The halls of the compound were quiet at night.

  Not silent. Never truly silent. Xandor’s breathing was always a little too sharp. Damian sometimes mumbled in his sleep. Someone’s bed creaked every time they rolled over. But it was familiar—like the hum of a heartbeat I’d memorized long ago.

  I made my rounds barefoot, the cool stone grounding me as I passed each door.

  Bay was curled up in a tangle of blankets, one arm dangling off the side of the bed. I nudged the blanket back up over her shoulder and moved on. Phoenix’s door was cracked, the room dimly lit with one of her soft-glowing stones. She was awake, of course—staring at the ceiling, her hands folded tightly on her stomach. I tapped the door gently.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded without looking at me. “Getting there.”

  I gave her a small smile and closed the door.

  Stephen was asleep, for once. That alone made my shoulders relax. He’d been running hot in training again. Always burning himself out faster than he needed to. I made a mental note to say something in the morning.

  Damian’s room was next. I found him half hanging off the bed like he’d been dropped there from a height. I grinned and gently repositioned him before pulling a second pillow under his head. He stirred but didn’t wake.

  Then came the twins—Leander and Ella. I paused just long enough to hear their slow, even breathing. They always slept facing opposite directions, but their hands were usually somewhere near the middle. Close, even when they didn’t admit it.

  Once I finished my rounds, I returned to my room—but I didn’t go to bed right away.

  Instead, I slipped into Helena’s room.

  She was already lying down, hair braided back in a thick coil. She cracked one eye open when I entered.

  “Everyone good?” she asked, voice low.

  I nodded and climbed into the bed beside her. “Yeah. Damian’s drooling. Phoenix is thinking. Stephen’s not on fire. I’ll take the win.”

  She snorted softly and rolled to face me. “You’re the only one who does this, you know.”

  “Does what?”

  “Checks on all of us. Every night. Not even the guardians do that.”

  I shrugged, staring at the ceiling. “Someone has to.”

  Helena didn’t push. She never did. She just reached over and tugged the edge of the blanket up around both of us.

  “You’re a good big sister, you know that?” she murmured.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and smiled into the dark.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “I know.”

  The gates to Olympus closed behind her with a sound like finality—like the end of something ancient and precious. I stared at the space where Zoe had stood, half-expecting her to turn back, to smile at me one more time, to change her mind. But she didn’t.

  She was sunlight—and she left us in twilight.

  For a long moment, none of us moved.

  Then Helena stepped forward, calm and quiet, as she always was when everything else was falling apart. Her hands glowed faintly as she knelt beside Bay, who was still curled on the ground, her skin blistered and raw. Helena touched her gently, whispering something I couldn’t hear. The light spread, and Bay’s burns began to fade.

  Stephen stood over them, his hands clenching and unclenching, his eyes red. “I’m sorry,” he kept repeating, voice barely above a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to—”

  Helena didn’t respond. Not yet. She just kept healing.

  The others moved slowly, almost sleepwalking. Leander retrieved his bow. Ella picked up her twin daggers. Peter sat in silence, wiping blood from his blade with shaking hands. Angelina and Phoenix didn’t speak—they just clung to each other, holding tight like the world might fall apart again if they let go.

  When Helena reached me, I didn’t say anything. She pressed her hands to my shoulder, and the pain eased. The torn muscle, the arrow wound, the strain—it faded beneath her healing touch. I mumbled a thank you, but she didn’t linger.

  I rose and walked the edge of the battlefield. The wind was still. The sky above Mount Olympus stretched wide and pale, like it, too, was holding its breath. The sun was beginning to set, and as the golden light slipped behind the peaks, I felt something stir in my chest. The stars were rising behind it—just faint sparks at first, but I could feel them. My connection to them. The way the night always woke something ancient and steady in me. The power was subtle, but sure. Comforting. I breathed in and let it settle over me like a promise. Even with Zoe gone, the stars remained. They always had.

  Then the memories started.

  Not all at once. Just flashes. A laugh. A flash of brown hair. Someone running through the courtyard faster than anyone should’ve been able to. Cassie.

  I remembered her.

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  Not Zoe.

  Cassie.

  The oldest of us. The quiet leader. The girl who moved like lightning and never left anyone behind. I remembered her sparring with Helena. Racing Damian. Pulling Stephen out of a fight before he burned down half the training yard. I remembered how much she loved us.

  And then I remembered the first time I met Zoe.

  She couldn’t have been more than four, but she didn’t act like a child. She was too calm. Too observant. Her eyes saw through things. Through people. She asked questions no kid that young should ask.

  Now I understood why.

  “She wasn’t just different,” I murmured. “She wasn’t like us at all.”

  The flashes of memories were interrupted by the sound of Leander’s voice breaking the quiet. He stood with his arms crossed, staring down the mountain. “What about the horde? The monsters Cole brought. They’re still down there.”

  The words settled over us like fog.

  I turned to look. The base of the mountain stretched wide and distant, but we all knew what was waiting. Cole’s death didn’t erase everything he’d unleashed.

  “They’ll regroup,” Bay rasped, pulling her hair back from her face. “They always do.”

  “Then we’ll stop them,” Helena said. Her voice didn’t shake. “Together this time.”

  No one argued.

  We were too tired. Our muscles ached. Our minds were frayed. No one had the strength for another battle—not today. But in the quiet, we all felt it: the resolve forming beneath the exhaustion. Tomorrow, we would be ready.

  We stood there in silence again.

  Then—

  Light split the air.

  The gates to Olympus reopened with a sound like thunder laced with song.

  Every head turned. Every heart paused.

  For a breath, I thought—please let it be her. Please let Zoe have changed her mind. Please let her have chosen us. Chosen me.

