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Persy thought for a moment. “I don’t know. It was less serious than say Poseidon and Athena,” she said, smiling at me and Lukas. “But it still wasn’t great. It took about four Junos before they would even consider being in the room with a Jupiter.”
On the Greek side, it was about the same. The Hera line had chosen to end peacefully after Adrian’s birth, but their history was the same.
“She’s young,” Rose commented. “Are we sure she knows what she’s doing? She just might be bending to Lorenzo’s whims.”
“That’s part of the problem,” I responded. “I know Reyna well. She never said anything about her father hating us that much. And she wouldn’t spare my feelings.”
“But would Lorenzo tell her?” Dominic asked.
I shrugged. “He’s been priming her to take over since she was ten. He doesn’t want her brother anywhere near his business. And even if he didn’t say anything, Reyna is smart. She’d have picked up on something.”
“She would have,” Persy said. I forgot they knew each other. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea to include her in this.”
“She’d help?” Lukas asked.
Persy looked at me for a loaded second. “Let me talk to Adrian. But yes, I think you can trust her. She has no interest in upsetting the system.”
“I think people are forgetting that it’s not just a system,” Dominic said. “We aren’t politicians. We're gods. We keep their world turning.”
“And we’ve been periodically knocking it off course for the past thirty years,” Persy, of all people, said.
She had a point. “We’ve done what we can. We’veadaptedas well as we could. But it clearly opened the door for someone to make a claim to power and garner support.”
The table hummed in agreement.
“We have to be careful,” Lukas said. “Moving forward, we need to make sure this is solved with as little disruption as possible.”
“Adrian agrees,” Persy said.
“Where is he?” I asked. I couldn’t help it. I had to know.
Persy breathed deep, then clearly made a decision. “I will let him explain the full extent of it. But he’s dealing with a lot of power in his hands. If our parents had this much,” Persy reached out in front of her, holding her hands out about a foot apart. “Then Adrian has twice as much. He’s making sure he has it under control before this conspiracy gets more intense.”
That wasn’t the whole story. Lukas and Dominic were sharing a look again. But it was enough for now.
I nodded, smiling at Persy. “Thank you. I think we should try to meet more often. At least to have our story straight before the Council meeting.”
Dominic groaned. Yeah, I felt the same.
“I’ll be at this one,” Persy said. She was at most Council meetings but had skipped the last few. “I can keep an eye on Claudia.”
“And I’ll reach out to Reyna,” I said. “Just to see how she’s doing before we get her involved.”
“If you see anyone who is constantly in long-sleeves,” Dominic added. “They might be trying to hide a tattoo.”
A memory pulled at the back of my mind. It materialized a second later. Lukas seemed to share the thought.
“Lorenzo was wearing a sport coat when we ran into him,” Lukas said, running a hand over his beard. “It was a hot day.”
“Fuck,” Dominic cursed under his breath and Rose’s hand disappeared under the table to settle on his leg.
“What he said,” she added.
“This just needs to be over,” I said, feeling stress weigh down my shoulders. “We need to find out who it is before they start taking more drastic measures. If someone gets hurt or dies…”
I trailed off. I didn’t need to tell anyone at this table how disastrous that would be. When gods were seriously injured, their power would dip to dangerous levels, enough to permanently damage the things they fueled. And if they died without an heir, their part of the world would die along with them.
“Adrian should slip in a reminder to check on heirs at the next Council meeting. Three down the line, at least,” Rose said.
