"It's not true," Atropos whines. "It's not."
"No?" Lark asks, completely in control of the room. "Then why glamour the room to make us see what isn't there?"
The Fates fall silent.
Harlow steps forward, her shimmering skin and sandy hair sweeping past me, looking directly into the Fates' eyes. "If you are as powerful as you want me to believe, then why did you kill my lover, Eric?"
The Fates turn green as they coil back, and I turn to Gaia's face, desperate to see the rise and fall of her chest.
Nothing.
Tears fall down my cheeks. She can't be gone. Not after all she has done for me.
She can't lay down her life as well.
"See, you can't answer," Harlow scoffs. "Because you didn't have a role in his death. You've cast a magic spell and it has scared people into submission. You make a potion and say it's your innate power. But it isn't."
Tennyson steps closer, and I watch as my daughter with her practically translucent skin -- the girl from the River Styx, who saved my life and risked her own -- stands up for me. For Gaia.
For the future of Mount Olympus.
"You're not goddesses," Tennyson declares. "You're frauds. Nothing more than witches who work in black magic."
Standing from my dying friend, I pull back my shoulders as anger races through me. "What did you do to the gods?" I step closer to the Fates, no longer scared of being sent away.
Where might I go? The Underworld? Fine. I've faced it already.
"It doesn't matter," Lachesis groans. "It's done."
"It does matter," Lark presses. "What did you do to our fathers?"
"It's too late," Clotho cries, burying her face in her wretched hands.
"It's never too late to make our wrongs right," Tennyson says. "I know that better than most. So, tell us, now." She takes the scissors from my hand and raises them in the air as Remedy sets free her wolf growl. It is terrifying; her bite full of venom. She is ready to pounce.
"Fine," Atropos sobs. "It was the toast."
"The toast?" I ask, my voice catching. "What toast?"
"At the wedding, you stupid brat," she hisses at me. "You were so young and in love, without a care in the world. But you were a greedy little girl, weren't you? The love of one god wasn't enough for you. You needed the love of four gods to satiate your desire."
"That isn't how it happened," I tell them, shaking my head. "We can't choose who we love."
Lachesis throws back her head, a grotesque laugh filling the decrepit room. "But you can choose who you hurt." She turns to look at Gaia, dead on the floor.
"Take it back, what you did to her, what you did to the gods." My eyes burn with fury, they stole my life from me. Stole my chance to hold my babies close to my chest and watch them grow. They stole the love of my husbands from me on my wedding day. They took every trace of happiness away from me, out of jealousy.
And yet they have no remorse for what they have done to my family.
Hades told me this love would ruin us and he was right.
Oh, how I long to salvage what they stole.
"Why should I take it back?" Clotho asks, raising her eyebrow.
I shake my head, biting down on the hatred I am tempted to unleash. Instead, I choose hope. Instead, I choose to forgive. "Because you can choose love instead of hate,” I tell her. "You have a second chance."
Just then a crash erupts outside and a wild cry forces us all to rush to the door. Outside the gods are raging, ready to fight, shouting our names.
My heart tightens with conflicting emotions. Part of me wants to run to my husbands and tell them it was a spell. That they don't truly hate me, that they've been tricked by the Fates.
But I can't reason with them until the spell is broken.
And right now, I can't let their anger steal my joy. I reach for my daughters' hands, clutching them tightly. Falling to the floor beside Gaia, we all stare at Mother Earth, the one who spent two decades fighting for our return.
This moment can't become about the gods. It needs to be about my oldest friend.
My daughters sense that, too. We won't give those gods the power.
"I'm so sorry, Gaia," I whisper. "I'd do anything to keep you alive."
"Anything?" Lachesis asks with a greedy grin. Behind her, my four husbands stand in all their glory. Wild anger whips through the room but I refuse to let it ensnare me.
My husbands are not in their right frame of mind.
But I am.
"Anything,” I repeat.
Bring it on.
19
Zeus
She is beautiful.
She always was. Hair like silver stars and moonlight, eyes like the sky at dawn. Clear as day.
My mind is twisted.