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I give her a soft, but tired smile and promise them both. “I’ll do my best to sleep tonight.” I yawn. “But perhaps a nap now will do me good.”

I begin to sink in the bed, pausing when Leuce shakes her head. “You’ve been summoned to brunch with Hera.”

My body shoots upright, the hairs rising over every inch of my skin. Sleep has been entirely chased away. “What?”

“Why do you think I woke you?”

“Why would she want to have brunch with me?”

Leuce’s eyes are troubled. “I have no idea.” She rolls her lips again before she stands. “But that doesn’t matter. You can’t refuse her.”

Hera’s lipspull into a tight line as her blue eyes fall heavily on me with displeasure. “Black again, I see.”

“I like black.”

Her lips pinch into the pucker of a forced smile and she waves a hand to the blue satin settee. The border of it is a carved wood, painted gold. The pergola that keeps the rays of the sun from touching our skin is crafted of gleaming white marble and carved pillars. It is adorned with wispy white fabric that hangs in the stillness of a day with no breeze.

I lower to the settee, beads of nervous sweat sliding down the line of my spine, not helped by the stifling heat of the day.

“Wine?” Hera asks.

“Just water, please.”

Hera scoffs and flicks her fingers. A girl I hadn’t noticed appears from between the curtains, holding a sweating pitcher of water. At the sight of deliciously large squares of crystal-clear ice bobbing in the pitcher, my mouth waters.

The girl bends carefully at the waist, pouring me a glass before rising. “Thank you.”

At my gratitude, her eyes flash with fear she quickly conceals as she tucks her chin into her chest, fading into the curtains once again.

Shook, I can’t hide the glare I slice to Hera. She smiles a cat-like curl of her lips as she hooks her finger around a glass of sparkling white wine. “Tell me, Persephone, how are you liking Olympus?”

I lift my glass and take a sip, letting the cool water quench the heat of my anger. The fire of injustice that ignites in my veins.

She knows exactly what I think of Olympus.

“Why am I here, Hera?”

Her brow arcs and she takes another slow slip of her wine. I watch as she holds the liquid in her mouth before swallowing. She wets her lips with her pink tongue. She is exquisitely beautiful, yet all I see is a snake.

“I’m just curious if my husband’s bastard daughter is enjoying herself in my realm.”

“Your realm?”

Hera leans forward, her eyes locking on me with unbreakable study. “Myrealm,” she purrs. “Tell me, Persephone, is the Underworld not yours? Does it not bow to you, bending to your every will?” She wets her lips again, and I can’t ignore the seduction that radiates from the motion. “Do mountains not rise for you? Do stars not fall for you? Are you not the Queen of the Dead?”

“What are you saying, Hera?”

“I only say that we are the same.”

If my spine weren’t already plank straight, it would have snapped to iron. “We are nothing alike.”

“Oh.” She smiles again. Again, there is a lethal danger to it that strikes at something inside me. “But we are the same. I began just like you, you know. The single obsession of an almighty God.”

Ancient intuition has gooseflesh raising on my skin despite the heat.

I suspect that Hera might be the one to truly fear here in Olympus. That her claws are sharper than Zeus’. That the poison she leaches is not only impossibly lethal, but that it is quiet. So quiet, one may not realize they’ve been attacked until they are gasping their very last breath.

“That doesn’t make us the same.”