Inside the windy, open pavilion, Hera took her seat on her throne with regal grace that scraped at my nerves. Her narrowed eyes glittered with arrogant disapproval and her lithe arms crossed over her chest in a pose that declared her judgment before either of us had spoken.
“Such shocking behavior from you, Siren. Need I remind you that you are a guest in my kingdom?” She raised that one eyebrow again, daring me to disagree.
“I remember,” I replied. I aimed for cool indifference, but I landed somewhere between breathless from fear and trembling from anger.
“And yet you tromp about with your self-righteous morality, trying to kill each of us?”
“No,” I hissed immediately. “I never intended to kill anyone. I didn’t kill anyone. What happened with Hades? That was… He attacked us! We defended ourselves. Neither Ryder nor I thought we had the ability to kill him.”
“You don’t,” Nix boomed from somewhere behind me.
Gods and goddesses surrounded us as a volatile, angry jury that would decide our fate. I kept my attention on Hera. For some reason she was easier to hold eye contact with than any of the other amoral gods.
“Tell us what happened.” Hera waved her hand lazily at us. “Start from the beginning.”
“Go on, Red,” Ryder encouraged.
I took a steadying breath and ignored the riot of nerves jumping through my blood. I hadn’t really been afraid of the repercussions of Hades’ death until this moment. I didn’t realize they would know so immediately or that they would hold us to our actions.
I thought I was here to kill Nix! If it was such a problem to end the life of a god, what did that mean for Nix?
What did that mean for me?
I licked my dry lips and told the story of where Ryder and I had gone last night and how we’d come to meet up with Hades. I left out the parts about trying to save my mother and my purposeful meeting with the Fates. Instinct whispered that any deal made with those three creatures would not do anything good for us.
“He wanted to take me to the Underworld,” I told them sincerely. “He wanted to use my powers for himself, to enslave the entire world to him. When he attacked, we fought back. Both Ryder and Hades fell over the veil. They both died.”
“And yet the musician lives.” Ares stepped next to Hera’s throne and cast a baleful glance at both of us.
The sickening part of this was that I knew, I just knew, that Ares would have done the exact same thing if he had been given the opportunity.
“Persephone gave him mercy,” I said in a smaller voice than I intended.
A cruel smile lit his face, when he said, “I bet she did. A favor for a favor. She’s been waiting to sink her claws into Hades for centuries.”
“Can’t blame her,” Hera snickered. “He would never have survived two days if he’d imprisoned me that way.”
Hope blossomed in my chest. Maybe this trial was just for show.
“Nevertheless,” Hera’s voice resounded through the columned building. “You are directly responsible for the assault and murder of a god. This is an unforgivable crime. It is in my power to punish you to the full extent of our law.”
“What is that?” I took a step forward. “What’s the extent of your law?”
A passive look of disgust flashed over her face and she said, “Death.”
“And my other options?”
Her slender nose wrinkled and she said, “Or you will be put in the charge of one of the other gods to work off your deeds until the time of their choosing.”
“Those are my choices? Slavery or death?” Chills racked my body and I suddenly saw clearly why Nix was so excited about this trial. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for.
“They are not choices, Siren,” Hera sneered. “I will decide how to punish you. You do not get a say.”
“Fine,” I huffed. “Just as long as you choose death. I will kill myself if I have to.”
“Ivy, you don’t mean that,” Nix chuckled from behind me. “My queen, she doesn’t mean that.”
“I suppose you want her, Poseidon?” Hera’s face relaxed into cold indifference. She seemed glad Nix was willing to take me off her hands. I wanted to chain her to the bottom of the ocean too.
If I could have eliminated the entire Pantheon in one sweep, I would have.
I would have drowned them all.
They were despicable and disgusting. Humanity, with all of our faults and mortality, was so much better than these self-righteous sadists.
“I would like that very much, my Queen.” Nix’s large hand landed on my shoulder. I tried to shrug him off, but his fingers dug into my flesh until I winced beneath his punishing grip. Ryder moved to take me from him, but other gods stepped forward and pulled him into an unbreakable stronghold.
A few minutes of struggle followed, as Ryder and I fought to find our freedom. Bright streaks of lightning flashed overhead in the suddenly midnight sky. The power of the gods warred against us, proving how frail and weak we were in comparison.
My stomach churned with fear and despair. But something else pulsed with my wild emotions, something like fury. Power undulated beneath my skin, screaming in protest against the unfairness of the situation.
Nix coughed behind me, gurgling a sound that surprised me. I gave into the power; I let the energy of this anger take over. I pushed aside my weak feelings of impotency and gave into the strange electricity that charged my blood and rushed through my spirit.
My bare shoulder was suddenly cold and wet. I looked back at Nix to see water pouring from his mouth, dripping down his chin to the front of his robe. The pristine white cloth became translucent with the deluge of water. It came from every part of him. Not just his mouth, nose and other orifices, but seeping from his skin too. He looked like a sponge that had been submerged in water and then rung tightly.
I took a step away from him and he didn’t try to stop me. His hand fell to his side in a limp bounce against his thigh. He swayed on his feet and for a moment I thought I had hurt him... I thought I had killed him. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, before they snapped forward again and locked onto me.
