Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 95187 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95187 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“Circe is here.” I don’t mean to say it, but I hate this pregnant silence. We don’t have time for this. We need to move, to plan, to orchestrate some kind of defense. We squandered what little time we had to prepare for her with infighting. Now she’s here and all that’s left to do is scramble for our lives and those of every person in the city.
Or surrender.
Zeus plants his hands on the table and half rises. He’s an athletic white man with dark-blond hair and piercing blue eyes. He’s handsome in the way of all Kasios family members, but where Ares and Eris—and even Hercules—are the beauty of warmth, Zeus is all ice. His cold doesn’t thaw now. If anything, the sensation of a freezing barrier closing around him only seems to grow. “The time for personal vendettas and bullshit is past. The enemy is at our gates, and if you think Circe will spare a single one of us, you’re a fool. She has more reason than most to hate the Thirteen and Olympus. She’ll show no mercy. She won’t be satisfied until the city is reduced to rubble and every person in this room is dead.” He takes a deep breath. “And that’s why I’m calling for the vote of war. We need to attack the ships before more arrive, to cut Circe down before she has a chance to do more damage.”
I accidentally catch Hera’s eye. I look away almost the moment I make contact, but even in that brief glimpse, I see satisfaction. The idea of the Thirteen ceasing to exist doesn’t seem to bother her. It’s strange. Her family has more connections to the various members of the Thirteen than most—her sister married to Hades, her mother occupying the title of Demeter.
Those connections should make her fight all the harder to protect the Thirteen. They don’t. Maybe she craves a simpler time, before her mother became Demeter and brought her and her sisters into the city proper. It’s those connections that resulted in her becoming Hera, a bargain to protect her family—not to seek power herself.
It’s a similar enough story to several of the past few Heras. Our current Zeus’s mother was a social climber, but Circe was just a beautiful woman with no connections. The Thirteen sure as fuck didn’t protect her when the last Zeus picked her up off the street and married her in a whirlwind ceremony. No one stepped in as he swept her off to a honeymoon that only one of them returned from. A swimming accident, he said. His fresh bride drowned in the ocean. Her body was never recovered.
Now we know why.
She’s back for revenge, and if her plan didn’t involve a navy laying siege to the city itself, I would step back and allow her to do it. Except the man who hurt her has been dead for nearly a year. Our current Zeus was a teenager when all of that happened, and while I was freshly named Poseidon at the time, I wasn’t much older. Perseus couldn’t be expected to do anything. Not when his father saved the worst of his torments for his eldest son. Or that’s what the rumors say.
But I should have done something. The guilt for the past Zeus’s actions have been a weight for the entirety of my tenure as Poseidon. I’m one of the three legacy positions. I should be able to use my power to protect people. Except nothing works like it should in Olympus.
The only people I can protect are my people, so I’ve spent the last decade focused on doing exactly that. Maybe it was a mistake not to fight for more power, not to try to expand my circle of protection past my territory… I don’t know. Even if I had tried to push back against Zeus’s abuse of power and people, I’m experienced enough to acknowledge that nothing would have changed.
Except there would be someone else of my bloodline occupying this seat right now, observing the same bitter rivalries play out, again and again.
While I’ve been musing, a heated discussion has started. Not that I need to be present to know the familiar routes this conversation takes. Zeus makes a declaration. Immediately, Artemis and the new Hephaestus begin listing all the reasons he’s wrong. It doesn’t matter what statement he begins with; it always progresses the same. Now Demeter will step in, making a big show of striving for peace while really riling up both sides. Hermes and Dionysus will whisper back and forth, lobbing a well-aimed insult from time to time to increase the chaos. All while Hades and Hera watch with unreadable expressions on their faces.
Except Hades and Hermes aren’t here.
I clear my throat. “We’re missing two key members.”
“A vote of war only needs a majority. They aren’t necessary.” Zeus meets each person’s gaze in turn. “As long as those of us here tonight are united.”