Chapter 10 Zeus
Zeus
The call from Athena took me on a wild-goose chase.
A woman who might be Circe was spotted in the university district, which led to two hours of combing every street and business with nothing to show for it.
I’m practically weaving on my feet when I stumble through the doors of Dodona Tower.
I need some food and possibly a catnap before I figure out the next steps.
The only warning I get for what’s coming is the receptionist looking a little guilty. When the doors open to my floor, my sisters are waiting for me.
Eris waltzes over, wearing a long dress that ghosts over the floor, and presses a glass of scotch into my hand. “Sit down before you fall down.”
I stare at the drink and then at her. “What the fuck is this?”
“An intervention,” she snaps. “Now, do what I say or I’m going to take you out at the knees, and you’re too old to bounce back from that as easily as you did when we were kids.”
I blink. Eris has always been the sharpest of my siblings, but usually she keeps that part carefully concealed. Apparently her husband is rubbing off on her. Ares steps in front of Eris and motions to the chair in my office—but not the one behind my desk. “Sit down, Perseus. It’s time we talked.”
Even she looks a little different than normal.
MuseWatch once coined Ares—Helen, then—as the most beautiful woman in Olympus.
It’s still there, but she’s gained an edge that she never possessed before.
With her hair slicked back and her clothes nondescript and dark, she almost seems like a different person.
Until I catch her eyes and see the familiar stubbornness there.
I could storm out, but I’m so damn tired that sitting down with a drink sounds really fucking nice right now, even if it comes with a conversation I don’t want to have with my sisters. With anyone. Maybe Hercules had the right idea. He left Olympus years ago and hasn’t looked back. Not even for us.
I drop into the chair and motion for them to get it over with. “Commence with the intervention.”
My sisters exchange a glance. They don’t look overly similar—Ares with a warm summer beauty that literally stops traffic on occasion and Eris with the same cold glamour our mother possessed.
Ares’s red highlights show in the lamp behind her and Eris has hair dark as the darkest night.
And yet they are undeniably related. It’s there in the careful way they hold themselves, our father’s training running strong despite our best efforts.
Ares is the one who begins. She perches on the edge of my desk and crosses her arms over her chest. “The coup was a risk and I agreed to help because I saw the benefit of dealing with Circe once and for all.” She sighs.
“Also, you didn’t give me much choice, seeing as how you’d already started the damn thing before talking to me. ”
I sigh. “But?”
“But you failed,” Eris snaps. “The rest of the Thirteen would have forgiven damn near anything if you were successful, but you went around them, undermined their power, and Circe still escaped.”
“The blockade is gone. That’s a success.”
“Tell that to MuseWatch.”
I frown. “I did. MuseWatch ran with my narrative this morning.”
My sisters exchange a look. Again, Ares speaks first. “That was the original story, but there have been two in the last hour debating whether you’re abusing power and what recourse the citizens of Olympus have if you are.”
I curse. Of course. I should have known it wouldn’t be as simple as leaking a single story. I did know, but I’ve been a little too busy to set up the promised follow-up interview with Clio Mousa. “I’ll deal with it.”
“That’s not all.” Ares shifts nervously. “You’re behaving erratically. It’s starting to worry our allies.”
What few allies we have left. I take a too-big drink of my scotch, relishing the way it burns down my throat and warms my stomach.
“We’re hardly in a normal scenario right now.
Never in the history of Olympus have we existed without the barrier.
There are enemies within the city, and surely our allies can see that we need to move decisively. ”
“Perseus.”
Every time they say my name, it snaps me back to earlier today, to my wife’s lips forming it, to the softness in her tone that I’ve never heard before. I scrub my free hand over my face. “What?”
Another of those shared glances. Eris clears her throat, not quite meeting my gaze.
“Look, I know I walked away from the Aphrodite title when you needed me there, and doing so hurt your position. I realize I don’t have much of a leg to stand on, but you’ve been seen all over Olympus acting out of character.
And I’m not just talking about the coup. ”
They’re not wrong about my unraveling at the edges, but I’m not in the mood to cooperate. If they want to do an intervention, they can spell out exactly what I’m doing that’s so worrisome. “If you’re not talking about the coup, what are you talking about?”
Eris hesitates, actual worry flickering over her expression. “Today—in the middle of the day—you were recorded fucking your wife in a godsdamned bar in the theater district.”
I’m out of my chair before my brain fully processes her words. I snatch the phone out of her hand, horror and fury rising with each racing beat of my heart. “Who the fuck dared record us?” I can count on one hand who knew we were there in the first place.
If I thought for a second that Ixion was responsible, I’d be happy for an excuse to kill him with my bare hands.
But as soon as I see the video, I know it couldn’t have been him.
The short recording is grainy in a way that suggests it was an interior security camera.
That means there’s only one possible culprit. “The bar owner sold this to MuseWatch.”
“That’s not really the point,” Ares cuts in. “The rest of the Thirteen already didn’t have much confidence in you, but you’re actively undermining it. You look like a fool. Everyone believes Hera and Circe are leading you around by your nose in turn.”
I’m barely paying attention. Upon closer inspection, I’m only moderately relieved to note that the footage is too low quality to see the details of our nudity.
Not that it matters; the motions themselves are clear.
The video stops when we do, cutting off well before that moment where she said my name, the moment that might have been a turning point for us.
It won’t be now.
Olympus has made sure of that.
This fucking city. It takes and takes and takes, and the trade-off might be power, but what the fuck is the point of power when I can’t protect my sisters, can’t even shield my wife from a godsdamned sex tape?
“Perseus.” Eris snaps her fingers in front of my face.
When I look up, she snatches the phone from my grasp.
