Chapter 6 Zeus
Zeus
“Do you know where your wife is right now?”
I’m getting heartily tired of people asking me that question.
I’m getting even more tired of the fact that my answer is usually no.
Of course I don’t know where Hera is. She doesn’t talk to me.
Not more than she absolutely has to. And every time I turn around, she’s trying to slip a knife between my ribs.
Or cuddling up with that fucker Ixion.
I look up from the reports I’m wading through—more and more of absolutely fucking nothing—to find Atalanta standing in my doorway. “I thought you were supposed to be leading a team searching for Circe.”
Atalanta is a handsome Black woman with medium-brown skin and scars across her face and hands.
She wears her black curls back in a stylized mohawk.
For as long as I’ve known her, at least until this last year, she worked under Artemis.
But after the events of Minos’s party, she transferred to Athena.
I’ve always liked her. She would have made a stellar Ares. But I can’t deny having my sister in the Ares position benefits the city as a whole, and me especially. I don’t have to worry about Olympian forces turning against me when Helen—Ares—is in charge.
“I’m headed out again shortly.” She leans against the doorway, apparently settling in for a conversation I very much don’t want to have.
I sigh and motion Atalanta forward. “I assume you’re here to give me a report, not just to engage in gossip.”
“You know me, Zeus. I only gossip when I’m commanded to.
” She waves her phone at me. “I’ve sent you everything we have, as Athena ordered.
All of the video feeds around the area where Circe came out of the water came back clean.
There’s no sign of her or her people anywhere. Which means that either she’s a ghost—”
“Or she’s in our system.” I don’t know enough about this shit to know whether or not that’s easy to accomplish.
Our camera network is one of those things that has always fallen under the jurisdiction of either Apollo or Hephaestus, depending on what the specific ask is.
My father never concerned himself with the details, and he taught me not to as well.
It’s only now, when the wheels have come off the bus and everything is on fire, that I wish I knew more about the specific ways Olympus runs in the nitty-gritty detail.
It’d make it a lot harder for people to put one over on me.
“Or she has found her way into our system,” Atalanta confirms. She grimaces. “I’d almost admire her if she wasn’t set on death and destruction and all that bullshit.”
“She certainly is capable,” I say neutrally.
I was raised to look at everyone around me, except family, as a potential enemy.
Atalanta has always had proximity to the Thirteen, and she failed to acquire a title of her own.
Surely her ambitions haven’t quieted? “Why haven’t you taken advantage of the assassination clause?
You’re certainly capable enough and Artemis repaid your loyalty with pain. ”
She laughs, the sound deep and pleasing. “And inherit the mess y’all have made? Absolutely fucking not. I’d rather burn the place to the ground.”
That’s a troubling response, but I keep my expression locked down.
She’s not the only one who thinks about burning Olympus to the ground.
The sentiment seems to be more and more popular as time goes on.
Each day that passes brings new challenges and new ways to fuck everyone over. “I’d prefer to salvage it.”
“Of course you would. If you weren’t Zeus, who would you be?”
She starts to turn toward the door and I realize she never gave me the information that I hadn’t asked for but that she obviously possesses. “Atalanta.”
She pauses and glances over her shoulder, her deep brown eyes glinting in amusement. “Yeah?”
“Where is my wife?” The words feel dragged out of me.
I hate admitting any kind of weakness, let alone admitting it to a potential enemy.
Considering I can count people who are not potential enemies on one hand and still have fingers left over, it means I rarely admit weakness at all.
But if Hera hasn’t been dissuaded from her antics, then I need to know.
I’m already looking over my shoulder for half a dozen enemies.
I don’t need to be doing it for my wife as well.
At least not any longer. Not after her last attempt failed.
Atalanta grins. “She’s down at Wine About It, day drinking with that handsome fellow who’s always following her around. Seems like a great place for a romantic encounter.” She strides out of my office before I have a chance to respond.
All theater productions have been postponed until the dust settles. I’m surprised any of those businesses are open at all, let alone that Hera was aware of it.
Even as I tell myself to make the call, to have someone else keep an eye on her, I’m already in motion.
I grab my jacket and pull it on, heading out the door.
I have access to my email and all of the data systems through my phone.
I can look at the information Atalanta gathered on the way.
Not that there’s anything to look at. Just empty video feeds.
Circe has to be in this city. Where else would she go?
All the Thirteen, excepting Demeter, are in the city proper.
Hades is somewhat protected by the secondary barrier still surrounding the lower city, but Circe has proven she can get through Olympus’s barriers.
I have no doubt she made contingency plans for this very thing happening.
I’d be a fool to assume otherwise, and so would Hades.
He won’t be taking any chances, not with his people and not with his pregnant wife.
Persephone, at least, seems willing to listen to her husband and avoid taking unnecessary risks. Unlike her sister, my wife.
I almost call a driver, but I don’t think I can handle yet more people looking at me out of the corner of their eyes, aware of how my wife continues to make a fool of me.
Maybe she’s not planning another assassination attempt.
Maybe she actually is having an affair with Ixion.
He’s handsome enough. Why not make a fool of me in that way, too? She certainly gives me no softness.
She didn’t want this marriage. It was an act of political expediency.
It’s the same reason I married her, needing to get Demeter and all her various alliances on my side instead of working against me.
There’s no reason to resent my wife for not caring about me.
There’s no reason to care about her at all.
But then, I’ve been a fool in a number of ways. What’s one more?
