Page 86 of Edge of Stars

The links of a chortle roll out of Hecate in return. Damn. This can’t be good.

“You have no idea what you’re asking.”

“No?” Kara snaps. “When you’re standing here, demanding I bow to your indentured servitude? With my own child as the barter?”

No laughter from the goddess this time.

Instead, with a high roar, she scourges more of the shoreline to life.

The shrapnel is brutal enough to make us all shield our faces, but past the spikes of my fingers, I can’t ignore the very new and noticeable changes to this bizarre power balance.

One: the shoreline rocks aren’t the only force of nature skip-hopping across the Aegean shallows now. The lightning party I started is becoming a celestial rave, with a pair of constellations that can’t be named—or mistaken.

Two: as I wave in welcome to the humanoid formations, hoping Dad and Po touch down here sooner than later, there’s no mistaking the hinky happenings with the relative I’d rather forget. Hades looks…worried. And his stress has everything to do with the invisible force that’s ripping open his black dress shirt—then pulling out the book he’s been hiding underneath.

Three: that’s not a book.

It’s a grimoire.

And as it travels through midair, gaining a brighter and brighter glow on its way to Hecate’s outstretched hands, the tethers around Veronica and Mom start to waver.

Suspecting Hecate is too riveted on Kara to notice, I inch into the small area between Mom’s head and Veronica’s feet. They’re both still getting cut up by the wild-flying rocks, so I hunch as much as possible to protect them. It’s better than nothing, which is exactly the support I’m able to lend my own wife right now. The witch queen is clearly looking for any avenue into Kara’s resolve, and I’m one of those obvious mechanisms. Support from afar isn’t nearly as poetic in real-life application.

Especially as the power seesaw tilts back in the goddess’s favor.

From the moment that her grimoire lowers into her arms and resettles against her bosom.

A chest that rises and falls with the heft of rising dominion. Knowing sovereignty.

The upper hand—in ways that I now wish were actually poetic.

Because as she lifts hers, with fingers splayed and palm curved in around her invisible door knob, the searing straps around our mothers are back to full force. And she’s completely celebratory about it.

“You want me to set them free, Kara?” she charges. “I can do it, you know—with nothing but a small wave and a tiny wish. And I want to do it for you, my sweet one. More than anything, I want your beautiful little louloudi to know and love their grandmamas as they grow up. We shall even build them a special villa next to yours at Iremia—”

“Bullshit.” Kara screams it over the tempest, her eyes filling with flames again. Some of the pebbles still flying past her face are ignited like specks of flint before flickering out in the wind. “That’s bullshit, and we both know it. Once you take Olympus—”

“Then you’ll have another home to call your own,” the goddess says, reminding me of some movie producer desperate to land a big star for the show. But this isn’t a negotiation for a bigger dressing room. It’s the future of the realms as we know them. The worlds that this witch is willing to burn for the glory of just one. The misguided purpose that continues to flash in her intense gaze.

“You won’t be the only one, Kara. Everyone you love will have a stunning villa too. We’ll all live in the aither and bathe in pure waters. We will drink nectar and dine like kings and queens. Best of all, your child will never know grief or suffering or sadness—”

Kara slashes up a hand. “You mean after she helps you attack the gods’ realm and assassinate Zeus?”

“After we take the necessary steps to rise…together.”

Now I’m ready to say something again—loudly—except that my astoundment’s cutting me short before I can start. More exigently, I don’t even know if I can find the right words. What’s the right way to call out a creature talking about turning against their king—murdering him—as if she’s getting ready to gift him with the Holy Grail instead?

“Bullshit,” Kell declares, marching past me with furious purpose. Along the way, she yanks her hair back from her face before ponytailing it like a sadistic pirate knotting a tow line. Her energy punches my senses hard enough to render me speechless.

But not useless.

I haul up my own determination, ordering myself to stay vigilant. If necessary, to ruthless degrees. Painfully, vehemently aware that I’m now the only protection between my treacherous uncle and my best friend. Also aware that my other uncle and dear old Pops should’ve finished their descent from the horizon a while ago.

Did you stop for cocktails and flirting, fuckheads?

“Bullshit.” Kell’s reiteration yanks me back to the dilemma that has to take bigger priority. Like why she’s still attempting that line when it obviously failed for her sister. And emphasizing the whole point by continuing her advance on the sorceress with the ultra-powered grimoire in hand.

“Guess what, bitch witch? You don’t get to do this anymore,” she dictates, waving Kara back as she bears in on Hecate. “None of this.”