  But it wasn’t her.

  It was Cassie.

  She stepped through the gates like she belonged there. Like she had never left. And as her face came into focus, the memories that had been flickering in the background rushed forward.

  We remembered everything.

  All at once.

  The golden corridors of Olympus stretched before us, polished and echoing with every step. I walked between gods—Hera to my left, Hermes to my right. Athena strode ahead, her expression as unreadable as ever, and Hecate floated just behind us like a shadow wrapped in moonlight. Cassie walked beside me, quiet for once.

  The weight of the coming council pulled at my chest, each step heavier than the last. This was where it all began. This was where it would end.

  Suddenly, Cassie stopped.

  I blinked, turning to her. “What is it?”

  She looked me up and down and made a face. “You’re going to a meeting of the major gods… dressed like that?”

  I looked down—jeans, a torn jacket streaked with blood, and the grime of war still clinging to my boots.

  Cassie huffed. “Absolutely not.”

  Before I could argue, she vanished in a blur.

  She returned a heartbeat later, arms full of flowing fabric and gold thread.

  I didn’t even have time to react before she spun around me once—just once—and suddenly I was no longer wearing my battlefield clothes.

  I stood in a traditional Greek chiton, deep midnight blue edged with celestial silver and accents of gold that caught the light like the tips of my wings. The fabric shimmered faintly as if woven with starlight and memory. My hair was half-twisted back, pinned with a delicate gold band that echoed the color of my feathers and gleamed like sunlight woven into strands.

  Cassie grinned and winked. “Better.”

  I rolled my eyes but smiled. “Thanks.”

  Together, we stepped into the throne room.

  The chamber was massive, domed and lit with sunlight that didn’t seem to come from anywhere at all. Thrones circled the center, each one unique, each radiating the presence of its occupant. Zeus. Hera. Poseidon. Demeter. Apollo. Artemis. Ares. Athena. Hephaestus. Aphrodite. Hermes. Dionysus. The Twelve Olympians.

  And just in front of the great hearth, not seated but standing in quiet grace, was Hestia—ever watchful, ever warm. Looking at her, I was reminded of Stephen, her son, who had nearly burned himself alive trying to protect the others. I scanned the room again, and faces became memories: Phoenix, daughter of Hades. Leander and Ella, children of Apollo. Many of the thrones here had left a legacy on Earth.

  The gods watched from above, but it was their children who had bled below. I saw them all in my mind: Phoenix, wielding the dead with grace and pain, her father’s shadows clinging to her. Stephen, flames licking at his arms as he fought—Hestia’s warmth turned to wildfire. Ella and Leander, light and music flowing through them like Apollo’s blessing. Every throne here was carved in gold, but their legacy had walked with me, bled with me, suffered beside me. And they—we—had paid the price for the gods’ silence.

  I walked to the center.

  They watched in silence.

  I took a breath.

  And I told them everything.

  My time on Earth. The compound. The friendships. The battles. The first time I met Xandor. The day Cassie left. The feeling of belonging—not because I was divine, but because I was understood.

  I told them how Cole had twisted the minds of those I loved. How he broke them. How he nearly broke me.

  I told them how I woke up.

  How I remembered.

  How I chose to come back.

  And how I ended him.

  When I finished, silence fell again.

  Zeus’s voice was the first to rise. Low. Controlled. But beneath the surface, it simmered with the fury of a storm barely held back, like lightning waiting to strike. His gaze snapped to each of the gods who stood beside me, his shoulders tense with indignation that he’d been excluded from something he believed he alone should have commanded.

  “You went behind my back.”

  His eyes burned as they moved across the room. “You manipulated prophecy. You risked Olympus. You—”

  “Enough,” Hera snapped, her voice cutting through the tension like a blade—sharp, regal, and unyielding. Her words rang out across the throne room, silencing the gathering like a spell. She didn’t just speak to interrupt—she spoke to remind everyone who she was. Her gaze locked on Zeus, fire and frost in her expression. There was no hesitation, no fear—only fury barely masked by formality.

  She stood, chin high. “Maybe if you paid attention to the people here, you would have known there were only twelve demigods on Earth—not thirteen. And you wouldn’t have needed to threaten those children at all.”

  The room stiffened.

  She wasn’t finished.

  “You sealed Olympus,” she said, her voice cold and precise. “You turned your back on the world below and claimed it was to protect us. But it wasn’t protection—it was fear. You feared the consequences of your own choices, and so you locked Olympus away instead of facing what you helped create. You left the world to burn while pretending your hands were clean.”

  Zeus looked ready to respond, the beginnings of another thunder-laced tirade rising in his throat, but Athena rose beside Hera with calm, deliberate authority. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her presence alone, her calculated stillness, said enough.

  The air shifted. Even Zeus paused.

  Athena’s eyes were like steel, unreadable and sharp. It was a silent reminder: that wisdom held more power than volume, that strength didn’t always roar. And in that moment, her silence cut deeper than any of Hera’s words.

  Zeus slowly sat back, his fists still clenched, his storm temporarily held at bay.

  I stood in the center, radiant and composed.

  The silence stretched, brittle and waiting. Then, at last, Apollo stood.

  He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

  “The prophecy has been fulfilled,” he said, his tone calm and steady. “Not in the way we expected—but in the way that mattered. Olympus stands. Earth is safe. And it is because Zoe chose to sacrifice everything.”

  He looked at me—not with awe, but with something softer. Gratitude. Respect.

  “She remembered who she was,” he continued, “and because she did, the rest of us were reminded who we ought to be.”

  Another pause followed his words, deeper than before.

  No one dared to break it.