Even if Zeus were into men, I would have fought with everything I had if he decided he was interested. Not only did Zeus not care a shit about consent, it always brought Hera drama. Maybe she had changed, but I highly doubted it. Hera’s antics towards Zeus’s victims and offspring were legendary.
Still, all I knew was stories. I’d never met her before tonight. Hephaestus knew her the best out of all of us, and he thought we should trust her, no matter what kinds of nonsense came out of her mouth. The fucking Queen of Olympus wanted to live among mortals and start a business from scratch? Was I the only one who thought that sounded like utter horseshit?
I knew she wanted Zeus dead. That was the only thing out of her mouth I believed. I also knew it was true she took everything he did out on his victims because she couldn’t come at him directly, no matter how cruel I found that. Hephaestus’s weapon changed that. She could get revenge on her husband for being utter shit.
I just didn’t think she would stop there. She’d been queen a long time, but she was always second to Zeus. I had no doubt Athena, Ares, and Poseidon were plotting to get rid of Zeus if they could. I just thought Hera wanted them out of the way, so they didn’t challenge her either with that weapon in play.
I was pretty much fine with killing all three of them. Poseidon was mine, and Athena’s death belonged to Pavlina. And really, who didn’t want to kill Ares? I’d met Ares before. He spent a lot of time on Earth pretending to be the God of War. Mostly, he stirred shit up and got people fighting and would disappear when he got bored.
I loathed when he would visit with Poseidon, and I’d have to be in the same room. Ares was just unpleasant in addition to being dumb. He got off on watching people hurt each other. If he wasn’t placing bets with Poseidon over which villages to get to slaughter each other next, he was strutting around like a peacock and demanding everyone tell him he was pretty.
Aphrodite was shallow and vain, but I think that was just because she was gorgeous, even for an Olympian, and she grew up with everyone making her think that mattered. Ares was just as evil as Aphrodite when it came to shallowness, but he didn’t have her grace. Everyone just volunteered to tell Aphrodite she was beautiful like that was the only important thing in the world. Ares went around posturing and begging for compliments, and it was just sad. His ass wasn’t even that nice, and he constantly talked about it.
Now that I thought about it, I wouldn’t mind eating Ares either. A lot of the seaside villages Poseidon set me against to slaughter was because he had a bet with Ares, and he was losing. If they weren’t meddling with people’s lives like that, I wouldn’t have been forced to slaughter entire villages so Poseidon could win some dinars off Ares.
I was getting pissed just thinking about it, and I needed to be focusing on Hera. We were all trained assassins, but none of us moved to put a knife at her throat. It wouldn’t have killed her for good, but I didn’t even snap her neck with my tentacles so we could figure out what to do with her.
Why didn’t I snap her neck? Everyone had weapons at their ankles, but most of our blades were on that incredibly ugly side table of a fat baby drinking wine. That had to have been a gift from Dionysus. I didn’t have a problem with Dionysus, but he’d always been more about partying with mortals than cursing people. He created satyrs, but only because humans begged him to. They considered it a great honor to be turned into a satyr by him. I think that’s why none of us liked the satyrs in the Underworld. They cursed all the other monsters against their will, but the satyrs begged to be turned into one.
But enough about the fucking satyrs. Why didn’t I stop her? I was going to, then Hephaestus said it was his mother. Did I stop because I deferred to Hephaestus? He was technically in charge. This was his stomping ground.
That had to be it. I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t snap her neck because this was Hephaestus’s show. He didn’t kill her right off. And as much as I didn’t like it, if this was his show and he wanted to trust Hera, I’d have to bite my tongue and deal with it.
But I would totally kill her if it came down to it.
Chapter 17
River
F
ucking Hera. I got that she was Hephaestus’s mother and that he thought we should trust her. I believed everything she said to us, but there was still everything from my class working against her. It was hard for me to fall asleep at first, but now I was awake. We were all slowly waking up except Solron, who was still snoring on the sofa bed.
My father was already awake and was sharpening his knife. I bolted to a sitting position when I realized Hephaestus wasn’t here, and neither was Tryphon.
“Where is he?” I demanded. “Where is Tryphon?”
My father just smiled at me.
“Stealing from the kitchens. You need to eat if you’re going to be killing gods, River. I can’t wait for you to visit Hell. I have an amazing chef. They approved him to go topside and apprentice with chefs all over the world. While I’m gone, he’s off with the Fae learning their cooking. I’m going to throw a feast when you arrive, and we are going to have a gigantic party.”
I just laughed.
“It’s not going to be like those baby demon reveal parties where I’m going to have to show off my cat and wings, is it?”
Barbatos just grinned.
“Not at all, but if you wanted to flash a little claw, it would not upset me.”
Meeting my father wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be, even if he was Hell royalty and wasn’t even human. He just had this way of being so fucking cool about everything. It was like nothing I did bothered him, and he’d never judge me. It could have been awkward meeting him again, especially with everything going on, but it wasn’t. I don’t think he knew how much I appreciate that. Or the massive army he brought with him just to help me.
Kimon stretched and rolled over in bed.
“Are we going to talk about the whole Hera thing?”
“I get she’s Hephaestus’s mom, but she’s fucking Hera,” Demos said.
“I believe her,” Pavlina said. “Men are wholly irritating, and I would imagine being married to an abusive fuck who won’t grant you a divorce because of his ego is enough to make anyone go crazy for a little while. I’m not excusing everything she did, and she took things too far, but I blame Zeus for driving her insane. I would imagine he took the rapist thing to their marriage bed too.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. I listened to Hera, and I gave her the benefit of the doubt for now because Hephaestus was. She sounded earnest when she talked to him, but I didn’t know her well enough to say she was lying straight to our faces.
Hera hurt people. She took that to some extremes. I wasn’t excusing what she’d done. Hephaestus didn’t call her out when she said Hercules was married to her daughter now. My professor spent two whole weeks on Hercules, so I knew exactly how she tortured him. It was beyond cruel.
I don’t think he would have gone anywhere near her daughter when he got to Olympus if they hadn’t made peace. After everything she did to him on Earth, I couldn’t imagine him even risking that in Olympus by setting his sights on her daughter unless he knew he wasn’t in for the same antics for all of eternity.