Page 92 of Vengeance of the Gods

That was what Marlena had been doing since fleeing from the fight. Research. She’d pulled apart every single book in her personal library before forcing Littera to shut down the Archives to everyone but her. There was always something to find if you knew where to look. Or at least that was what she’d always told herself, but she couldn’t and hadn’t found a single fucking thing about Remus and his curse in the nearly seventy years she’d been researching the gods.

Not before. Not now.

Not ever.

“Where the fuck is Bridger?” she asked again through gritted teeth.

Meyer wore his general’s uniform, which was similar to Bridger’s commander suit, without the billowing cape. “He stayed.”

Everything sped by, crashing around without any control, until those two little words slipped from Meyer’s lips.

The world halted to a stop. Ice coated Marlena’s veins, rage turning her body cold. “You lost him,” the voices hissed.

Meyer flinched away from Marlena’s rigid stance. “He what?” The question bubbled from the pit of her stomach.

“He’s staying with the rebellion,” Meyer repeated.

Had Marlena stepped into a time machine and walked through to the beginning of her reign? She finally moved, using her wind to send the table in the center of the room flying.

Meyer ducked away from the splintering shards of wood.

“Why? Why!” she screamed.

Meyer held his ground, and Marlena would give him credit—he didn’t shake with fear like he once had. “Because he loves her.”

It took everything inside Marlena not to blow this entire territory up with how hot her fury burned. “Where are they?” she asked, fearing her teeth might shatter from the force of her jaw’s tightening muscles.

“Vates’s caves,” Meyer answered quickly. “But they’re moving to Vincere.”

“You left people alive?” she asked, fighting against the roar of voices in her head, only able to address one concern at a time.

He cocked his head an inch. “What would you have liked me to do, Marlena? Attack four gods, severely outnumbered, and kill off children and the elderly? It would have been a blood bath, and not in the way you would have liked.”

The sensible side of her knew he was right, but the piece of the real Marlena was locked in a jar and cursed to disappear. She wasn’t real anymore.

“How many of the group you took stayed with Bridger?” Marlena wasn’t stupid. She knew what kind of army Bridger had built after she’d killed his father—one where the majority would follow him, not her.

She’d just never thought it’d become an issue. She thought she’d had Bridger hooked for good, given him the power he wanted, the distraction he needed…

“Twenty-three out of thirty-two.”

Marlena circled Meyer, doing her best to keep the anger from reaching detonation-level. She would be outnumbered as far as body count went, but not in knowledge—never in knowledge.

“Bridger told me to give the rest of the army a choice. To join him or to stay with you.”

A laugh erupted from deep within Marlena. “He’s got some fucking balls, doesn’t he?” Marlena stopped circling and stared at Meyer. “Are you going to let him take the army you’re about to inherit?”

“The army isn’t yours to give away… not while Bridger is alive. It’s his.”

Technically, Meyer was right, but Marlena had never once cared about technicalities. Technically, she shouldn’t have been able to live when she summoned twelve dead gods—but she had.

Technically, she shouldn’t be alive without a heart beating in her chest! But I am. That was her voice, growling in her head like a rabid mutt.

Marlena lost sense of herself, disappearing to reappear with Meyer now clutched by the throat, suspended above her. “This world is mine. I am the god people will bow to when this is over. Not them.”

“We. We. We,” the gods all chanted at the same time.

Meyer kicked his feet, fighting against the crushing hold of her fingers. It was no use—he’d never be able to fight her off.