Chapter 16 Zeus
Zeus
My wife falls into a restless sleep within minutes.
Unconsciousness eludes me, though. It often does these days.
Sleep is a vital part of maintenance to ensure your brain works properly to anticipate your enemies and see the knives threatening before they have a chance to slide between your ribs.
A contradiction to my father’s training to go without sleep, but my father was a study in contradictions.
Once he was satisfied that I could function without sleep for the approved amount of time, he moved on.
I didn’t. Insomnia became a fact of life, something to endure like I endured so many other little torments.
I managed to hide my late-night wanderings and inability to sleep from my sisters, but Hercules caught me on more than one occasion.
He never said anything—that’s not how he operates—but we would share a moment of perfect understanding before we’d go on our separate ways.
Fuck, I miss him. I hate him, too. Our father’s love, if you want to call it that, is a burden we four were meant to share in equal parts, but Hercules didn’t play the game.
He walked away and never looked back. I’m so jealous I can barely see straight.
I roll onto my side and prop my head in my hand. Hera—Callisto—lies on her back, one arm thrown carelessly wide and the other resting lightly on her stomach. Her stomach that feels different than it has previously.
I reach out with a shaking hand and hover it a bare inch above the gently rounded curve.
It’s not much; I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if we didn’t share a bed so regularly, but there’s no denying its presence.
In the light of the full moon, I finally allow myself to study the other changes I’ve been too distracted to notice.
Those marks on her cheekbones—broken blood vessels.
I would’ve registered them earlier if I was paying closer attention instead of letting my anger guide me.
She wears makeup to cover the marks during the day, but I’ve caught sight of them and wondered.
Her breasts are larger, too, her nipples several shades darker.
She’s…pregnant.
I don’t make a conscious decision to move, but I find myself outside the bedroom and stalking down the hall before my brain fully catches up to my body.
Surely I’m wrong. She would’ve said something if she was actually pregnant.
Except, this is Callisto. Of course she wouldn’t have said anything.
She wants me dead, and if she’s carrying the next Zeus, she can remove me with little consequence.
Suddenly it all makes sense. Why she decided to move now instead of months ago.
I’ve been such a fucking fool.
I still am, because I can’t stop the bright kernel of something light and hopeful taking up residence in the base of my throat…but it only lasts a moment before sheer terror snuffs the feeling out. I never intended to let my wife murder me, but if she doesn’t, if I live, if we annihilate Circe?
She’ll have the baby.
I’ll become a father.
I don’t know how to be a father. Or at least not a good one. I can barely handle being Zeus, and one could argue I’m failing at that spectacularly. But to take on a new role, one where the stakes are so much higher…
I lose time again. One moment I’m standing in the hallway, feeling like an abyss has opened up beneath my feet, ready to send me hurtling into an eternal darkness. The next, I’m out on the balcony again, my phone in my hands.
I dial the memorized number by rote, but even as I lift my phone to my ear, I don’t actually expect him to answer.
He hasn’t in a very long time. Whether that’s because I don’t call often or because he got tired of arguing with me about whether he should come back to Olympus now that our father’s dead…
Well, I know the answer to that, don’t I?
And it’s late. Any respectable person will be tucked into their bed with their two lovers, not answering their phone.
When the ringing clicks over to voicemail, I don’t think. I just dial him again. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I need my brother right now. He’s the only one who will understand.
He picks up the third time I call. “Damn it, Perseus, I told you I want nothing to do with your war or whatever the fuck you have going on right now.” He never calls me Zeus. I love him all the more for his rejection of anything related to the title. “I’m busy and—”
“My wife is pregnant.” My wife is pregnant. My knees buckle and I sink onto the metal chair on the balcony. This is real. This is happening.
The words hang between us. Of anyone, Hercules understands what I’m feeling right now.
He never wanted children. Eris doesn’t, either.
I think Helen does, but she’s always been the healthiest of the four of us, the one who refused to bend or break under our father’s abuse.
She’ll be a particularly vicious mother, but only to those who threaten her children.
But me? The heir, the one molded in our father’s image?
How can I be anything other than the monster he created?
My brother exhales slowly. “Congratulations?”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“Yeah, Perseus, I do. I know you want kids—and not just because you are a good, obedient Zeus who needs to breed heirs.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice has lost some of the venom. “Why are you calling to tell me about this?”
That’s the question, isn’t it? “I don’t know.
She hasn’t told me. I don’t know if she’s ever going to, at least until she can’t hide it any longer.
It’s not like we have a happy fucking marriage.
