Chapter Twenty-Six Hera
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hera
Hera was always the first awake, especially in Europe, when everyone else was still groggy from the time difference.
She would rise from bed, Zeus snoring next to her, and dress before padding down to the breakfast room.
She listened as Cook fried an egg in the kitchen, as the groundskeeper quietly swept the back terrace, and felt a surge of satisfaction. She did so love this house.
Or perhaps London itself was what appealed to her. There was something fastidious about this city, the sidewalks always swept clean, the public trash bins constantly emptied. Londoners would have been horrified if trash bags squatted on the curb, the way they did in New York.
But today, Hera couldn’t even sit and properly enjoy her mug of tea. She had too much to worry about. Namely, that she was about to throw an engagement party for her son and a mortal woman she didn’t trust.
Hera had to go through the motions, of course.
She could hardly throw a party that was less than perfect.
Every detail had been meticulously planned, from the string quartet (usually hired by Charles at Highgrove) to the flatware (Repoussé, of course, pulled from storage and polished for the occasion).
In several hours, the florist would arrive with several trucks full of blossoms, which would be installed into flower arches and twisted around columns.
Julia kept protesting that she didn’t “need all this,” a statement that Hera ignored.
“All this” wasn’t for Julia. It was for Ares. Hera needed him to think that this match had her support, even if it didn’t.
Even if she was still trying to figure out why Julia was really here.
Her phone buzzed with a new message. Hera glanced down, surprised to note that it was from Gina, the mortal woman who managed TWL’s public relations. When Hera saw the photos Gina had attached, she sighed.
Then she rang for Hermes. Truly rang for him, that is. Hera walked down the hall to the housekeeper’s station near the kitchen and pulled on a cord, and the bell in Hermes’s room chimed.
Old houses had such lovely systems for summoning people.
Hermes appeared in the dining room a few minutes later, impeccably dressed in a button-down. You would never guess that he’d been out all night, chasing down Julia, who had worried Ares by ignoring his calls.
Hera gestured for Hermes to take the seat across from her. Magnanimously, she waited until he’d gotten his coffee before pouncing on him.
“What do you have to say about this?” she asked, and slid her phone across the table.
She watched Hermes study the photos that had been taken of Julia the previous evening.
She looked so…common, dancing on a table with one arm flung in the air, a strap of her dress sliding down her sweaty shoulder.
The light caught the rhinestones of that appalling bedazzled tiara. Really, who manufactured those things?
“Are these paparazzi photos?” Hermes asked, then shook his head. “Aphrodite,” he muttered.
Hera blinked. What did Aphrodite have to do with anything? “Julia and her friend were clearly having a bit of a spree.” Though Hera knew the woman’s name was Abby, she deliberately left it out; it was beneath her to recall the names of mortals. “But I thought I sent you for damage control.”
“That’s not her friend in the photos,” Hermes said softly. “It’s Aphrodite.”
Oh. Hera forced herself to remain calm as she reached for her tea mug.
“So Aphrodite is shape-shifting again.” It struck Hera as yet another of her daughter-in-law’s moral failings: this impulse to shed her own form, one that anyone else would kill to inhabit, and pretend to be another woman.
There was something cowardly in it, something escapist, as if Aphrodite couldn’t face what it meant to be herself.
“I think the real Abby was there at first,” Hermes explained. “Aphrodite made the woman feel sleepy, sent her home, and took over. The nightclub and all the”—he waved a hand—“all the accessories were her idea.”
“I take it the paparazzo was there at Aphrodite’s bidding,” Hera finished for him.
“I assume so, yes.”
Aphrodite was trying to get rid of Julia. She wanted Ares back, or at the very least, she didn’t want Julia to have him.
Hera had hoped that the family could put that whole sordid love triangle behind them, but here was Aphrodite, up to her old tricks.
Not that it was entirely Aphrodite’s fault. The mess Ares and Aphrodite had made—Hera had played a role in it, too.
It had been obvious that Hephaestus and Aphrodite were drifting apart. So Hera had intervened. That was what mothers did: they fretted about their children long after they were grown and attempted to help them as best they could.
There was no magical way to fix a marriage, of course.
Marriage was not a simple and uncomplicated thing like lust or rage, to be turned on or off the way you flicked a light switch.
It was as elaborate and complicated as one of Hephaestus’s inventions, with many nuances and moving parts.
