“Uh, she’s a gorgon? So, yeah. That’s pretty much a given.”
“You should introduce us later. Perhaps I could gift her a spear or ax to—”
Aphrodite ended the tangent with a slap to Ares’s face. “Enough!”
The slap not only got the God of War to quit his obvious lusts, but it helped Alex get his mind back to the most important task of his life: saving his daughter. “Aphrodite, I know we’ve had our issues in the past,” he said, fumbling along as he tried to pick the best words he could. “And I know this is going to be the most monumental favor ever, but you’re literally my only hope at this point. I’ll do whatever you want to make this happen.”
Aphrodite chuckled as she folded her arms over her chest. “Anything, Alex?” she asked with an equal mix of seduction and deviousness. “That’s quite the promise.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure? Athena might take issue with that. Or more importantly, your wife.”
Alex sucked in a breath reflexively. “I’m sure,” he said. “Athena can’t help right now anyway. And Euryale is desperate to save Cassandra, too.”
Aphrodite huffed and shook her head. “I see. So what you’re telling me is that once again, even after all I did for you and your wife, you still went to my bloody sister for help before coming to me.”
“No! I mean, in a sense, Athena approached Euryale first, so technically yes,” Alex said, holding his hands up defensively before rambling on like a madman. “Well, no, that’s not right, either. Euryale and Athena got into a fight, and then Athena sent Artemis to talk to my wife about helping, so we never actually spoke to Athena, but I did try her phone. It went to voicemail—but that’s only because, well…Gods, this is such a mess.”
“Slow down, Alex. You’re going to give yourself a coronary.”
“I know. I’m sorry. This might be the worst couple of days in my life.”
“Fine. I can understand how that might be,” Aphrodite said. “As such, in my infinite graciousness, I’ll ignore you granting me second fiddle—again. What do you need from me?”
“I need you to let me in Zeus’s vault.”
Ares gasped.
Aphrodite did, too, and if she’d had eyebrows, they would’ve hit the ceiling. But alas, she was far, far from healed, and thus didn’t. But even with the horrid scarring that froze most of her face, Alex had no doubts this was as shocked as the goddess had even been before.
“You want in Dad’s vault?” she said, each word spoken slowly and in utter disbelief. “And you’re serious. You’re not joking. You actually want in Dad’s vault.”
“Yes.”
“And since you’re not asking Dad, I’m going to assume that he wouldn’t be happy with you going in there.”
“Probably not,” Alex replied. “Okay. Well, definitely not.”
Aphrodite clasped her gnarled hands together before exhaling sharply. “Then tell me why, exactly, I should even dream about letting you in there, because aside from the fact that I’m not going to betray him, ever, even if I did, he’d find out. And once he did, he’d know exactly who let you in. And I don’t know about your plans for the future, but mine don’t include facing his wrath.”
“I need to save Cassandra,” Alex said, wishing he could say more but knowing he couldn’t. The goddess would never let him in if she knew about Hera. “That’s all I can say.”
“Will say,” she corrected.
Alex sighed with resignation. “Will say.”
“You don’t trust me,” she said, shaking her head, sorrow in her voice and disgust on her face. “If that’s all there is to this, why don’t you go ask Dad for whatever’s in there? In fact, isn’t he helping? The two of you have always seemed to get along.”
Alex sneered out of reflex. “Used to.”
“Which means?” When Alex balked, Aphrodite tilted her head toward him and frowned. “I’ll find out, you know, the moment I pick up my phone. Now tell me. What’s going on?”
Chapter Scrying
Zeus read the letter.
Again.
That marked the fourth time his eyes scanned the parchment, and with each pass they made, his skin burned brighter and brighter. Thunderheads gathered over his temple, and Athena, who stood nearby, had no doubt that even the mortals on the other side of the planet could feel the electricity building in the air.
“Not a friendly note, I take it,” she said, wondering if she should inch back in case she needed to dash out of his inner courtyard if it started to rain lightning.