He stepped forward, coughing at the same time he shook his shoulders, flinging water off him in a wave of release. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out.
Instead, his strong hand swept the air with renewed energy and I felt the water bubble up in my lungs like a geyser. I sucked in a quick breath just before I drowned in the power of Poseidon.
I didn’t have his strength or his experience. I fell to my knees in the next second, unable to support my own weight. My eyes bulged as I choked on the water, suffocating in the sea that Nix could produce with the fling of his fingers.
My chest tightened until I was positive it would explode. My lungs couldn’t hold anything else and even though water poured out of my mouth, pooling around my hands and knees, drenching the cold stone beneath me, I couldn’t expel enough of it to get a breath.
It was never-ending. I might have been able to play this game for a few minutes, but Nix could keep this up until I was a blue corpse, water-logged and lifeless.
“Enough,” a strange familiar voice commanded from far away.
Sunbursts spotted my vision and a sharp ringing resounded in my ears. My fingers clawed at the harsh ground as I tried to find some purchase. Panic suffused every part of me, even while I welcomed death.
So be it, I thought.
“Enough!” the voice bellowed, shaking even my drowning bones to the core.
At once, the water was pushed from lungs. I coughed and vomited and emptied every ounce of sickly saltwater onto the floor, collapsing on top of it in pathetic weakness.
Nix bent down to drag me to my feet. With his hands wrapped roughly around my waist, he set me in front of him, practically vibrating with the promise of his wrath. “Mine,” he rasped through a strangled voice. “Mine or nobody’s. I will send you back to the sea where I will rule you from your gra
ve.”
“Never,” I hissed. My throat was raw and so tender, but the fierce words would not be held back. “You might be the god of the sea, but I am not yours. I am the force of nature that will unseat you from your throne.”
He leaned into me, his voice pitching low with fury. “I am the ocean.”
My heart hammered in my chest when I replied, “And I am the flood.”
“Ivy,” someone snapped.
I turned to the voice I recognized, stepping away from Nix on unsteady feet. I wobbled, but managed to keep my balance. Smith stood before me in a toga so brightly white that he seemed to glitter beneath the still sparking lightning overhead.
His grim smile told a story I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. “Are you finished?”
The crowd of gods and goddesses erupted with surprise. All around the room people called out, “Zeus!” Some of them in outrage, some in shock, some with approval.
Hera slumped back in her chair, completely shaken by her husband’s appearance. “It’s truly you, my husband?” she asked with breathless wonder.
He seemed reluctant to take his eyes from me, but he turned to Hera with a small, playful smile. “Yes, my queen.”
“But how you’ve changed.” Her fingers brushed over the back of her neck, a slight tremble barely visible quivered through her torso. I thought she would be excited to see him after all of the time he had been away, but more than anything she seemed nervous. Her dark eyes darted around the room without landing anywhere for long, except on Smith. And she straightened her back compulsively, as if she was getting ready to run.
“I went through… mortality,” he admitted with a chuckle.
Furious protests exploded around the temple. The crowded room shrunk beneath the ego and anger of the collective Pantheon. The gods pressed closer to me, anxious for Smith to explain. They demanded answers and would have crushed me underfoot had Nix not stepped behind me. He ordered them to move back. Reluctantly they complied.
Smith held up his hands and pushed them toward the floor in a pacifying gesture, “Worry not, my friends. My immortality has been restored. I am once again… Zeus.”
Nix didn’t say anything even though plenty of his brothers and sisters shared their opinions. I could feel his tension skyrocket, burning through the thin atmosphere, pinging from the stone columns to the sky overhead. His body thrummed with quiet rage.
I realized how well I knew him as I stood there next to him. I could anticipate his frustrated facial movements and the clenching of his fists. I instinctively felt his mind spin with everything that had happened in Omaha, everything that happened right in front of him. My mother had married Smith at Nix’s command. Smith had gone through mortality under Nix’s nose. Smith’s power, his money, his prestige… all of it belonged to Zeus.
I knew the second Nix’s thoughts dipped to Smith’s protection of me. His enlarged muscles contracted and swelled until he stood three inches taller. I wondered if Nix was remembering Honor too, and how Smith had done everything in his power to keep Honor out of Nix’s filthy reach. And the god-killer that my mother had in her possession the night Nix tried to rape me, had no doubt come from Smith, who had brought it straight from Olympus.
Nix had missed everything, every little piece of this complex puzzle until this moment. And now his brain worked furiously to put everything together. I sensed his struggle to hold his fury in check. Nix had become a foaming volcano. His blind madness was barely caged in the hulking mass of his body. He wanted to kill someone.
And that someone might end up being me.
Nix wasn’t alone in his confusion. There were pieces to this puzzle I still didn’t understand.
If no one knew that Smith was Zeus or that he’d fathered a child with my mother, how did they recognize him here? He hadn’t changed more than Nix had. Sure, he was taller, broader, more muscled and wore the same kind of toga that everyone else did. But for the most part, his features were the same.
I recognized him immediately.
And what did it mean for my sister that her father was the king of the gods? If she was part goddess, part Siren, how did that affect her powers?
