13. Where The Plan Finally Comes Together （And The Empress Realizes Too Late That She Had The Power All Along…） #2
Zeus’s color changed to a particularly worrying shade of puce.
Hera felt her heart sink. Nemesis had been shot by a Cupid’s arrow.
Nemesis, who was currently playing with the ends of blonde tresses for the whole world to see.
The woman was looking at her with eyes so smitten, underwear would be dropping any second now.
“Why on Earth would you do that? She is to be my wife! And now she is completely enchanted! Aphrodite, lift this veil from her eyes! She is mine and she cannot simply fall for Revenge! I forbid it! And again, I ask who shot me, because I cannot be feeling what I am feeling!”
“Ah, Zeus, I’m afraid I can’t just undo a Perfect Match—”
“That woman is Nemesis’s Perfect Match?” Hera all but spit out the words.
Abby looked at her, eyes wide and puzzled.
“Which woman?”
Zeus dragged a meaty hand through his curls, and the ceiling above them rang with thunder.
“Nemesis cannot be anyone’s Perfect Match; she is basically a demon! I will smite her off the face of the Earth!”
Aphrodite looked even more puzzled at the gods around her.
“Abigail, I can’t believe you paired a mortal with Nemesis!”
Thunder rolled close, and lightning speared the ceiling. Athena reached a protective hand to cover her wife’s abdomen.
“Charon damn you all, Zeus, would you take this entire thing outside? I’m sure Nemesis will oblige you. There are ladies present, and some of them are pregnant.”
In the corner of the ballroom, Nemesis lifted her head, her fingers still on the woman’s face, and looked back at Hera.
Their eyes met, and Hera felt an electric current fill the space between them.
Stronger than Zeus’s lightning bolt. Louder than his thunder.
She swayed. Nemesis dropped her hand. The woman in front of her pouted.
Hera could see her mouth moving, the thin hands reaching up to cup Nemesis’s jaw.
Nemesis lifted an eyebrow, waiting for Hera’s sign. Hera tried to speak, the lump in her throat growing larger, choking her.
Next to her, Zeus gasped. A sound so pathetic, so pitiful, Hera almost felt for him. She looked at him just in time to see a tear slide down his ruddy cheek, his eyes already filling with more.
Well, she had done it.
One sign, and Nemesis would lean down and kiss the woman. And their plan would be accomplished with a flourish.
She’d taken everything from him. One kiss. One kiss was all that was left, and he’d be a devastated, ruined man. And yet, Hera did not feel elation. Hera tasted victory. Hera tasted failure. And Hera tasted her own blood, as she felt her teeth bite through her lip.
The surrounding air was suddenly still. Dead. Nothing moved. Not a soul. Not a deity. There was a single gasp, and Hera was certain it was hers. When the paralysis lifted, in the center of the ballroom, three crones stood stooped, glaring at everyone around.
“The Fates!”
“The Fates are here!”
“It’s someone’s turn to die!”
“They came all the way here! You all know what it means when they come in person!”
“An immortal is about to be taken!”
“They never show up like this for anyone else!”
“Oh Helios, I still have so much to do! I’m not ready to face Hades, I owe her too much money to cross the Styx.”
Voices, whispers and shouts gushed from everywhere. Hera closed her eyes. She knew that across the ballroom, Nemesis was watching for her nod, for any expression that she should proceed and wrap this entire farce up.
The Inflexible reached into her pocket, and the shears caught the candlelight. The gods and goddesses closest to the crones staggered backward.
“Do it, Empress! Finish what you started! We wait for nobody.” The Inflexible’s broken voice rang around the ballroom.
Hera swayed harder. Aphrodite’s arm around her tightened. Nemesis’s eyes across the room turned glacial as she finally noticed the Fates. She looked at the crones, at the shears, and straightened entirely. Hera felt her gaze deep in her bones.
Forgive me, forgive me…
She wondered if Nemesis would, knowing that she had been instrumental to Hera’s own death. She also wondered why she had still not given the nod. After all, this was just as it should be, now that the damn Cupid had shot Nemesis and Hera could never have her.
Have her?
Hera dropped her flute, glass shards spilling all over the floor in front of her.
Have her?
“Ah, what’s happening?” Abby’s voice carried a note of panic. “All I did was ensure that Nemesis stops fighting her Perfect Match, since she looked certain to mess it up out of sheer stubbornness and isolationist tendencies.”
Hera barely heard the words.
Her life might be over, with the remarkably steady hand of the Inflexible Fate holding the scissors, but she’d be damned if she’d go along with this farce.
If she did nothing else, she’d confess to one thing and one thing only.
Among her myriad of sins, among her eras of perceived villainy, there was one truth that deserved to see the light of day. Tonight.
Hera loved Nemesis. She loved this stubborn, impossible demon-woman, and no other would have her!
“Am I not the Empress?” She asked, her tone so quiet, the entire ballroom strained to listen. The bears sang out a somewhat subdued “Is she not the Empress?” She could see their tears. Dammit, she hoped Aphrodite would take care of them.
The Inflexible lifted her watery, unseeing eyes, meeting Hera’s gaze.