Chapter 3 Zeus
Zeus
I wake all at once. It’s a trick I learned at too young an age; there’s no use dwelling on why.
I reach over without thinking, touching the empty side of my bed where my wife normally sleeps.
Cold. She’s been gone for some time. Whether she woke early or barely waited for me to fall asleep before she left… It’s better not to think about that.
Because then I’ll start wondering where she went, and who she’s with.
If she left my bed to go straight to Ixion’s.
There’s nothing I can do to stop her. Trying would be the height of foolishness and would only serve to make me look weak.
A man who can’t control his own wife. I climb out of bed and start the process of putting myself together.
It’s all unraveling. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve fought and bled and suffered for. Olympus. My city, my people, my place in this world.
I’ve never felt more like a pretender than as I shove out the doors of my building and stalk down the street toward Dodona Tower.
On a normal day, the sidewalks would be filled with people heading to work or running errands.
Now, it’s a ghost town. The vast majority of the city has evacuated to the countryside in an effort to keep civilians out of the way of Circe’s threat of attack.
An attack that never quite manifested. I want to believe it’s because we moved fast enough to thwart her, but there were days between the start of her blockade and the moment I boarded the Penelope to find she wasn’t there—hadn’t been there in some time.
We have to find Circe.
It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world realizes the barrier that kept us separate and safe is down.
I doubt it can be repaired, even with the part Circe stole all those years ago.
She ensured it would fail eventually, and then she went on to make sure of it with a bomb that took out what was left of the machinery keeping it up.
The outside world will come, first with curiosity and fascination, and then with force.
We have a small window to prepare for it, and we can’t very well fucking do that with Circe remaining an active problem.
More than that, I have no faith that the Thirteen will be able to come together to protect Olympus from the next threat.
They wouldn’t even vote to take down the blockade, and that was a clear and present danger to the city.
I whip out my phone and call Apollo, barely waiting for him to answer before I bark, “Update.”
“There’s nothing.” He sounds exhausted. “My team has been through every camera around the perimeter of the city. It’s tedious but easy enough now that most of the population isn’t present.
She’s not here.” He sighs. “Or she knows about the cameras and has taken great pains to avoid them. But, Zeus, no one is perfect. She should have slipped up.”
She doesn’t have to be perfect when the Thirteen are a fucking mess.
There are only a handful of us who have held the titles more than a year, and none have experience in anything resembling what we’re dealing with now.
We’ve been coddled, the people holding the thirteen titles playing at being modern-day gods, untouchable in the way only the rich and powerful can be.
All those power games seem so petty now.
“Hermes doesn’t slip up.”
He curses softly. “There’s no sign of her, either. I know she’s in the city—she called Cassandra yesterday to tell her to stick close to me—but I’ve caught no evidence of her on tape.”
If Hermes, that fucking traitor, can do it, then it’s possible Circe can as well. We clearly have holes in our security, and have for quite some time. “Keep looking.”
“I will.” He hesitates. “Are we going to talk about the fact that you went against the Thirteen’s vote and attacked Circe?”
I don’t want to. The temporary coup worked to break the blockade but not to remove the greater threat. Hard not to see it as a costly failure. “It needed to be done.”
“There are laws for a reason,” he says quietly. “I’ve supported you since you became Zeus, but that support is not unconditional. If you keep breaking the laws, I’ll be forced to stand against you.”
His feelings are nothing more than I expected.
There’s a reason I only told my sister—Ares—and Athena about the coup.
The fewer people who knew what I intended, the fewer people who could stop me.
Apollo is a good man, and while that’s benefited me to this point, it won’t hold if I have to keep doing what’s necessary to protect the city.
“I understand.” I hang up and quicken my pace, but it’s not fast enough to outrun the insidious voice tucked into the back of my brain.
Your father never would have let this get so out of hand.
He would have killed Minos the moment he realized something was off about the man, without giving a fuck about the consequences.