I shook my head and tried to reconcile everything I knew about Smith with his infamous godhood. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t figure it out. Zeus was a cruel, heartless man-whore. Smith had been compassionate at every turn. He had sacrificed greatly for me. He had done everything in his temporarily limited power to make sure I survived.
The two beings did not match up.
I didn’t know if Smith’s presence was a good thing for my case or a bad thing. But, I wanted to believe he would help me… and if need be, save me.
If Smith had been willing to risk everything for me in Omaha, he might be willing to save me here too. Besides, it was more than convenient for him to show up just as Hera brought me to trial.
This had to be more of his games… more of his plotting.
Maybe he had constructed this entire thing, all of the events of my entire life. Maybe I was nothing more to him than a pawn on a chessboard.
“What are you doing here, Smith?” Every voice fell silent at the sound of my voice. Resentment stirred in the air. They didn’t want to hear his answer as much as they wanted to figure out how he and I had a familiar relationship.
Hera’s sharp voice rang out from across the room, “You will address your king with reverence, Siren, or I will allow Poseidon to finish what he started.”
I met Smith’s stoic gaze and jerked with a sudden pang of fear. He might be here to save me from Nix, but he couldn’t save me from Hera. “Zeus,” I murmured reverently, trembling into a shallow bow.
His eyes regained some of the Smith I knew and loved. “The one and only.”
“Where’s Hon-”
“You’ve gotten yourself into some trouble, Siren.” Smith/Zeus cut me off with a warning glance. I hoped that meant Honor was safe somewhere.
“I didn’t mean to hurt Hades,” I said honestly. But I planned to kill Poseidon. I planned to murder him with my bare hands. I kept that juicy piece of incriminating evidence to myself.
“What did you mean to do?” Smith was colder here, removed and distant. He had always treated me with warm respect at home. He had taken care of me when nobody else would, he had provided for me when I had no one else. But now, there was a stark desolation to his blue eyes, a frigid aloofness that made him feel untouchable and superior. I couldn’t tell if this was a role he was forced to step into because he was king or if this was the real version of him and whoever he was back home had been a role he played to get what he wanted.
But what was it that he wanted?
I pulled back my shoulders and met his appraising gaze. “I meant to stay alive. I succeeded.”
Nix snorted a derisive laugh, his ire curling through the sound, sending a clear warning of his displeasure. “And yet whenever you’re in my presence you’ll do anything to die.”
My voice shook, but I felt the truth behind each word. “Death is more appealing when you can’t see the Underworld waiting for you.”
Low murmuring rippled through the room. Hera glided gracefully to her feet and took her place next to her husband. “You went through the Underpass?” she demanded.
I nibbled on my bottom lip, realizing I shouldn’t have mentioned that part. “We got lost.”
“You got lost?” Hera’s eyebrows lifted to her hairline, challenging my lie.
“We just followed the road…” I glanced back at Ryder. He nodded his agreement and struggled against the gods holding him in place.
Nix paced around me, unable to settle and be still. “So,” he began in the tone of a lecturing teacher. “You’re telling us that you left dinner last night, wandered down the Road of No Return, walked into the Underpass, which is the only road that goes through the Underworld, met Hades, killed Hades, then somehow reappeared right here, in the middle of town?”
“Is it really called the Road of No Return?”
<
br /> He shook his head slowly, amused that I would have the guts to ask that question. “It’s a nickname.”
“I brought her back,” Hermes called out. “I lost her when she went through the mountain, but as soon as she stepped out again, I brought her and the musician back.”
“Hermes, you’re implicating yourself in this?” Hera demanded.
He pushed through the crowd and stood between Ryder and me. His face was pale for a god; his golden Greek glow had disappeared completely. “I had no idea about the Underpass until they were already in it. And after they were gone for so many hours, I expected to find them dead. I couldn’t have guessed all that they’d gotten themselves into overnight.”
Zeus cupped his chin thoughtfully with one hand. His long fingers curved along the line of his jaw and scratched at barely-there stubble. Over the last year, I had speculated that maybe Smith was Zeus. Now I had my answer. And while he might have remained Smith to me in Omaha, here, on Olympus, there was no mistaking his godhood. This was the king of the gods, this was almighty Zeus.
“They are your guests, Hermes?” Zeus asked.
“And I will vouch for them still,” Hermes answered immediately.
“Then escort them back to your home until the morning. My queen and I have much to discuss. Until then, keep a better eye on them.”
Hera turned incredulously to her husband, “You’re letting them go?”
He let out a ragged sigh and replied, “I am weary, wife. Let me have some wine. Let me greet my brothers and sisters. The Siren and her musician can wait until morning.”
With ice in her veins and stone in her heart, Hera reminded him, “Your brother is dead, Zeus. Do you not think it wise to punish those who have killed him?”
“My brother ruled the Underworld,” he gritted out. “He was already halfway there! Now be silent woman and let me be glad to be home!”
Hera’s mouth snapped shut and she stormed out of the building. Lightning snapped overhead, violent bolts of light chasing each other across the sky in her wake.
Smith turned away from me to answer questions from some of the other gods, but I felt his attention stay with me.