I don’t call a car. I take one of my own, sliding behind the wheel for the first time in…
I honestly can’t remember. Even as a teenager and young adult, I always had a driver who doubled as a bodyguard.
Can’t be too careful with the heir to Zeus.
If there was an added bonus that he reported my every move to my father, then so much the better.
It feels strange to grip the wheel, to back out of the space, to leave the parking garage and turn out onto the mostly empty road. Strange…but not bad.
I make it to the theater district in record time.
The location Atalanta gave me is tucked off the main thoroughfare.
I park a few blocks away and walk. It would probably be wiser to stake the building out and see exactly who Hera is meeting, but each step has my barely buried anger rising higher.
We don’t have time for this shit. We don’t have time for infighting and backstabbing and political machinations.
We have a literal enemy in our midst and my wife is fucking around.
I shove through the doors hard enough that Imbros bolts up from where ze leans against a table and has zir gun halfway drawn before ze registers who I am. Even then, ze doesn’t immediately release the butt of zir gun. Ze eyes me with suspicion.
My wife couldn’t have asked for a better set of protectors…or are they her lovers, too? Why stop at one?
I hate this. I’ve had lovers in the past and I’ve never felt this kind of possessive jealousy.
It feels like there’s a monster inside me clawing to get out.
Even though this is an arranged marriage of convenience, at least for the first couple of months, I tried.
I was kind to her, as much as I’m able to be.
I brought her flowers. I found out what kind of food she likes and had it cooked for us.
I spent every moment in our bed ensuring that she was experiencing as much pleasure as I was. More, even.
And all my efforts were rewarded with her derision. She hates me. There’s nothing I can do to change that. There’s absolutely no reason for that knowledge to sit like a hot coal in my gut.
I tried to be as good of a husband as I could be for her, and she would have none of it. Instead, she plotted to kill me. And now, when our city is at its most vulnerable, she’s meeting up with Ixion, Imbros, and Nephele to pursue her selfish interests.
I barely register the fact that Hera looks particularly lovely today.
She always looks lovely. Though lovely is too tame a word for my wife.
Her beauty is violent and cutting, all angles and viciousness.
Her long dark hair is pulled back into a high ponytail, and though the color is high in her angled cheeks, she looks…
tired. Surely not. Surely I’m seeing things.
Hera would never allow for something as mundane as exhaustion to affect her.
She stares at me as I cross the bar to get to the booth that she sits in next to Ixion. Too close. Always too damn close. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing. I was under the impression you’d be spending the day at your orphanage.
” The orphanage has been the heritage of every Hera since the founding of Olympus.
My father found it to be a silly little hobby, but I’m aware of the good my Hera has done with that so-called hobby.
I worry that Olympus will see more orphans before this is done.
“I am. I was.” She looks away. “I just needed a moment.”
Something is off. Hera usually meets me with derision and malice, and I can’t remember a single time where she stumbled over her words.
I look at her again, closer this time. I note the faint smudges of darkness under her eyes, the smattering of what almost looks like freckles on her cheekbones and the way her hand shakes as she lifts her drink to her lips.
Something’s wrong. Actually wrong. Even Ixion, the bastard, can tell.
He hovers over her even more than he normally does.
“I need to speak with my wife,” I finally say. “Alone.”
He glares at me. “I don’t take commands from you.”
“Stop trying to order my team around,” Hera snaps, sounding almost like her normal self. Almost. “And stop staring at me like that.”
“Like what?” I ask it absently, still focusing on the clear evidence that something is wrong with her. Her color is off, too. A little too pale, almost green. “Are you sick?”
“Would you care if I was?” She sits back in the booth and crosses her arms over her chest. It’s infuriating how beautiful my wife is.
Hera waves a hand in a move that’s almost careless—if not for the tension in her shoulders.
“Run along, Husband. You’ve done your due diligence and checked up on your poor little wife.
As you can see, I’m alive and kicking and hardly up to no good. ”
“You’re always up to no good.”
Her lips curve the slightest amount before she seems to catch herself and stills the motion. “Don’t you have a war criminal to chase down? Or can you even call Circe that when all she’s done is poke at the cracks that already existed?”
Her words don’t echo Hermes’s, but they’re close enough that I narrow my eyes. “Have you been talking to Hermes?”
“What? She’s back in town?” Her surprise seems genuine enough, but I’ve learned that Hera is a superb actor when motivated.
If she’s working with Hermes to do… I don’t even know what the fuck Hermes is doing.
I barely had time to process the barrier being down, let alone contemplate all the things Hermes mentioned in her brief visit.
“Do you know something about why she left?”
Hera shakes her head slowly. “You’d be better off asking someone like Cassandra or maybe Dionysus. Hermes and I tolerate each other, but we’re hardly friends.”
Her words match what I’ve seen, but that doesn’t make them the truth. I turn away, barely catching myself before I drag my fingers through my hair in frustration. Hera and I aren’t alone. Her trio watch us with wary expressions, and there’s a bartender lurking in the shadows.
So many walls that she insists on throwing up between us.
If we had been a true partnership in the way I originally wanted, maybe we could have gotten the rest of the Thirteen to vote to take on Circe properly.
Maybe we could have united to stop the threat against the city before the conflict reached this point.
It’s not fair to blame Hera solely for that, but I can’t help blaming her in part.
She may have agreed to this marriage, but she never wanted it.
She never wanted me.
Before I realize what I intend to do, I’m already speaking. “Everybody out!”