could make him strong enough to resist it. Even if it was only temporary, it would buy him time.
I fed my power into the earth, taking more and more. Giving it to Hades, but also keeping it for myself.
“What’s happening?” Hades’ voice carried over the roar in my head.
“Fixing you,” I gasped.
He looked down at his arms, his brow creased.
Was it working?
It felt like it was working. So I kept going, feeding more life into him, trying to save him. The power made me feel like nothing could stop me. Distantly, I realized that it was like a poison, changing how I behaved.
I was going too far, but I couldn’t stop.
I’m not strong enough.
Something deep within me urged me to keep going, and I did.
A massive cracking noise rent the night air, and the earth opened up in front of me. A great chasm appeared, dark smoke and mist billowing out.
Chronos.
Somehow, I knew it was him.
This had been the end goal all along, and I’d just ushered in the apocalypse.
No. I couldn’t let it end here. The shock of what I’d done snapped some sense into me, dragging my real self to the surface. Horrified, I looked around. I knelt in the middle of a wasteland, all of the greenery dead as far as the eye could see. And in front of me, the earth formed a massive crevasse deep into the depths of evil.
The same darkness that resided in Hades’ castle was rising to the surface.
Panic burst forth within me.
I couldn’t release this onto the earth.
It would destroy everything.
I’d gone too far, and it didn't matter that I’d been trying to save those I loved.
I needed to knit the earth back together. Trap it.
But how?
Your life.
It came to me with blazing clarity. I needed to repair the earth, and the only thing that could do that would be to give it the life force it needed to recover. My life force.
Fear roared through me, but determination pushed me on. I had to fix this. As I had at the forest, I pushed my life force into the earth, trying to reverse what I had done. Instead of taking, I gave.
I looked over at Hades, who appeared to be fully corporeal again. I couldn’t truly tell if it had worked, but I wanted to believe it had.
Weakness tugged at me as I worked, my head going woozy. I could feel the earth repairing itself just as I could feel the darkness still rising. It came from far away, and I still had time.
Please let me have time.
Tears rolled down my cheeks, and my muscles ached. Echo landed on my shoulder, lending his strength to mine. But it wasn’t enough. When my vision began to fade, I knew.
I wouldn’t survive this.
22
Hades
What was going on?
Everything felt different.
My body, for one. Seraphia had clearly done something to me, feeding the life of the earth into my body, healing me. I could still feel the curse that would drag me back to Tartarus, but it was far weaker than it had ever been.
She’d staved it off somehow.
And yet, she looked drained. She knelt in the moonlight, her shoulders bowed as her right hand gripped the dead grass at her knees. Her skin was ghostly pale, and her magic seemed to be flowing out of her. All around, the dying earth was reviving.
She was undoing her work.
Why?
I stepped up to the edge of the crevasse that she had created, feeling the magic deep below. Something was coming—the same darkness that was at the base of my castle. That was expected. But there was something different about it. I frowned.
“What’s happening?” a woman shouted behind me.
I spun back and saw the golden-haired woman. Carrow.
Another voice echoed, deep in my soul. It is time, Hades.
A chill of knowledge raced over me, confirming what I had already suspected.
The voice from my abyss, from the Place of Memories—it was Chronos. It always had been.
For millennia, I’d known my fate. Known exactly what I would do.
And everything was changing. In an instant, I knew that nothing was going to play out the way I’d expected it. The darkness was more than just an ephemeral force. It was a Titan.
I drew my bident from the ether, ready to fight. I would allow the darkness to spread—it had been my plan all along—but I would drive Chronos back into Tartarus. There was room for only one ruler, and it would be me.
I turned back to Seraphia, seeing her sway on her knees,