No, Hera couldn’t draw upon her magic to make everything better for Hephaestus and Aphrodite, but she could make them long for companionship.
For the intimacy and understanding that come from a spouse.
She decided to brew her potion on Olympus. The island was the wellspring of the gods’ power; her magic was strongest there. And she needed this elixir at full force, if she wanted to trick the goddess of desire into feeling desires of her own.
That afternoon, at the council meeting, Hera had moved about the table refilling water glasses and iced teas. Aphrodite’s drink contained a little something extra.
Immediately after their meeting was over, she’d chased down Aphrodite, urging her to walk back with Hephaestus. But he was deep in conversation with Zeus, and Aphrodite, as usual, appeared restless. I’m walking back, Aphrodite had declared. Hephaestus, I’ll see you at the villa?
How stupid of Hera, letting the goddess out of her sight for even a moment.
She couldn’t have foreseen that Aphrodite would bump into Ares on the path.
The spell made Aphrodite feel an instant kinship with him, drawing her attention to all the ways she and Ares were similar—both of them adrift, both resentful of the other gods.
The potion should have made Aphrodite feel a spark of connection with Hephaestus, her husband. Instead it drove her straight into his brother’s arms.
Hera had never told a soul about her intervention, not even Zeus. Especially not Zeus. He might misunderstand, and blame her for the affair.
“These photos haven’t gone to print, have they?” Hermes asked, interrupting her thoughts. He was still frowning regretfully down at Hera’s phone as if he, not Julia, were the one in the cringeworthy photos.
“The Sun threatened to publish them with the headline Ellene Bride-to-Be Is Ready for Her Tiara! But no, nothing has been printed,” Hera told him.
The gods had to be very, very careful about controlling their image, or mortals might eventually notice that the same individuals kept showing up, generation after generation.
There was a spell in place to prevent humans from snapping photos of the gods.
If they tried to do so without the god’s permission, the photo would turn out blank.
But Julia wasn’t a goddess, and there were no protective spells around her.
“They aren’t printing the article?” Hermes repeated. “Did you bribe them?”
“Not with cash.” Hera sighed. “I’m going to need you to find me something on the prime minister.
Today, if possible.” That was the only trade the Sun’s bottom-crawling editor had been willing to make: burying Julia’s photos in exchange for a scoop on someone more famous to the unwashed masses than an Ellene. Someone political.
“So you’d better go to Ten Downing now. Follow him for a while, compel him if needed,” Hera concluded.
Hermes didn’t rise from the table. He hesitated, staring down into his coffee. “There’s one more thing,” he said slowly. “Have you sensed anything…unusual about Julia?”
Plenty. “You’re going to have to be more specific,” Hera admonished him.
“Have you attempted to use your powers on her? Because Aphrodite and I were both unsuccessful,” Hermes admitted, with visible reluctance.
“Aphrodite says that she was able to enchant Julia on Olympus. But after we left Greece, I tried to compel Julia and drew a blank. Last night Aphrodite tried to tug at her desires, and she couldn’t influence her, either.
Julia didn’t even seem aware that she was resisting us.
It was as if she had some kind of—of shield,” he added helplessly.
“That is strange indeed.” Hera didn’t say more. She was hardly about to tell Hermes that she, too, had encountered Julia’s strange defenses. Or that the Eye of Argos had failed for the first time in Hera’s memory.
If she’d learned anything from her husband over the years, it was that you didn’t need to share everything with those who worked for you. Especially not your shortcomings.
“Perhaps she was touched by the Fates as a child?” Hermes mused, fingers drumming restlessly against the table. “She could have inadvertently absorbed power from them? Or maybe she’s under some kind of protective spell.”
“I didn’t ask for your theories,” Hera said tersely.
Hermes flinched. “I only thought—”
“Your job isn’t to think, Hermes. Just go find me something on the PM to give those awful tabloid people, all right?”
Hermes’s expression shuttered. “Of course.”
Hera instantly regretted snapping at him. But Hermes had already vanished from the dining room, leaving nothing but a slight breeze in his wake that ruffled the edges of the tablecloth.
She stood and retreated with a sigh. It was a sign of how distracted she was that she didn’t even bring her tea with her. The conversation with Hermes had only left her with more questions than before.
Who—or what—was Julia, and why had she appeared among the gods?