by Aimée Carter
So this was what my afterlife would be.
My afterlife. Adonis. I scrambled to my feet and looked around the one-room home, but he wasn’t there. My heart sank. He had to be here. After everything that had happened, he deserved peace.
I pushed open the door and stepped into the artificial sun. It wasn’t the real thing—beyond the illusion of my afterlife, I was among the dead in the caverns of the Underworld, surrounded by the very rock I’d hated for eternity. The unbearable weight was gone though, along with the wall that had haunted me for eons. Apparently they’d died with my mortal body, leaving my soul free. Finally.
Inhaling deeply, I looked around my afterlife. Flowers bloomed in the garden, a rainbow of colors and as fresh and new as the spring, and the scent of a summer day wafted through the air. It was beautiful, but it couldn’t be perfect, not without—
A figure appeared on the path, shaded by the trees, and warmth filled every inch of me. As he stepped into the sunlight, I grinned and launched myself down the path.
Adonis.
He caught me in an embrace, his strong arms lifting me into the air, and he kissed me with the same love and passion and happiness that coursed through my body. Every doubt and regret I’d entertained in those few seconds without him vanished, and in that moment, I saw our eternity.
He was here. We were together.
And at long last, I was home.
* * * * *
God of Thieves
There’s a rumor going around that I stole my big brother’s cattle the day I was born. That hours into my life, I not only managed to wrangle fifty prized cows and hide them from Apollo, but I invented the lute, as well.
Hours into my life. Not days, not years, but hours.
Come on. I’m good, but I’m not that good.
So let’s set the record straight: I was seven when I invented the lute, and Apollo spent the next four years trying to steal it from me. But since he’s not me, he failed time and time again, and that’s when I stole his cattle to see if I could—when I was eleven.
Eleven years old, not eleven hours old. I guess it sounds better to say that a newborn did all those things, somehow making me more godlike or powerful, but I’ve never met a newborn who could sit up, let alone herd cattle.
It’d be pretty cool though, I have to admit.
But it did get one thing right: Apollo was pissed. And I did have to give him my favorite lute in return for not getting thrown off Olympus. So there’s that.
Ever since, it feels like I’ve been living that down. Every time I do something the council doesn’t like, Zeus rolls his eyes and brings it up again, while Apollo sits there smugly. I don’t know what they expect—I’m just doing my job, exactly like all the others. No need for them to act all high and mighty and ignore me.
But this time, I admit I deserved it. I sat in the otherwise empty throne room of Olympus, throwing a ball against the wall and catching it as it flew past me. Nothing much happened in the throne room without the council present, but it was never completely abandoned for this long, and I knew exactly why.
Me.
Ever since Persephone had given up her immortality and single-handedly thrown the council into chaos three decades ago, I’d been persona non grata. No one spoke to me. My suggestions during meetings were completely ignored. Even the minor gods and goddesses gave me the cold shoulder, as if being a pariah was contagious or something. For all I knew, it was. One touch and they’d never have a decent conversation again.
Normally it wouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did. Wasn’t the first time I’d been shoved into social exile, after all. But this time Zeus hadn’t brought up cattle even once. And when Zeus missed an opportunity like that, clearly it was serious.
Funny thing is, none of this was my fault. If they were going to blame someone, they should’ve blamed Aphrodite or Ares. She was the one who’d messed things up so badly with Adonis, after all, and Ares had been the one to kill him. I’d just had an affair with Persephone eons ago.
That was it. That was my entire involvement—falling in love with my best friend and giving her some freedom when everyone else had been trying to keep her in chains. Not exactly a capital crime if you ask me, but no one ever does.
The council needed a scapegoat though, and I was convenient. No way Zeus would ever punish Aphrodite for anything, or Ares, Hera’s favorite son. So I, the screwup, was forced to take the blame even though I’d never said a single word to Adonis.
Not fair, not at all, but the council doesn’t exactly run on fairness.