His face hardened, and he seemed to grow at least four feet in stature. “This is your fault,” he said, clenching a fist toward her.
“My fault?” Athena said, genuinely shocked. “I don’t even know what this is.”
Zeus flung the scroll at his daughter. “See for yourself.”
The Goddess of Wisdom snatched it out of the air, but before she looked to see what was on it, she glanced to Apollo, who could only shrug. At that point, she turned her attention to the letter. With exceptionally beautiful penmanship, it read:
Euryale, wife to Alexander, sister of Stheno, mother of Aison and Cassandra, and daughter of Phorcys, to Zeus, current ruler of Olympus. I am writing to inform you that due to your assaults and abuses to not only myself, but others, your reign is coming to an end. You can abdicate the throne peacefully, or I will remove you by force and burn Olympus to the ground. The choice is yours.
P.S. Achlys sends her regards.
Athena carefully refolded the letter, and Zeus arched his eyebrows in response. “No comment?”
An unsettling feeling formed in Athena’s gut. It wasn’t that she didn’t have a comment. She had several. Hundreds, even. Most were true. Those that weren’t were simply her opinion on the state of affairs as well as what she thought of her father. None of them, if spoken aloud, would bring anything but strife and misery, and she longed to find a way to buy more time.
And she could if she conducted herself as she always had, turning at least a partially blind eye to Zeus and not holding him accountable. The problem at this point was that she knew this was a defining moment for her character.
“Well?” Zeus asked, his tone making it clear that his patience was a single pause away from ending.
Athena, taking to heart the bravery Aphrodite had shown standing up to Hera, committed herself to the righteous path and straightened. “This is not my fault,” she said. “Don’t you dare pin this on me.”
“You said we should give her a chance!” Zeus shouted, storming up to his daughter and pointing a finger in her face. “And now look what she does! She runs to Achlys and threatens us all! They’re both probably on their way to wake Cronus this very instant!”
“YOU RAPED HER!” Athena fired back, slapping his hand away. “How thick-headed can you be? None of this would’ve happened—absolutely none of it—if…”
Athena choked, guilt and shame strangling her words.
“You’d best speak carefully from here on out, daughter,” Zeus said evenly. “And whatever you say, it had better be an apology.”
“You’re right,” she said, laughing through the pain. “I should apologize. This is my fault. It’s all my fault.”
Zeus’s temper faded threefold, and though the God of Thunder seemed somewhat placated, Apollo looked as confused as ever.
Athena took a moment to wipe away her tears, which didn’t matter because new ones instantly replaced those that were lost down her cheeks. “It’s my fault,” she repeated, voice wavering as she fought to get the words out from her torn heart. “It’s my fault because I never stood up to you before. I turned a blind eye to who you are, hoping, praying, fooling myself you’d ever change. And the only one who ever held you accountable up till now, we locked away. So, yes. It’s my fault. But as the Fates are my witness, I’m going to do everything in my power to right my wrongs.”
“Well then, this is what it’s come to: my own daughter turns against me,” Zeus said. �
��Perhaps you’re not as wise as you’ve led everyone to believe.”
Over the next two seconds, Athena considered all her options. She had to leave to set things right, and she also knew Zeus would never allow it, especially since that meant him paying for his crimes. He’d likely strike her down the moment she ran. Lethally? Probably not. At least, not at first. Though there were a total of three exits she could try for, only one was viable. But she’d need to dodge lightning for a few seconds to reach it.
Her dad’s first throw would be a little high and to the right. It always was when he flung one in haste. She could spin under that easily enough. The second would be trickier, as he’d steady his aim, no doubt. If she reversed herself fast enough, she’d have a good shot at making the door. Any throws after the first two would be made in frustration—a feint to the left would counter the third strike, and the same feint two strides later would defeat the fourth. She might not even need to worry about any after the second if Apollo cried out in protest. That could easily distract her father enough for her to escape unscathed.
All she needed to really tip the odds in her favor was a distraction. It didn’t even have to be a grand one, or a good one for that matter. A split second would be all she needed.
