Jayden shoots me a glare over his shoulder. “Be quiet, baby. Stop drawing attention to yourself.”
“No, I’m not going to let her focus her ire on you and Raven to protect myself.” I step around Jayden.
“I have heard the tales the other gods tell about how noble you are. It won’t save you from me, you know. I will go through everyone you love to get to you if I have to.”
“I will defeat you if it’s the last thing I do. You will not harm another one of mine,” I seethe.
“You think a lowly bastard of my husband’s has the power to defeat me.” Her laugh is maniacal. “I will crush you. Just like I had done to your mother.”
I lunge for the bars without thinking. Magic crackles at my palms. Red tints my vision. The only thing in my thoughts is Hera’s death. Arms wrap around me from behind and I thrash against them.
“Beth, baby. You can’t win this fight like this. She isn’t actually here. That’s Zeke’s body.” Jayden pulls my back against his chest.
Hera bursts into raucous laughter, clearly enjoying my outburst and the rage coursing through me. I don’t care that it’s Hera speaking through Zeke’s body, I want her dead for what happened to my mother. She ordered the hit on me and my mother. We were a way to get back at my father for his infidelity.
It has to fucking end. If I have to be the one to end it, I will… and happily. Even if I end up in the underworld. With my dying breath, I will end her.
“I’m coming for you, bitch,” I scream.
“Oh, little fledgling goddess,” Hera coos. “I have millennia of experience. You don’t stand a chance.”
“Really?” Raven snaps. “Those millennia of experience sure worked out for you when we destroyed all your plans five times over.”
Zeke’s expression contorts with rage. “You will all pay the price for your insolence.”
“Get out of my brother,” Dax grumbles. “This is just weird.”
“You think to make commands of me? The queen of the gods,” Hera roars.
Kira steps forward. “You’re nothing more than an enemy of this academy, you know the one you have tried to destroy on multiple occasions? I’m surprised any of the other gods sided with you.”
“You young ladies should have sided with me. What I’m doing will benefit females most of all. We will rise up against the men who rule and look at us as fools to be trifled with. We will change this patriarchal society into a matriarch and no man will ever be allowed to treat us like second-class citizens again.” Hera glances between Raven and Kira.
“You see, normally I would be all for girl power and sticking it to the man,” Raven says. “But you’re forgetting a few crucial details with this plan of yours.”
“And tell me, oh wise one, what am I forgetting?” Hera smirks.
“One, everything you have tried to do so far has damn near ended the world you wish to rule.” Raven raises a brow.
“I can just make a new better world where women rule and men bow to us.” Hera waves a dismissive hand.
“You can, but we will all be dead so that doesn’t really work for me.” Raven taps her foot impatiently. “And two, you’re a vindictive bitch that I wouldn’t want running an HOA, let alone the damn universe.”
“Uh, Raven. I think that’s enough, bestie. We get the point.”
Steam about shoots out of Zeke’s ears as the goddess bares her teeth at us. She’s going to snap at any second. I glance at Kira to see her reaction but her expression is carefully blank.
“I think Raven forgot a reason.” Kira grins.
“Oh? What’s the third reason?”
“To you, Beth is enemy number one, but to us, she’s our savior. I’m not fighting for a world without her in it.” Kira shrugs. “We both know that in your perfect little girls rule utopia, Beth is dead and gone, punished for her father’s mistakes because you’re too weak to take him down on your own.”
“Shit, Kira, shut up,” I say. “You’re just going to make this worse.”
Hera flies into an epic toddler temper tantrum and lunges at the bars again.
Zeke’s forehead smashes into the bars and blood drips down his tanned skin into his eyes. She screams and repeatedly throws poor Zeke into the bars in a last-ditch attempt to get to me.
