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She continues, as if I haven’t spoken at all. “Like Hades had to have you, Zeus was compelled to possess me. All of me. I held his obsession in the palm of my hands for centuries until—” She shrugs. “Until something else, something younger and new caught his attention. He shattered my heart when he strayed,” she admits. “He demanded my loyalty, my faithfulness, without giving me his in return. I loved him, completely. I gave him all of me, but I wasn’t enough. He took another lover, and another, and another.” She takes another long sip of her wine, her sharp eyes never straying from mine. “But he’d already made me his Queen, you see. He’d already pledged me to Olympus, and the realm accepted me as its own. He could take other lovers. He could spread his seed far and wide, siring bastard after bastard. But he could never take my crown from me.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I tell you Goddess to Goddess, woman to woman, that love never lasts. The loyalty of man is impossible, and we must face it, sweet Persephone. The Gods are simply men with a little more power. Like Zeus, Hades will stray, and you will be left like me, shattered. Like me, you will need to pick up the pieces of yourself, to stand strong under the weight of the shame of his straying.” She lifts her chin high. “To bear the weight of the crown he will never be able to take and wear it through the centuries of faithlessness.”

Hera stands, moving around the table that sits between us to lower herself next to me on the settee. “I advise you now, Persephone, to consider long and hard the crown you choose to wear.”

Unease spreads inside me as I fight the urge to jump to my feet and flee. “I don’t know what you are saying.”

“There is great power inside you.” She inhales, as though she can taste the power she speaks of, savouring it on her tongue.Ribbons of fear coil around my spine, squeezing like a snake about to devour me whole.

I recall in this moment that Hera is considered a Patron Goddess, overseeing both peace and war. She can call upon both clear skies and harrowingly vicious storms. She is a contradiction of great and terrifying power, rumored to shapeshift. But the most fearsome power of the Goddess is her divine connection to the feminine. Her ability to influence fertility and labor. Her ability to sense the innermost strength of a woman.

“I’m human,” the words sound on a breath.

“Your body is human, but there is immortal power inside you.” She slides her hand into mine, weaving her fingers with mine as she peers deep into my eyes. “I can offer you immortality in which you will be able to explore your great power. I want you to consider your future as a woman. As a great and powerful Goddess.” Her eyes sweep my face, before lifting slowly back to my own. “Hades may be a God, but he is still a man, and men are weak. He may love you now, but love fades with time and lust makes a liar of loyalty. I am offering you the choice to wear the crown that will never again bow to the kingdom of men.”

“You want me to rule Olympus?”

“Oh, no.” She laughs. “I am offering you the chance to push your power where your power will not be wasted. You will be the princess of the greatest realm in the kingdom of realms, ruling with me.Beside me.”

“I thought you hated me?” I breathe, sensing that I should not deny her. That to do so would be far more dangerous than denying Zeus.

“I was under the impression you had no memory of your past life.” Her eyes narrow on me, studying me carefully. “Do you remember your past life, Persephone?”

“I—”Lie. The word is a shout in my mind. “I kept journals—in the Underworld. I’ve been reading them.”

Hera dips her chin, satisfied. “I did not like you. As the bastard daughter of my straying husband, a giftless goddess, you were a shame. A stain I am ashamed to say I preferred not to wear.”

“But now?”

“Now, you are far more powerful than you ever were before.” She inhales again, and I don’t miss the little shiver that pulses through her body. Like pleasure. “There was a time long ago,” she tells me softly. “A time when great power surged from the core of Olympus. When power poured from the land into the Gods. When the very realm nourished us. Now, we are forced to pull that power in slivers from the blood we spill, from the life we let drain into the sand of the arena. The realm is ravenous, and the powers that live within the Gods it feeds have been on the brink of starvation for thousands of years.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

She leans in again, her eyes shuttering before blinking open, heavy lidded and hungry with need that has nervous needles of fear pricking at the base of my neck. “The power inside you is everything it has ever been rumored to be. I didn’t believe it before. I didn’t believe the whispers of how you alone fed the Underworld. How the realm sustained you, powering the Gods who call the realm home.”

“And now?” I hate to admit I’m afraid of her answer.

“Now I sense that power inside you. Can practically taste it.” Her eyes drift over me with the hunger of one who has been denied sustenance far too long. “You are everything Olympus has needed since—since the vein to Atlantis—the realm in which suckled our own sank.”

I steal a shuddering breath. “Atlantis powered Olympus?”

I already know this, but I hadn’t been aware she knew it.

“Oh, yes. Atlantis is the heart of all realms.” She studies me again. “Or it was once upon a time.” Her lips curl in that dangerous smile once more. “I believe I’ve found a new heart now, though.”

I gulp when she leans in closer, wetting her lips and sighing as though tasting my very essence on them.

I think she can sense the powers of my unborn daughters. I pray they remain cloaked well enough that even a Goddess with the calibre of power Hera possesses will not sense them.

I stutter, “Y-you mean m-me?”

Hera purrs, “I would be foolish to ignore the power you hold.”

“You say you hated me before.” I need to bring this back to her. Bring something negative, the blame of it entirely owed to her to the table. “You want me now for the power I possess? I’m no good without something to offer, then?”

“Is anyone worth anything if they have nothing to offer?”