Page 119 of Hades

“No, Kane. Pegasus is fine. He will recover. You can be angry if you need to be, but don’t you dare confuse discomfort with harm.”

Zeus’ jaw worked like he was chewing glass.

“You need to come home.”

“I will come home when I’m ready, and not one minute before.”

“Mom.”

“No. You don’t get to use that voice on me. I changed your diapers. I held you when you were sick. I just buried one man who controlled me. I’ll be damned if I let another one take his place.”

No one moved. No one breathed too loud.

“I am safe,” she said. “That’s all you get. Tell Pegasus I’m sorry for the way it had to happen, but not for leaving.”

Then she’d hung up.

A few hours later, we found Pegasus exactly where she said he’d be. Dehydrated. Weak. Pissed as hell because he’d been unable to do his job. He remembered stopping with Rhea. Remembered helping to carry her bags inside. Remembered drinking water she handed him after he complained about the heat. Then nothing. No assault. No weapon. No obvious injury. Just forty-eight hours of misery. Vomiting, sweating, and being too weak to crawl across the room for his phone. Whatever Rhea had used to get loose hadn’t been meant to kill him. That was the detail I kept coming back to. Because it mattered. Zeus didn’t see it that way. Zeus saw his mother gone, and a prospect dropped like a stray dog in a hotel room. The rest of us saw a clean escape.

I didn’t know yet what I saw. And that was becoming a problem.

“Coeus,” Zeus said.

Coeus looked up from one laptop. “We have another death.”

“Cause?” Atlas asked.

“That’s where it gets interesting.”

Ares leaned back in his chair. “It’s never fucking good when you say that.”

Coeus grinned. “Not for the dead woman, no.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Darlene Kessler. Forty-seven. Ran the Willow Bend Girls’ Home on the east side of Henderson County.”

Apollo’s eyes narrowed. “Group home?”

“Private placement facility,” Coeus said. “State contracts, emergency housing, foster girls waiting for placement, girls whose parents didn’t want them, girls who were too much trouble for regular homes. You know the type.”

The room shifted. Not much. Enough. Men like us heard “group home” and thought one thing: vulnerable kids. Targets. My chest tightened. Zeus sat forward. “How’d she die?”

“Officially? Cardiac arrest brought on by complications from acute gastrointestinal distress.”

Ares blinked. “The fuck does that mean?”

“It means she shit herself inside out until her heart quit,” Coeus said cheerfully.

“Jesus,” Hermes muttered.

“Was it wolfsbane?” I asked. My fingers curled against the armrest.

“No.” Coeus tapped a few keys. “Different plant toxicity.”

Asclepius lifted his head for the first time. “Which one?”

“Castor bean exposure is my best guess, but I’m waiting on confirmation. Could also be oleander or another cardiac glycoside. Severe abdominal pain, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, dehydration, cardiac collapse.”