Page 35

Chapter

Thirty-Two

P ersephone

“Up you get!” A sharp hand falls on my thigh, and my heavy eyes pop open to see Leuce glaring down at me. Her hands, the assaulting one included, are plopped on her hips. She’s wearing the same scowl she had on when I slinked back into the room after my night out with Ares.

“Leuce,” I protest her name on a whine. “I’m exhausted.”

“Oh, and whose fault is that?”

“Argh,” I groan. “I already told you why I couldn’t sleep. I could hear her suffering and I had to do something.”

She narrows her eyes on me. “You didn’t have to do something alone .”

“I wasn’t alone. I had Ares.”

“You didn’t start out with Ares. You started out by wandering the halls of this diabolical place by yourself.” She heaves a sigh as she falls heavily onto the bed next to me. “Do you know how afraid I was when I woke, and you were gone? How afraid Hydra was?”

“I’m sorry.”

Leuce pins her eyes on me. “Don’t do that again, Persephone.”

I nod. “I won’t.”

“I’m serious. If something happened to you, if we lost you to this place—” She shakes her head. “I never would have forgiven myself.”

I sit up in the bed even though I swear I just fell asleep. It’s been days of very little, broken sleep. It won’t be long, and my body will no longer give me the choice of whether I want to sleep. I feel like I’m moments from slipping unwillingly into a catatonic state.

I say the only thing I can say, “I’m sorry.”

Leuce folds her lips in, releasing them on a slow roll. She sighs again. “I know. Me too. I’m so on edge here.”

“I get it.”

Her eyes drift over my face, surely seeing the darkening circles around my eyes. “You’re not sleeping much, are you?”

I shake my head. “I’m not coping with the ways of Olympus well.”

“You must sleep, my Persephone,” Hydra speaks into my mind, and my eyes flick to where she sits on the balcony.

The high golden sun shines brightly in the clear blue sky.

In the light of it, her sangria scales cast shimmering purple orbs over the white marble like the prisms scattered by a disco ball.

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 lips pull 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.

“ My realm,” 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.”

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?”