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“Why?” The question encompasses more than I have breath to articulate.

Why help me? Why now? Why rebel against his fellow gods again?

I stagger to my feet, my legs threatening to buckle beneath me. Lark catches me, hauling me upright.

“Because I do believe in you.” Rivlan nods to Lark before gesturing toward the others.

Agnar struggling to rise.

Bastian and Rafe standing back-to-back against a tide of abominations.

Leesa releasing arrows as fast as she can find a target.

“All of you. In humans.” He holds his hand out, and a streak of sparkling blue appears. The glaive, his gift to me before we revolted. “You deserve this. Use it and magnify your strength.”

Despite my earlier reservations, something in his eyes compels me to trust him.

I accept the glaive, drawing on reserves of strength I didn’t know I possessed. My guardian magic responds more readily, and water answers my call, spiraling around my arms and crystallizing into bracers of ice so cold they smoke in the arena air.

Another figure emerges.

The throng of divine creatures parts, ash settling amidst swirls of concentrated heat.

Ziva’s wrapped in living flame, weapons of fire materializing from her hands as she advances.

Her eyes meet mine, then seek out Lark’s. “We will not be killing dragons. Or mortals.”

Lark freezes in shock, her gaze locked on her patron goddess.

The moment of distraction nearly costs her as a multi-limbed horror lunges toward her exposed back.

I shout a warning.

Too late.

A shadow detaches from the screaming crowd, materializing behind Lark with lightning speed. Nyc seizes the creature, her fingers lengthening and her claws extending as she rips it apart with casual strength.

The darkness rippling around her like a living cloak consumes the flailing monster. “I got you into this mess. My family is in your debt.”

Behind her, Mar emerges from her shadows. Nyc’s daughter, the Goddess of Dreams and Visions. An aura of light surrounds her, illuminating delicate features and hair so pale it’s almost white. The creatures that approach Mar seem to forget what they’re doing and turn on each other in their confusion.

Distrust trickles through the connection I share with the others.

But so does a sliver of hope.

Something stirs within me.

The exhaustion that dragged at my limbs fades, replaced by a gush of energy that tingles my skin. My wounds start to heal, and the pain recedes, becoming distant and unimportant. The others straighten, their movements becoming more fluid, more certain.

Nyc swells, the edges of her darkness flaring and swallowing a pack of cave cats. When they emerge again, they’re facing the opposite direction. With snarling roars, they charge into the fray, attacking another family of pangolins.

With the gods’ intervention, the battle shifts.

Where before we were pushed back, now we advance, blazing a trail through divine creatures that are suddenly less sure, less coordinated.

Rivlan and I move as a unit, my ice complementing his water in ways I never imagined possible. He pulls the liquid from their bodies, and I freeze it.

Lark and Ziva are twin vortexes of heat and flame that consume everything in their paths, leaving nothing but ash in their wakes.