Chapter 9 Hera
Hera
What am I doing? Zeus’s words ring through me like the clearest bell.
Not just his words. His touch. His taste.
The feel of him inside me. I should have said no the moment I realized where our argument was heading, but with fear riding me so hard, I let myself be selfish, let myself sink into the pleasure I find at his hands.
Even if he’s the enemy. Even if I have active plans to see him dead.
Instead, I just rode his cock in the middle of the damned bar.
I just fucked my husband while my sisters’ and mother’s lives are in danger.
I stand there, feeling more lost than I’ve ever felt, and watch him walk away from me.
I should be grateful for the reprieve, but instead it’s one blow too many.
“I can’t do this.” I am calm, collected, and occasionally violent, but I have never let fear get the best of me.
There’s always a way out. I just need to think, except I can’t even do that right.
I’m barely showing other symptoms of my pregnancy, but it increasingly feels like my thoughts are wrapped in cotton.
My husband stops and looks at me, his strong brows pulling together. “Hera?”
“I can’t do this,” I say again, sharper. “What the fuck am I doing?” My voice gains a shrill edge, but I can’t stop it. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Zeus crosses the distance between us in three large steps and catches my elbows. “Look at me.”
I don’t want to, but I’m helpless to do anything but open to the deep, soothing command in his voice. His blue eyes contain so much, and I can’t read any of it. I choke out an exhale. “I hate you.”
“I know. Now, breathe for me. Slowly in and out through your nose.” He mirrors my breathing, guiding me through it until my thoughts start to settle. “That’s it, Hera.”
My hard-won calm slips through my fingers. I jerk my elbows out of his grasp. “My name is Callisto.”
Instead of snarling at me, Zeus’s expression goes contemplative. He searches my expression. “Callisto,” he says slowly, as if savoring it on his tongue. The same way he savored me just a short time ago.
It roots me in place. I can’t tell if I’m breathing. I can’t do anything but stare at Zeus…at… “Perseus.”
He closes his eyes and shivers—actually shivers. I don’t know if I take a step forward or if he does. All I know is that the new distance between us disappears as if it’d never been there to begin with. My husband reaches up slowly as if to cup my cheek.
His phone rings before he can make contact.
Something like regret blooms in his pale eyes. “I have to take that.”
“Okay.” I don’t move, though. I just whisper, “I have to go. I have things to do.”
“I know.” He takes one slow step back, and then another, and digs his phone out of his pocket.
The moment is over. Maybe it was never there to begin with.
Psyche and Eurydice were always so careful about who they slept with, claiming that sex made them fall for someone so much faster.
It’s never been a problem I’ve had, but I’ve also never slept with the same person for more than a couple months—and I’ve never lived with a partner.
People view us as stepping stones to power.
We are Demeter’s daughters, after all. Even our mother looks at us that way, though I suppose she’s also concerned with our having power, not just consolidating it for her.
As my mother has gotten fond of saying in the last month or so, she’s not going to be around forever; at least she can die knowing her girls are taken care of.
As if she’s not in her midfifties and thriving, war or no.
I watch my husband walk out the door, his phone to his ear, and call myself seven different kinds of fool for the small sliver of loss that cuts through me when he disappears from view.
He is not my ally. He can never be my ally.
I smooth my shirt with shaking hands. My body aches from what we just did, but there’s no time to think too hard about how much better the sex was today.
How he wasn’t cold and removed, how he was right there with me, our fury spiking desire higher.
How good it felt for him to hold me, just for a moment, after.
I shiver a little at the thought of next time.
No, damn it. That’s not the correct priority to be focusing on right now. I scrub my hands over my face. I have to get out of here. I push forward to shove out the doors…and almost trample Ixion in the process.
He catches my shoulders, his expression murderous. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I don’t bother to smile. That won’t reassure him at all. “Let’s go. We have a long drive and I have to be back by dinnertime.”
To his credit, he takes me at my word, even though he doesn’t look happy about it. Ixion and the others are incredibly protective of me. They also hate my husband, and why not? Historically, the number one threat to Hera is Zeus.