“I think you’re going to find I’m a lot wiser than you realize. In fact—” She cut herself off, feigned surprise, and looked over Zeus’s shoulder. “Hera?”
Zeus took the bait.
The instant he glanced behind him, Athena sprinted away. After two strides, she reversed herself with a spin. Lightning ripped by her cheek, missing by a hair and singeing her skin. She never made it another pace. A second bolt slammed into her back, square between her shoulder blades, sending her sprawling to the ground.
* * *
Zeus strode over to his daughter’s body, tendrils of smoke rising and curling in the air from her scorched clothes. Apollo raced over and knelt. After a quick exam, he sighed with relief. “She lives.”
“Of course she lives,” Zeus said with a snort. “I wasn’t trying to kill her.”
Gently, Apollo slipped his arms under her neck and beneath her knees and carefully picked her up. “I’ll bring her to my temple and see to her wounds.”
“You’ll tend to her in jail and nowhere else,” Zeus said with a tone that dared the god to offer any sort of challenge.
It was a challenge Apollo had no intention of making. “As you wish.”
Though Zeus nodded in response, his face still bore a healthy dose of skepticism. “You think I was wrong?”
“I think these events need to be handled with the utmost care,” he said. “Going after Euryale is one thing. Attacking your own daughter—”
“She sides with the gorgon!”
Apollo raised his hands defensively, as much as carrying the fallen Athena would allow. “I only meant, this is going to put the others on edge. If you want to show them your rule is just and not one resting solely on fear, I simply wish to remind you that tact is needed.”
Zeus crossed his arms over his massive chest and studied the god, trying to get a feel for how trustworthy he was. On the surface, certainly, Apollo’s advice was sound, but then again, so was Athena’s, and look what happened with her. It didn’t take him long for a new thought to come to him, or rather, a question—a question that demanded an answer. “Tell me, Apollo, God of Prophecy,” he said. “Why didn’t you see any of this coming?”
“I did,” he said, matter-of-factly and to Zeus’s complete surprise. “But had I told you beforehand and you’d confronted her, she never would’ve made this admission to your face.”
“And what does the future tell you now?”
Apollo shook his head. “Only chaos, though I don’t understand why.”
Zeus made a fist and popped his knuckles as he let Apollo’s words sink into his mind. At this point, he felt the god was telling the truth, and while Apollo’s ability to speak to future events wasn’t always one that could be relied on, visions of chaos were never a good omen.
“That doesn’t sit well with me,” he finally said. “After I jail Athena, we must scry the whereabouts of Euryale.”
“I’ll need something she recently touched in order to do that,” he said. “Something personal.”
Zeus smiled and pointed to the scroll. “I believe we have that covered already.”
Apollo put Athena back down before taking the letter and examining every inch. Once he was done, he rolled it up and gave an approving nod. “It should work, but we can’t wait long before scrying. Her presence on the letter won’t last much more than an hour.”
“Plenty of time,” Zeus said. With a sigh, he then scooped up his daughter up and slung her over his shoulder. “Now go and prepare. I’ll join you shortly.”
The two parted ways. Apollo headed for his giant scrying pool inside his temple, while Zeus went to the back of his own temple and down a flight of circular stairs. These led him a full three hundred yards down into the depths of Mount Olympus, far from prying eyes and sensitive ears.
Initially, Zeus kept his thoughts on the superficial level, merely focusing on the mechanics of the task at hand. But as he drew near the jail cells, his heart grew heavy with sorrow, and with every step he took, Athena’s weight against his shoulders felt even more unbearable than the one he’d taken before. When he finally reached her cell, a bare ten-by-ten square with granite walls and adamantine shackles, he quickly set her down, anticipating a relief that never came.
“That’s called a conscience,” Athena said as he locked the shackles around her ankles.
“Despite what you may think, I’m not immune to regret,” Zeus replied.
“Then let me go and set things right,” Athena said. “It’s not too late.”
