The Battle of Olympus | III

1. I Try To Drown Myself In The Shower

First chapter of the final book. I'm so stressed. This needs to be a good ending or else it'll be so bad.

Also, the chapter title is... actually, I'm not gonna say anything, in case someone threatens to kill me.

The beginning of the end has begun.

THAT SOUNDS SO DRAMATIC OMG I SHOULD USE THAT IN ONE DAY—

Have you ever felt your heart tear itself out of your chest? Felt a sudden urge to scream and cry and demand to know why Fate was so cruel? Have you ever remembered the screams of your mother, the sounds of your brother fighting for his last breath, the tears of your own pain? And have you ever felt your soul try to tear itself in half as a part of it struggled to escape, to kill the wretched man who made you feel all that?

Someone once said that if you told the truth, you wouldn't have to remember it. That it would set you free.

What a glorious, glorious lie.

I wondered if I could drown myself in the shower.

"Eden?" there was a hesitant knock on the door. "Eden, you've been in there for almost an hour. You okay?"

No, I decided. If I wanted to drown myself, I should've taken a bath. There was also a giant just a quarter of a mile away, and there was also the bay. I also had five experienced killers in my living room who could do the job. Or I could insult Zeus who could also kill me.

Emerson didn't push it. I could sense her hesitance even through the door, but she didn't move.

"I just thought you should know..." she hesitated. "Amara has a message."

"Great," I muttered.

"It's not a quest. Not really. I mean... well, you should just come and see for yourself."

Then she left, the sounds of her retreating footsteps echoing through the halls.

Okay, so maybe I was being dramatic. I wasn't Galeria anymore, and Claudius wasn't my father. Even if I had been Galeria, he still wasn't my father. I had learned, long ago, that family was chosen, not predetermined. Just because I had half of his DNA didn't mean that he was actually my father. But I had once heard that people who lost limbs sometimes had phantom pains from where their arm or leg used to be, and seeing Claudius in the Atlanteans' Mirror of Truth had made me feel the same way. Like a vital organ—probably my heart—was aching, and I had an internal struggle to not cleave their fountain in half.

Besides, the Mirror had shown me a lot more than just Claudius' stupid face. I had seen his plans, and I had seen his allies. He hadn't just aligned himself with other primordial deities—he had also called back the spirits of my worst enemies from each of my previous lives. And I had seen his power. His insane idea that he had managed to pull off.

In a world of gods and monsters and really-messed-up families, you'd think that I'd stop getting surprised by so many things, but Claudius' plans had stunned even me.

Sure, once I had taken over the entire household, I had reviewed Claudius' plans that he had written down in his journals, but I had dismissed them, predicting that the technology and knowledge he required to complete them wouldn't have been discovered until thousands of years later. Besides, he had based his hypotheses and explanations off the journals of our previous ancestors, but since the Galerii were known for going mad in their late teens or twenties... well, I wasn't sure why Claudius had been so eager to take the word of someone who had gone insane.

Then again, he himself had gone insane around that time, so there was that.

I tried to shake it off. He hadn't achieved his plan yet. And though he might've gone mad as Claudius, I didn't know how his sanity was nowadays. I mean, I had come back from the dead with my sanity intact... more or less. I technically wasn't a Galerii anymore, so I didn't have to suffer the family curse. Besides, by the time it got to Adonis and I, the other Galerii branches had died out or had been diminished so much that while there were people to carry the name, none would've been as powerful as any of us. They might've been able to see better, or have a stronger sense of smell, but that was about it. So they didn't have to really worry about going crazy either.