And all my efforts were rewarded with her derision. She hates me. There’s nothing I can do to change that. There’s absolutely no reason for that knowledge to sit like a hot coal in my gut.
I tried to be as good of a husband as I could be for her, and she would have none of it. Instead, she plotted to kill me. And now, when our city is at its most vulnerable, she’s meeting up with Ixion, Imbros, and Nephele to pursue her selfish interests.
I barely register the fact that Hera looks particularly lovely today. She always looks lovely. Thoughlovelyis too tame a word for my wife. Her beauty is violent and cutting, all angles and viciousness. Her long dark hair is pulled back into a high ponytail, and though the color is high in her angled cheeks, she looks…tired. Surely not. Surely I’m seeing things. Hera would never allow for something as mundane as exhaustion to affect her.
She stares at me as I cross the bar to get to the booth that she sits in next to Ixion. Too close. Always too damn close. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing. I was under the impressionyou’d be spending the day at your orphanage.” The orphanage has been the heritage of every Hera since the founding of Olympus. My father found it to be a silly little hobby, but I’m aware of the goodmyHera has done with that so-called hobby. I worry that Olympus will see more orphans before this is done.
“I am. I was.” She looks away. “I just needed a moment.”
Something is off. Hera usually meets me with derision and malice, and I can’t remember a single time where she stumbled over her words.
I look at her again, closer this time. I note the faint smudges of darkness under her eyes, the smattering of what almost looks like freckles on her cheekbones and the way her hand shakes as she lifts her drink to her lips. Something’s wrong. Actually wrong. Even Ixion, the bastard, can tell. He hovers over her even more than he normally does. “I need to speak with my wife,” I finally say. “Alone.”
He glares at me. “I don’t take commands from you.”
“Stop trying to order my team around,” Hera snaps, sounding almost like her normal self. Almost. “And stop staring at me like that.”
“Like what?” I ask it absently, still focusing on the clear evidence that something is wrong with her. Her color is off, too. A little too pale, almost green. “Are you sick?”
“Would you care if I was?” She sits back in the booth and crosses her arms over her chest. It’s infuriating how beautiful my wife is. Hera waves a hand in a move that’s almost careless—if not for the tension in her shoulders. “Run along, Husband. You’ve done your due diligence and checked up on your poor little wife. As you can see, I’m alive and kicking and hardly up to no good.”
“You’re always up to no good.”
Her lips curve the slightest amount before she seems to catch herself and stills the motion. “Don’t you have a war criminal to chase down? Or can you even call Circe that when all she’s done is poke at the cracks that already existed?”
Her words don’t echo Hermes’s, but they’re close enough that I narrow my eyes. “Have you been talking to Hermes?”
“What? She’s back in town?” Her surprise seems genuine enough, but I’ve learned that Hera is a superb actor when motivated. If she’s working with Hermes to do… I don’t even know what the fuck Hermes is doing. I barely had time to process the barrier being down, let alone contemplate all the things Hermes mentioned in her brief visit.
“Do you know something about why she left?”
Hera shakes her head slowly. “You’d be better off asking someone like Cassandra or maybe Dionysus. Hermes and I tolerate each other, but we’re hardly friends.”
Her words match what I’ve seen, but that doesn’t make them the truth. I turn away, barely catching myself before I drag my fingers through my hair in frustration. Hera and I aren’t alone. Her trio watch us with wary expressions, and there’s a bartender lurking in the shadows.
So many walls that she insists on throwing up between us. If we had been a true partnership in the way I originally wanted, maybe we could have gotten the rest of the Thirteen to vote to take on Circe properly. Maybe we could have united to stop the threat against the city before the conflict reached this point. It’s not fair to blame Hera solely for that, but I can’t help blaming her in part. She may have agreed to this marriage, but she never wanted it.
She never wanted me.
Before I realize what I intend to do, I’m already speaking. “Everybody out!”
7
Hera
I am still reeling with shock that my husband ishereof all places, let alone commanding my people—and the godsdamned owner of the building—out. “What are you doing?” I mean for the question to come out sharp and serrating. Instead, the words waver around the edges. Almost as if I’m afraid.
The strange thing is…I’m not.
My recent conversation with Circe has shown me what true fear is. It’s my sisters’ and mother’s faces in the sights of a sniper rifle. What are my husband’s cold temper tantrums compared to that?
It’s because of Circe that I’m still so shaken, because of this damned baby in my stomach that I’m feeling strangely weak and sick to my stomach. Not because ofhim. Even when my husband loses his temper and actually finds the capacity to be more than a human-shaped icicle, he still draws the line at abuse in any form. Smart of him, because even in my diminished capacity, I would cut off his hand rather than let him hurt me. I am my mother’s daughter, after all.
And it’s been a long time since I actually properly stabbed someone.
While I’m sitting there, wrapped up in my own thoughts, Ixion is looking at me for direction. Of course he is. He doesn’t answer to my husband; he answers to me alone. I nod. It seems Zeus and I will be having this fight one way or another, and I’d rather not do it in front of an audience. The bar owner would likely take to MuseWatch and report every bitter detail. My team might very well shoot my husband.