” Children were always going to be part of it, though.
It was in the contract we both signed before getting married.
Zeus needs heirs, and Demeter intends for her daughter to be the mother of those heirs.
The better to link her bloodline with the rulers of Olympus.
But that’s Demeter’s goal, not necessarily Callisto’s. “I…”
Hercules, damn him, doesn’t cut in and offer me a reprieve. He simply waits, allowing me to fight my way through the fear thickening my throat until I can barely breathe past it. “Our father was a monster.”
“Yes.”
Each word feels like it’s dragged from somewhere deep, bloodying me in the process. “He…abused us.”
“Yes,” he says simply.
That simple acceptance is like a dam breaking inside me.
Words pour forth, with only the night and my brother’s disembodied voice to witness.
“I don’t know how to do this. The only fucking role model we had was an abusive, narcissistic monster.
Mother died. We barely met Circe before she was gone, and Lamia didn’t last much longer.
How the fuck am I supposed to be a father?
I don’t know what to do.” I slump back in my chair, my bones feeling brittle and in danger of shattering.
“And she’s no better. Her mother loves her and her sisters, but Demeter’s a goddamn monster, too.
She didn’t hesitate to barter her daughters for more power.
I’m nearly certain she’s killed as many of her husbands as our father killed wives. What kind of parents will we be?”
Hercules is silent for several long beats. Finally, he says, “The kind of parents you want to be.”
A rough sound escapes me. It’s not quite a laugh, far too bitter and broken. “It’s not that simple.”
“I think it is.” There’s the faint echoing sound of footsteps.
My brother is pacing as he talks to me. “I never had much desire for children, at least not of my own, but there are a lot of parents around here. Our situation may have been somewhat unique because of the way Olympus is structured, but the sad fact is that abusive parents are a dime a dozen. We don’t have the market cornered on that experience.
And you know what? It doesn’t matter. The people I know might have some shit to unpack, same as we do, but they’re putting in the work to ensure their children have a better life than they did.
A safe life. A healthy life with loving parents who protect instead of harm. You can do the same.”
He makes it sound so easy, but it’s not fair to be mad. I just dumped a whole boatload of trauma onto his shoulders, and he’s handling it admirably. Now is the time to hang up, to release him from this awkward conversation, but I can’t quite make myself do it. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“This might be shocking, but I suggest you start by talking to your wife.” Hercules chuckles a little. “She could surprise you.”
“Maybe I’ll do that.” I don’t tell him that a mere hour ago I was on this very balcony, not entirely certain if my wife was going to push me off it or not.
My brother wouldn’t understand, for all that he has a nontraditional relationship with the man who used to be called Hades and his consort, Megaera.
Instead, I take a deep breath and force some brittle charm into my tone. “How are things with you?”
For a moment, I think he won’t allow me to change the subject, but finally he sighs again.
“They’re good. Really good.” He goes on to talk about the various changes they’re making to the kink club he works in, gossiping easily about the various parents in question he mentioned earlier.
They’re just names to me, and yet I allow my brother’s voice to soothe some of the ragged edges the night has exposed.
I know he’s doing it on purpose, just like he’s always done.
Roughly thirty minutes later, Hercules’s voice trails off. “Go back to bed, Perseus. Things will be simpler in the morning.”
I’m not so certain, but I understand that this conversation is over. “Thank you. For picking up. For everything.”
“You’re going to be okay. The only person who expects perfection is you. Try to loosen up.”
The problem is that if I loosen up, people die.
More people. That’s not my little brother’s problem.
He’s got his own life to live and he’s made his boundary incredibly clear.
He’s never coming back to Olympus, and so Olympian problems and politics and bullshit are no longer his business.
Again, jealousy pricks me, hard enough to draw blood.
What would it be like to walk away from all this? The very idea is inconceivable.
Who am I if I’m not Zeus?
I don’t have an answer to that question. I’m terrified of what it would mean to set aside the title I’ve spent my entire life preparing for. I would be no one. No goals, no power, no fucking personality. And no wife.
Callisto only married me because of the influence my title holds—and my promise to use that influence to protect her family.
She never wanted me, Perseus, the man. And I barely knew her, her reputation speaking more than the woman herself.
I think we’d had maybe one conversation in all the time she’s lived in the city proper.
Without my title, I’m nothing. I’ve experienced what nothing feels like at my father’s hands, and I will never allow it to happen again. No matter what plans Circe or Hermes or any of the others attempt to play out, one thing remains true.
When all the dust is settled and the bodies are buried, I will be Zeus.
Or I’ll be dead.