The Valkyrie Divorces the God of War

Kairos, the last heir of the God King Cronos, binds himself in chains forged by Hephaestus that crush even a divine-blooded body. His servant Helen asks why he would seal his own godhood. The answer is simple: without the seal, his Chronos Fire would burn too hot for his wife Cassia to endure his touch. Three years ago, he petitioned the council so she could join the army and become the Valkyrie commander known as the Frost Sparrow. Now she returns from the abyssal frontier a war hero, and the crowd that gathers to greet her falls silent at the sight of her swollen belly. Kairos stands before her, struggling to form the words. Cassia does not flinch. She is pregnant, she tells him, and the child has nothing to do with him. He has no right to ask who the father is. The council is rewarding her victory handsomely, so she will set aside a sum as compensation for him. Kairos’s servant Helen reminds her that for three years, her entire family lived in Thorn Temple and Kairos provided everything—gold for her brother Lukan's gambling debts, silks and jade for her mother. Cassia's response is contempt: Kairos is a weak, powerless mortal hiding in a crumbling temple. He never deserved her.

Cassia lays out three demands. First, Kairos will raise the child she conceived with another man. Second, the father is moving into Thorn Temple and will take the master bedroom; Kairos can have the storeroom. Third, and most audacious, she demands the Heart of Cronos, the Thorn family's most guarded ancient power. She has already broken her blood oath by teaching it to her lover—Grand Marshal Adrian Clovis, the ruthless warlord who rose from a nobody soldier to the council's favored hero. Cassia tells Kairos that carrying Adrian's bloodline is the greatest honor of her life. When Kairos refuses to hand over the relic, Lukan and Cassia mock him as a sick kitten, a dying man who cannot even carry a bucket. Helen throws herself between them and is struck down. Something inside Kairos snaps. He tears off his robe, revealing the Hephaestus chains wrapped around his torso. The scraps of metal he tosses to the ground pin Lukan to the floor by their sheer weight. As Cassia and her soldiers stare in disbelief, Kairos speaks: she humiliated a man simply because he was without divinity. Today he will show her exactly what divine power is. The Heart of Cronos glows in his hand as the shackles fall away, and a column of blinding light erupts from Thorn Temple.