hand lifts, and a wave of disruption crashes into me. For a heartbeat, everything twists—balance, focus, thought. My knees buckle.

  But only for a moment.

  I force myself upright, breath steadying, power thrumming beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. She had caught me off guard, but she wasn’t stronger. Not anymore.

  Still, I didn’t strike.

  I looked at her—really looked. I could feel it. The fracture in her. The uncertainty. The war behind her eyes.

  Cole had been inside her head for ten years. Ten years of manipulation. Ten years of twisting her sense of loyalty, of justice, of duty.

  “Angelina,” I said gently, taking a step forward.

  Another wave of disruption hit me. My body wavered, but I kept moving.

  “I know what he’s done to you. I know how deep he went. But this isn’t you.”

  Tears welled in her eyes, though her jaw stayed tight. Another disruption tore through the air, sharper than the last. My vision blurred. My thoughts spun.

  But I didn’t stop.

  “I understand,” I whispered. “I know what it’s like to feel like you’re the only one holding everything together. To believe the only way to protect people is to hurt someone else first.”

  Angelina shook her head, another blast trembling in her palm. “You don’t—”

  “I do,” I interrupted softly. “Because I watched you. I remember what you were before him. Loyal. Fierce. Kind. You wanted to protect all of us.”

  She tried to speak, but the tears spilled over.

  She launched one final surge of disruption—her whole body behind it. I staggered. My knees touched the ground. Every part of me screamed.

  But I stood.

  And I walked.

  Not with rage. Not with magic. Just with love.

  When I reached her, her hands trembled midair. Her lips quivered.

  Then she sobbed.

  I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into me, holding her like I had known her forever. Her entire body trembled as she sobbed against my shoulder, her power still flickering like a broken signal trying to hold its shape. I didn’t try to stop her tears—I just held her tighter, grounding her, offering every ounce of warmth I had. This wasn’t a victory. This was a rescue. And I was going to carry her through it.

  Only then—only when she broke—did I slip into her mind.

  And I began to unravel everything Cole had done.

  It was like walking through a labyrinth built from pain.

  His influence clung to every corner of her thoughts, woven through years of whispered lies and twisted truths. He’d buried commands inside her memories, wrapped guilt around her joy, planted fear in her sense of loyalty. I could feel how hard she had tried to hold onto herself—and how close she had come to vanishing.

  I moved carefully, gently peeling back the layers. Undoing one knot at a time. I brought up the memory of her laughing by a campfire with Phoenix. I rekindled her first day of training with Peter, the pride in her stance. I held onto those fragile moments of light and let them grow.

  She didn’t resist.

  She wept.

  And I stayed with her, not as a goddess, but as her friend—as her anchor.

  Until the last thread snapped.

  And she was free.

  Angelina blinked rapidly, breath catching as the world realigned around her. I gently stepped back, releasing her.

  She pulled away slowly, like every movement felt foreign, like she was waking from a dream she’d been trapped in too long. Her fingers brushed her chest, her arms, as if relearning what it meant to be in her own skin. Then her eyes found mine—wide and raw and utterly vulnerable. They filled with something like wonder, and a fragile smile broke across her face, trembling at the edges like it wasn’t sure it was allowed to exist.

  A heartbeat later, she collapsed to her knees.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice thin and shaking. Then it broke open—raw and full of anguish. “I’m so sorry. For everything I did. Everything I let him make me do. I hurt people. I hurt all of you. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was strong enough to carry it, but—” Her voice cracked. “He made me believe it was the only way.”

  Tears streaked down her cheeks as her hands curled into the dirt. Her voice cracked with every word, pain and guilt spilling out all at once.

  I knelt beside her, placing my hand gently on her shoulder.

  “I know,” I said softly. “It wasn’t you. It was him.”

  Cole seemed to realize he had lost.

  Not just the battle. Not just the circle of demigods he had tried to twist and break. He had lost control. The thing he built his empire on—the thing he used to enslave minds and rewrite truths—was crumbling beneath his feet.

  He looked at Angelina, still on her knees beside me. At the others slowly rising, wide-eyed, free. At the strength in our unity—the very thing he feared most.

  And I saw it in him.

  Fear.

  Real, raw, mortal fear.

  I saw the flicker of panic in his eyes—the calculation, the retreat.

  He turned to run.

  But before I could so much as raise a hand, a powerful gust of wind roared down the mountain.

  It struck him hard, lifting him off his feet and slamming him to the ground. He hit the dirt with a ragged grunt, dust clouding around him as he rolled.

  I blinked and turned.

  The demigods were still reeling, unsure what had just happened. All of them except one.

  Xandor stood near the edge of the circle, his arm outstretched, a faint shimmer of wind still curling around his fingers. His clothes were torn, his face bruised, but he was standing tall—and smiling.

  Just a little.

  A smile just for me.

  I returned Xandor’s smile, just a flicker of warmth in the middle of everything.

  Then I flared my wings wide, the golden feathers catching the wind, light streaming from them like fire. I launched myself at Cole.

  He scrambled to throw everything he had at me—illusions, mental traps, memories twisted like knives—but none of it worked. My mind was sealed. My heart was steady. I cut through the lies like they were smoke.

  I landed in front of him with a force that cracked the ground beneath us.

  He stumbled back.

  “You murdered gods,” I said, voice low and sharp. “You manipulated children. You made my family your pawns.”

  He tried to speak, but I didn’t let him.

  “You stole years from us. You broke them. You nearly broke me.”

  I reached into my jacket and pulled free two of my daggers—their hilts warm and steady in my hands. The wind howled around us as I stepped forward.

  “You escaped death once,” I said. “But not again.”

  Then I struck.

  He tried to dodge—of course he did. His illusions shifted, his form flickered, but I didn’t aim for shadows. I aimed for him.

  My blades met his chest with a sickening, final sound.

  He gasped, eyes wide with disbelief, hands scrambling to reach me, to push me away, to cast one last illusion.

  But it was too late.

  I held firm. Not with rage, but with clarity. With purpose.

  “You don’t get to run again,” I said, my voice quiet in the storm.

  He dropped to his knees, blood seeping into the ground like ink. The light in his eyes flickered, then dimmed. And just like that, the nightmare ended.

  I stepped back, wings still spread, the wind finally beginning to slow. Around me, silence fell—stunned, reverent.

  Cole was gone.

  And we were free.