It will take several hours to drive into the country to where my mother and Psyche are currently overseeing Olympian civilians, but I can’t trust this conversation to a phone call.
It’s going to be a hard enough sell as it is.
Step down and abandon the city… As if that’s not the opposite of what my mother has spent her life doing.
Circe set me an impossible task, but the consequences of failing are too damned high. I have to make them see reason.
If I can get Psyche on my side, that will help immensely. She always knows the right thing to say, the right approach to take.
Ixion and Nephele wait with me while Imbros pulls the car around. The displeasure of all three is apparent, but none of them challenge me about being fine. They’re right to worry, but it’s not my husband who’s to blame.
It’s Circe.
Nephele climbs into the back seat with me. “It’s okay if you’re not fine, you know.” She waits for me to fasten my seat belt before doing the same. “He’s a monster.”
No, he’s not.
I bite down the words, not sure where they even came from.
Of course my husband is a monster: he’s Zeus.
Except he’s not entirely Zeus, is he? He’s also Perseus.
That’s one thing I’ve never bothered to consider, that the man I married wasn’t always the cold and fearsome leader of the Thirteen and Olympus.
At some point in the past, he was a baby, a kid, a teenager, growing up in the household of the last Zeus.
He was a true monster, and if Persephone had married him the way she was supposed to, not even our mother’s machinations would have saved her from harm—or possibly even death.
Surely that man didn’t save his violence and viciousness only for his spouses. Surely his children were subject to it as well.
My chest pings at the thought. My mother may be hard to deal with at times, and her plotting is often at her daughters’ expense, but we grew up knowing we were safe.
Out in the countryside, the suffocating rules of the city proper are nowhere in evidence.
No one cared if we were perfectly put together at all times.
No one was trying to use us as pawns to get to or hurt our mother.
We were just children, wild and beloved.
Even without knowing the details of my husband’s childhood, I know it wasn’t like that for him.
No one creates such a perfect icy persona unless they have to in order to survive.
His sisters went a different route—Helen with her golden perfection and Eris with her fury.
And Hercules left the city, though the story is still muddy on whether that was his choice or not.
So, no, I don’t think Perseus had a safe childhood. Certainly not a happy one. It shouldn’t matter. Bad things happen to all sorts of people, and while it’s tragic, it doesn’t excuse their perpetuating abuse onto others.
Perseus just…hasn’t done that. Yet. But he will, won’t he? Because he’s not just Perseus, someone who might have had a chance to leave the generational trauma behind the way Hercules apparently did.
He’s Zeus.
The changing scenery drags me from the death spiral of my thoughts.
The city falls in increments, tall buildings giving away to shorter ones which in turn give way to rolling hills and fields.
Although I have every intention of keeping my emotions locked down, my heart beats faster and my lungs feel like they expand to twice their size, as if I can taste the country air even through the windows.
Home.
It’s not, though. It hasn’t been home for nearly half my life at this point. Mother wanted us to have a clean break, so the interludes to the country became less and less common as we got older—as she became entrenched in the city’s intrigue.
“It’s beautiful,” Imbros breathes.
That’s right. Ze has never seen the Olympian territory outside of the city proper. I clear my throat. “It is.”
At least until it’s not.
It happens so fucking fast. One moment, we’re surrounded by the fields in late stages of harvest, and the next it’s a tent city. Ixion has to slow down as he turns onto a dirt road that leads into a converted field. The ground is a long way from frozen, so it’s a muddy mess.
All around us, the displaced citizens of the city move about in some semblance of a rhythm. People in every season of life, from a toddler barely able to walk to an elderly couple hunched with age. Kids run between the gaps in what I belatedly realize is a line of adults waiting for…something.
Ixion carefully navigates us through it all, slowly enough that it would probably be faster to walk.
I don’t suggest it. I’m too busy picking up signs of my mother’s influence.
We reach the head of the line, discovering it’s actually two lines—one for food and one for job allocation.
It takes a lot of work to keep a displaced community running, and while my mother has an extensive staff, I imagine they’ll need help.