I fully expect her to lay into me, to be like Ares and belabor the point that my relationship with my wife should be the least of my concerns right now.
She doesn’t. She glances at the phone and sighs. “I’m sorry.”
Ares pushes off the desk and flops into the chair next to mine.
She pulls off the band holding her hair back and drags her fingers through the newly freed strands.
“This is such a clusterfuck. We evacuated everyone to save them from the invasion, and now there’s no invasion and no blockade.
We look like fools. We’re losing the confidence of the civilian population, disrupting their lives for no damned reason. ”
“There is an invasion,” I snap. “It just looks different than we expected.” Except I’m not certain of that, am I?
Even after all the time I wasted today, I’m still not sure the woman spotted in the video was actually Circe.
If it was, she allowed herself to be seen.
Like she wanted me to play the fool, searching for her when she’s nowhere to be found.
Like she wanted me distracted.
“Maybe she’s not in the city at all. At least not anymore.” I sit upright. “Are we tracking people leaving for the country?”
“With what manpower?” Ares throws up her hands and slumps back into her chair. “Everyone is either on perimeter, searching for Circe, or managing the civilians who waited to evacuate. There’s no one left to monitor those on the road, and why would there be? They’re allowed free movement.”
Eris moves around to take the spot that Ares vacated against the desk.
“Perseus.” She waits for me to give her my full attention.
“You’re grasping at straws. We might not know if Circe is actually in the city, but what we do know is that the Thirteen are fracturing and the city will pay the price of that fracture.
That’s the problem that needs to be your focus.
We have all the resources available searching for Circe.
We need you to stabilize the public’s perception of what’s going on in Olympus.
You need to convince the rest of the Thirteen that you’re not a power-mad dictator in waiting. ”
I don’t care about Olympus or the Thirteen.
I don’t say it. I can’t admit that finally holding the Zeus title, the one thing I spent my entire life working toward, has only made it clear that this isn’t what I want.
It’s never mattered what I desired, though.
It’s about duty. “If you feel so strongly about the stability of Olympus, you never should have stepped down as Aphrodite.”
Ares curses, but Eris doesn’t flinch. She meets my gaze steadily.
“Walking away from the title doesn’t mean I stop being able to observe, to think.
You need to take your own advice, Perseus.
Stop reacting and think. Sele isn’t me, but they’re doing a fine job as Aphrodite.
More than that, there isn’t another alternative. ”
Alternative. To power, to the titles, to… Why does this keep coming up? I narrow my eyes. “Have you been talking to Hermes?”
She blinks. “I haven’t seen Hermes in…months? I don’t know. A long time.”
“She’s around,” I mutter. I didn’t take her comments earlier seriously, but now I wonder.
If bringing down the Thirteen has truly been her goal all along, then she was a traitor from the start.
“She popped by my office to tell me that we should dismantle our system of government and set up…something.”
“How does she plan on doing that?” Ares shakes her head. “The Thirteen have always existed. It’s a fundamental part of what Olympus is.”
“So was the barrier, but look at it now.” Eris shrugs when we both glare at her. “I’m not saying we should rush to topple what’s left of our government. Just pointing out that things are changing—have been changing for some time.”
If nothing else is true, that is. “We don’t need change.
We need stability.” The words feel dragged out of me.
I’m so fucking tired, but there’s no one else.
There’s never been anyone else. Trying to find Hera before the video does so I can be the one to break the news to her is a fool’s errand.
This is Olympus; gossip travels faster than the speed of light.
“And we can’t have true stability until Circe is removed as a threat. ”
Eris shrugs. “You’re not wrong, but there’s a lot of damage that can be repaired in the meantime. The coup with Poseidon and Hades can be spun to prove that the three legacy titles are in an alliance for the first time in generations. That’s powerful. We just have to use it.”
“It won’t be enough to bring Artemis around.
” Ares laces her fingers behind her head.
“She hates our entire family and your stepping down as Aphrodite hasn’t changed that.
You’re right that Sele was a good choice for Aphrodite, but they’re going to play things safe to protect themselves.
Same with Hephaestus. Xe will look after xir people, because that’s where xir loyalty lies.
Their respective votes about the attack on Circe’s blockade prove that.
If either of them makes alliances, it won’t be until the dust settles. ”
“Dionysus isn’t cooperating, either.” Eris examines her nails. “It seems he’s in your wife’s corner now.”
I truly wish I could say that her corner and mine are one and the same. They aren’t. “Demeter is mercenary, but she knows where her best interests lie. She’s worked too damn hard to marry one of her daughters to me to undermine that now.”
“Maybe,” Ares says almost reluctantly.
My sisters exchange another one of those speaking glances. I hate it when they do that. “What?” I snap.
“Demeter’s loyalty only lasts as long as your power does.” Ares stretches and shoves to her feet. “So let’s do what we have to in order to ensure your power doesn’t falter.”
I look from her to Eris and back again. “Athena is in my corner. You are.” I nod to Ares.
“Apollo is.” I reach for another name, but come up short.
Fuck. Four out of thirteen is shit odds.
“I’ll talk to Poseidon and see what I can do.
Hades, too, for that matter. We worked together well during the attack on the ships.
We can come together again to defend the city. ”
“I hope so.” Eris plucks the bottle of scotch from my desk and takes a long drink. “Because I’m pretty sure you only have one chance to get this train back on the tracks. If you fail…”
Failure is not an option. My father’s voice haunts me, a nasty little reminder that Zeus has never failed, and if I do, I’ll be the first. That was the metaphorical whip he used against me countless times over the years. Don’t fail the title, the family, him. I clear my throat. “If I fail?”
She meets my gaze. “Don’t fail, Perseus. For all our sakes.”