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“But you’ve tried?”

Hypnos nods again. “I’ve tried.”

Minthe takes another sip, holding the wine in her mouth as she bobs her head. She swallows. In the same breath she says, “It’s only been three days. Persephone can’t stay awake forever.”

“This is true. As a human, there is only so long she can go before her body forces her to sleep.”

“And whenever that time comes, you will be ready,” I say.

“We will be ready, Hades.”

I sink into a chair. “There is so much she doesn’t know about Olympus. I failed to prepare her.”

“You have not visited Olympus since the fall of the Titans, Hades. It’s been millennia.” Minthe lowers close to Hypnos on the couch, seeking a comfort he does not deny as he slides his arm around her body, tucking her close.

Leuce and Minthe have been lovers for as far back as I can remember, their devotion to one another absolute even as they both take other partners and bring others into their bed to share between them. It is their relationship that I once attempted to model my own with Persephone. To convince myself that there could be love between sharing.

I had loved her. I’d also loathed every moment I’d been forced to share her.

Now, knowing her every sigh of pleasure had been an act—it made rage boil in my blood. Demeter needed to be stopped, stripped of her power and made to pay for all the suffering she’d dealt. Not only to me and Persephone, but to the world. To all of humanity, for her schemes had touched many.

Her hatred leached from the very earth in which her harvests sprouted, poisoning like toxins while humanity expected nutrients.

My fists clench as I think of the modern food industry in the living realm. The Gods have infiltrated the minds of those in power, encouraging them to package disease and addiction for profit. To build wealth while treating side effects, never offering the cure.

The realms of the Gods have spiraled for far too long. There is only so much humanity can sustain before they meet their end. I’ve seen it before. The death of entire civilizations wiped out because of the Gods’ manipulations.

“Zeus’ reign as king must come to an end.”

Hypnos’ eyes flash. “How do you intend to do something like that?”

“I don’t know. But the living realm can’t sustain his rule much longer.” I cast my gaze to the flames in the hearth, reveling in the burn. “The living realm is nothing more than one giant amphitheatre to Zeus. He’s always loved to watch blood spill.”

Dark vengeance stews inside me as Minthe stands. I pay her no mind as she moves around the room, appearing at my side with a tumbler of whiskey.

I take it from her with a nod of thanks, tossing the whole thing back in a single swallow. I revel in the burn. The God inside me revels in the burn.

And the burn becomes a need for vengeance I can no longer ignore. “The day will come when the world watches as Zeus’ blood spills, washing away centuries of a tyrannical rule.” The whiskey ignites a flame in my gut. “I vow it.”

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

Persephone

I am forcedto sit through another dinner, and another horror.

Nothing is as it seems here. Olympus might possess exquisite beauty, but it houses truly terrible monsters. The kind that even nightmares make quiver, pleading for reprieve.

My dinner threatens to rise as it has every night since my arrival, and Leuce’s hand grips my thigh under the table as though to hold me in place. Her touch is the only thing that grounds me. That keeps me steady.

But tonight is especially hard.

Tonight, a young girl, no more than seventeen, screams for the man she calls ‘daddy’, as he fights for his life against another much larger, much stronger man. A man who looks like a gladiator of old, adorned in bloodstained leather and armed with a short, fat sword.

The first night in Olympus, I’d received dinner in my rooms. The first night I witnessed Zeus’ idea of entertainment, on only my second night in the realm, I’d vomited in my soup bowl. Mythird night in Olympus, I’d been so sick with horror I’d been incapable of sleep though I’d managed to keep the contents of my stomach harrowingly put. Honestly, it’s a feat I didn’t vomit then, too, considering the horror I’d been forced to listen to. I say listen, because I hadn’t been able to make myself watch.

Tonight, though, I can’t look away. Looking away somehow feels disrespectful to the young woman who screams, begging for mercy from Gods who have none.