My wings carried me over the balcony railing. My feet touched cloud-stone.

  Zeus sat on his throne of captured storm, lightning turning slowly in his palm like a pet snake. His beard was a thunderhead. His eyes were the pressure before the strike.

  We were alone.

  For now. He had called the others. They would come soon. I didn't have much time.

  I let my copied wings fade.

  Before I could take a step, a blur screamed toward me from the side.

  Hermes. His winged sandals flashed. His leg swung at my head in a kick faster than thought.

  My hand moved. Not faster than him. Just... earlier. Like I knew where he would be before he did.

  I caught his ankle.

  His eyes went wide.

  I squeezed. Crack.

  Hermes fell to the marble, clutching his leg, his ancient messenger's face twisted in shock and pain. He did not scream. Gods don't scream. But he did not get up.

  I stepped over him.

  Zeus watched. The lightning in his palm spun faster. His voice rolled out like thunder across a sleeping city.

  "Ego."

  The word hung in the air.

  "A fragment so small it thinks itself whole. A shard of a forgotten creator, now a debt-collector for a celestial clerk." His lips curled. "You are not a warrior. You are not a god. You are not even a man. You are a receipt given legs and arrogance."

  I stopped walking. I looked at him. The King of Gods. The Thunderer.

  And I smiled. Not wide. Just enough.

  "And you're a father who's scared his kids will do to him what he did to his own."

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  Zeus's hand stopped spinning the lightning.

  "What did you say?"

  Zeus stood.

  The lightning in his palm exploded into a storm. The throne room shook. His eyes were no longer pressure before the strike.

  They were the strike itself.

  He raised his hand. Lightning gathered—not a bolt, but a spear of pure, blinding white. He threw it.

  The air screamed.

  I didn't dodge. I raised the Ur-Blade.

  The lightning spear hit the black blade.

  And stuck.

  Not deflected. Not absorbed. It hung there, crackling against the dark edge, trying to push through, trying to erase me. The Ur-Blade drank the light, swallowed it, but the spear was endless. My arm shook. My teeth ached. The black aura of the blade fought the white fire—

  And then it melted.

  The lightning spear dissolved into threads of harmless smoke. The Ur-Blade hummed, hungry, waiting.

  Zeus's eyes narrowed. He threw another. Then another. Then a storm of them.

  I dodged. Rolled. Slashed one out of the air. Another grazed my shoulder, burning through my shirt. A third hit the Copy-Blade in my left hand and ripped it away. It skittered across the marble, out of reach.

  Then the Ur-Blade was gone too.

  A bolt struck my wrist. The black blade flew from my grip, spinning, landing ten feet away in a pool of shadow.

  I was on one knee. Empty-handed. Breathing hard.

  Zeus descended the steps of his throne. Slowly. Enjoying it.

  "No clever copies now, little receipt. No debt-blade to hide behind." His hands crackled with residual lightning. "Just you. A boy. A fragment. A nothing. "

  He was close now. Close enough to touch.

  He raised his fist, wreathed in thunder.

  I moved.

  Not for a blade. Not for a weapon. My fist drove into his liver.

  His eyes bulged. The lightning flickered.

  My second fist found his diaphragm.

  The air left the King of Gods in a single, choked whoosh. He doubled over. I grabbed his beard—his stupid, magnificent, storm-cloud beard—and pulled him down.

  Zeus fell backward. His knees buckled. His spine hit the carved base of the throne—the wide, ornate platform where his feet usually rested. His crown tilted. His lightning flickered wild, uncontrolled, weak.

  I didn't wait.

  I jumped.

  Both feet leaving the marble. Body airborne. My empty hand reaching down toward him.

  And then I felt it.

  Mid-air. No blade in my hand. No weapon. Just me falling toward the fallen king.

  The lightning around Zeus's body—flickering, dying, escaping—rose.

  Not toward the ceiling. Not into the air.

  Toward me.

  White fire gathered in my palm, crackling, alive. It should have burned. It should have destroyed me. But it just... sat there. Waiting.

  Then the black aura of the Ur-Blade, still lying ten feet away on the cold marble, reached across the floor. It stretched like a shadow at sunset, climbed my leg, wrapped around my arm, and coiled into my palm.

  White fire turned to black lightning.

  My knees landed on Zeus's chest. My hand, crackling with stolen storm, raised above his face.

  The throne room was silent.

  No gods. Not yet. Just me. Just him.

  I looked at the King of Gods beneath me.

  I gave him a small smile.

  He did not smile back.