"Stop!" I roared, lunging forward.
Click.
Three submachine guns pressed against my temples, cold steel biting into skin.
The lead mercenary spoke in stilted English. "Miss Dunn. Don't move. Bullets don't have eyes."
Harold watched me pinned down and laughed, wild and unhinged.
"Pansy! Thought you were tough? Thought you could fight?"
"Go on, then. Hit me again. I dare you."
He hauled himself out of the wheelchair, limping toward me one agonizing step at a time, and raised his hand high.
"That slap from earlier? I'm paying it back tenfold."
His hand came down.
But the slap never landed.
Because I caught his wrist mid-swing.
Harold froze.
The mercenary beside me jammed his barrel harder against my skull. "Let go! On your knees!"
The Harding bodyguards, the police, every single person in that circle stared at me like they were watching a dead woman walk.
In their eyes, I was an ant at the end of the road, seconds from being crushed.
Power. Money. Firepower. Public opinion.
Every weapon the mortal world had to offer was stacked on top of me in that moment, layer after suffocating layer.
I looked at Harold's face, drunk on his own triumph, dripping with sanctimonious cruelty.
I looked at Lena, hand over her mouth in a performance of horror, eyes glittering with barely concealed excitement behind the act.
I looked at my father, pinned to the ground under boots and batons.
And I laughed.
Louder and louder.
In the dead silence of that armed circle, the sound was unnerving.
Harold yanked his wrist free, skin crawling. "Have you lost your mind? What the hell are you laughing at?"
I stopped laughing. Slowly raised my head.
Glanced at the overcast sky.
"I'm laughing because you're pathetic."
My voice was quiet.
"You throw around some dirty money, pull a few strings with the right people, and you think that makes you gods?"
"You're mortals. You're nothing."
"I am the Storm Goddess."