“You’re right. It’s not too late,” he said as he took to his feet and towered over her. “We still have time to stop the gorgon.”
“She’s not the enemy!”
“She made herself the enemy,” Zeus said evenly. For a moment, he looked down at his daughter, wondering where he’d gone wrong in her upbringing. “I wish it didn’t have to come to this,” he said, voice full of remorse. “I’ve always tried to give you anything and everything you wanted, even at the expense of others and myself.”
“You? Sacrifice for another?” Athena scoffed. “When?”
“You could start by asking your sister,” he said. “Aphrodite’s jealousy of you wasn’t misplaced, and I must own up to that shortcoming of mine. But despite that, she always knew that ruling the gods was never easy, and with that responsibility came the undeniable fact that I have to deal with ugly, messy solutions from time to time. No one else. Me, and me alone. Case and point, all that’s happening now.”
Zeus turned to leave, but he stopped when Athena shot up and tugged against her chains. “You talk about messy solutions as if you weren’t the cause of the problem to begin with,” she said. “Why can’t you see this? Why won’t you see this?”
With a low grumble, Zeus shook his head and faced her one last time. “We’ve been over this before,” he said. “We must all be able to trust one another. There is no other way, and Euryale had two chances to tell us what we needed to know. Instead, she chose herself over us, over Olympus, and sealed her own fate. If I’ve done anything wrong—and perhaps I have—it’s that I’ve grown soft over the eons. I let Hera go unchecked to where she grew bold enough to try and usurp the throne, and now I’ve let you be filled with such hubris, you think your wisdom is greater than anyone else’s expertise. You have a brilliant mind, Athena, and I am still proud to be your father, but there’s a lot for you to still learn, and those are lessons I’ll personally oversee once I’ve dealt with Euryale.”
With that, Zeus left, cutting whatever conversation and objections Athena wanted to raise on the subject short. As he climbed the stairs, his spirits lifted, and his determination grew, reinforcing the idea in his mind that now, finally, he was getting things back to how they should be. Olympu
s would once again be the grand city it had always been known for, and thankfully, the damage it had suffered could and would be fixed in short order.
As Zeus made his way through the city, headed for Apollo’s temple, raw power flowed through every fiber of his being, long-dormant energy that he hadn’t realized he’d lost—or missed for that matter. Indeed, he’d grown soft and complacent, chasing pleasures of the flesh while neglecting to ensure order and discipline within Olympus itself.
Not that he wouldn’t pursue the fairer sex when this was over—or even during, for that matter—but gone were the days where men and women, gods and gorgons, would challenge his authority. Euryale would serve as warning to the world that it would be foolish for anyone to go to war against him. And when he had her strung up, broken for all to see, he’d then turn his attention to Typhon, and slay that titan once and for all.
Zeus grunted.
He never should’ve chained that monster under Mount Etna to begin with. And that, admittedly, was another mistake he’d made: succumbing to the pleas of a desperate mother to spare her child. Gaia, primal goddess of the Earth and indeed all life, including the titans, had begged Zeus to spare her son. And though Zeus had loathed granting such a request after the devastation Typhon had wreaked, when the tears started flowing, Zeus, like many men in a similar position, felt powerless to wage war against them.
That one error, that one simple action framed as mercy, became a travesty as time wore on.
The past couldn’t be changed, he knew. He could only focus on the present and his plans for the future.
But what of Alex? he wondered.
There stood a man Zeus had no plans for. He’d instantly grown fond of the hero when they’d first met during the wedding celebrations. And Alex had also shown himself as a shrewd negotiator that day when it came to dealing with Hera by not giving in to her baseless accusations. Zeus wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps Euryale acted without his knowledge. His gut said Alex hadn’t a clue, but he had to admit maybe that was his foolish hope for the hero. He would have to have a talk with the man, possibly interrogate him a little more forcefully than Alex would like, but either way, Zeus made a resolve to himself that he’d keep his mind and options open on the matter.
A Storm of Blood and Stone (Myths of Stone Book 3) Page 18
