Page 33 of Vengeance of the Gods

The camera was still on her. Tolevarre was still watching.

“I’ll let you walk out of here alive on one condition.” An actual smile pulled at the corner of her lip. “You get on your hands and knees and beg for forgiveness.”

The man’s eyebrows creased together in the middle, but it didn’t take long for them to smooth over and for him to drop to his knees.

He pitched his head back and stared up at Marlena, intertwining his fingers together. “P-pl-ease, Marlena, forgive me. I am unworthy. I-I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Glancing around to the other stark white faces of Stella’s elite, Marlena fed off their fear, letting it propel her into the actual reason she’d called this gathering.

“I don’t think you’re down low enough. Bow.” The gods hummed inside Marlena’s head, stirring when she didn’t want them to.

The man did as he was told, folding down on the ground. “I have children. Please, let me get home to them.”

Marlena didn’t care about his children. She still hadn’t decided whether she was actually going to let him live or not.

“No one…” Her eyes scanned every person she could see from where she was standing, and then they stared directly into the lens of the camera. “Not a single person here will ever be as important as me.” Her attention darted back down to the sobbing swine below.

His cheeks were puffy and red, eyes bulging out of their sockets as his fear found a new height. He fit the part of an animal off to slaughter almost too well.

“Because I’m not like you.” She nodded towards the front row of the motionless crowd. “Or you. Or you.” She fixed her stare back on the cameras, back on Tolevarre. “Or you.” Her eye caught the reflection of her face in the lens. “Fifty-five years ago, I summoned the twelve original gods.” It was the first time she’d spoken those words out loud to her realm. Most knew, but there had never been a confirmation from Marlena’s own mouth. “The gods are gone.”

They didn’t like her lie, trying to claw their way out of the cage Marlena kept them trapped in. They had their own corner inside her mind, and on Marlena’s best days, she could keep them locked away.

It’d been a while since Marlena had what could be considered a best day…

The gods were louder now.

“And they left me in their place.”

The faces around her were a mixture of shock and disbelief. Jaws hung low, and one woman swayed on her feet.

The sky darkened, casting a deep-violet glow across Stella.

“I am your god.” Marlena exhaled, the hairs on her arms sticking up from the distress rippling through the people like the aftershock of her admission. “The only living goddess our people will ever know.”

Without having to move a muscle, a few people fell to their knees. Out of fear or devout loyalty, Marlena wasn’t sure. She didn’t care how they did it.

It was time Tolevarre recognized her as what she was.

Not just Marlena the ruler… No.

Marlena, the one true goddess.

The others were bonded by a murky demigod, and their lives were linked, souls intertwined. Vega and her friends were still half-breeds at best, and Marlena would prove she was the superior of the new gods. She didn’t have a plan yet, but that had never stopped her before.

Across the sky, green lightning scattered through the low hanging clouds. The last bit of purple left in the darkening night sky was the backdrop to her emerald light show. “It’s time Tolevarre stops worshipping the old gods.”

Thunder rumbled like Marlena’s personal choir. She couldn’t control the weather like her sister. That power was all Vega’s. But the lightning came from Jupiter, the original bloodline the sisters shared through their father.

Marlena had already mastered air-wielding when she summoned the gods—she didn’t need Jupiter’s wind, so he gave her something else instead.

She didn’t use the lightning enough. It felt good, skittering across her skin like static. It was a colder heat, nothing like the inferno of her fire.

“It’s time you worship me instead.”

More people dropped to their knees. Unintelligible prayers from muttered lips became the soundtrack to the chorus of voices finally escaping through the iron bars of her mind.

“You wouldn't be here if it weren’t for us.”