He was too damn charming to actually see consequences… another way you’re failing.
It would be a lot easier to banish that voice if it didn’t speak truth.
One of the first things I became aware of as a child was how I’d never be as good as my father.
Though good is a strange word to use, considering the violence and destruction he subjected anyone under his control to.
He killed three of his wives, including my mother.
Well, two of them. Circe was the shortest marriage of the three, only lasting a week after being forced to say, “I do.” He saw her on the street and had to have her, a magical story of love at first sight, according to MuseWatch.
The truth is significantly less romantic.
My father was a conqueror; he couldn’t stand the thought of something beautiful existing outside his control.
And Circe was beautiful. I don’t remember her well—I was in my early twenties and wanted nothing to do with the prospective stepmother who was only a few years older than me—but I remember that.
She was a lean white woman with dark hair and a spark in her green eyes that made me sick to my stomach.
Because I knew exactly what my father would do to that spark, how he would crush it out of existence and leave her a shell of the person she’d once been.
At least until he grew tired of her rebellion and she suffered an unfortunate accident.
But even I didn’t expect him to come back from the honeymoon a widower.
Despite his monstrosity—or maybe because of it—Olympus ran smoothly under his rule as Zeus.
I can hardly say the same, for all my determination to create a better world than the one he controlled.
The longer I hold the title, the more I wonder if my father wasn’t onto something with how he conducted himself.
He never had to deal with assassination attempts, an unruly Thirteen who refused to vote to benefit the city, and a godsdamned siege.
My phone rings as I step through the doors of Dodona Tower. It’s early enough that the receptionist behind the massive counter is still blinking blearily as they sip their coffee. Their eyes go wide when they see me, but I wave them off as I dig my ringing phone out of my pocket. “Yes?”
“We found where she made landing.” None of the exhaustion weighing me down is evidenced in Athena’s cool voice. She’s been working herself to the bone, same as I have, but it never seems to touch her.
Another way you’re proving yourself to be an inadequate Zeus.
I ignore the inner voice. “Tell me.”
“They killed Poseidon’s sentries and there are half a dozen boats cleverly hidden in a copse of trees a few miles north of the bay.
It’s inside where the barrier once stood, but only just. She could have just as easily cruised another half mile north to coastline we aren’t able to cover with our numbers.
She wanted us to find them, but not to find them fast. They weren’t visible until we actually went into the trees. ”
Of course it’s intentional. Everything that woman has done is intentional.
Avoiding the search party entirely wouldn’t send the message that she could have come ashore whenever she felt like it.
It might actually allow us a moment of peace, which is obviously something Circe will never do.
She’s been playing head games from the start. “Where did she go?”
“How the fuck should I know?” A sliver of frustration works into Athena’s voice. “I’m not a tracker, Zeus. She could have cut into the city from here without issue, or skirted the city limits and headed west toward the country. I have no way of knowing.”
“Send the information to Apollo. A camera has to have caught her.”
“I will. Atalanta is taking a team west to see if there’s any evidence they headed in that direction. I’ll work with Apollo and Ares to create a grid for searching the city in this area.”
I don’t bother to point out that her grid search didn’t work particularly well when Ariadne, Icarus, and the Minotaur were on the run.
I wanted them alive, and instead, Ariadne and the Minotaur sailed off and now Icarus is under the protection of Poseidon, one of the few people I can’t afford to piss off.
As one of the three legacy titles—him, me, and Hades—we hold unprecedented power among the Thirteen.
I thought bringing the three of us together in a temporary coup would turn the tide of this siege, but Circe was several steps ahead of us. “Do it.”
I take the elevator up to my floor. My floor.
The very idea is absurd. I might have scoured every bit of my father’s love of gaudy gold from this place, but it still feels like I’m trespassing, as if I’ll turn around to find him looming in the doorway, ready to cut me down to size with a few well-chosen words.