Scowling, I threw the ball hard against the wall, and it bounced off at an angle, heading directly toward the circle of thrones in the center of the room. With a muttered curse, I stood. Couldn’t give Zeus any more of a reason to get pissed off at me. I was already way over the line as it was, at least as far as he saw it. And on the council, that was all that mattered.
“Looking for this?”
At the sound of that familiar voice, I grinned and turned around. Apparently not everyone had completely given up on me. Just almost everyone. “Iris. Haven’t seen you for a few decades.”
“Zeus sent me on a scouting trip.” She examined the rubber ball and gave it a tentative bounce. “It wasn’t pleasant. Besides the fact that it took half a damn century, a lion tried to eat me, and he looked awfully confused when his teeth and claws seemed to stop working.”
“Shame he didn’t succeed.” I leaned up against the wall, crossing my arms. “I could use a new job.”
“As if you could do a tenth of what I do.”
I snorted. “Please. Zeus only lets you be his messenger because no one else wants the job. And you don’t snitch on him to Hera. Or gossip about his affairs. That’s more than just about any other minor god or goddess out there, you know.”
A dimple appeared on her cheek, one that only showed up when she was annoyed. Usually with me. “I am anything but minor. What’s wrong with the job you have now?”
“You mean you haven’t heard?” I said, raising my eyebrow. Then again, she was talking to me. Couldn’t have known much. “Persephone gave up her immortality. Rather than everyone blaming someone who actually had something to do with it, they all decided to gang up on me instead.”
Iris’s eyes widened, and she seemed to forget about the ball in midair. With a dull thump, it hit her on the head, right in the middle of her coppery curls. “Wait—you mean that actually happened?”
I eyed her. Was she pretending to be clueless to get my side of the story, or did she really not know? “What have you heard? Kick the ball my way, would you?”
She made a halfhearted attempt, but the ball only rolled three-quarters of the way back to me. Figured. “I heard whispers. Nothing confirmed. Then again, I haven’t exactly been in the center of things lately.”
No, she hadn’t, which was a damn good thing for me. “Persephone fell in love with a mortal. Unfortunately for her, Aphrodite was already sleeping with him—”
“Who isn’t Aphrodite sleeping with?” muttered Iris, and I smirked.
“Ares was his usual violent self and decided to take out the competition. Wild boar,” I added when her mouth opened. She winced and touched her stomach in sympathy. “Apparently the mortal’s afterlife wasn’t so great, so Persephone decided to sacrifice her immortality and die in order to give him an incentive to leave his own personal hell for something better.”
“Oh.” Iris let out a romantic little sigh, and now it was my turn to make a face. “Did it work?”
I shrugged and averted my eyes under the guise of fetching the ball. “No idea.”
“You mean Hades hasn’t mentioned it?”
“We’re not exactly on speaking terms.”
“No surprise there. But none of the others brought it up?”
“We’re not exactly on speaking terms, either.”
Her eyebrows arched. “They’re taking this whole ganging up thing seriously, aren’t they?”
&nbs
p; “You’re telling me,” I muttered.
She crossed the space between us and set her hand on my cheek. Against my better judgment, I tilted my head into her touch. First time anyone had bothered in months. For a second, our gazes met, and her weird purple irises seemed to turn an even darker shade of violet.
“Your eyes are the shade of ripe grapes,” I said. “What does that mean?”
She dropped her hand and gave me a look, and her eyes reverted to their normal purple. Or at least it was normal around me. They changed color with her mood, I knew that much—sort of like Persephone’s hair with the seasons—but what those colors meant, she refused to tell me. Not that I blamed her, but still. The few clues I had weren’t much to go on. When I wasn’t public enemy number one, Ares had informed me in no uncertain terms that her eyes were blue, and Aphrodite swore up and down they were green.
Didn’t matter anyway. Eyes were eyes, and Iris didn’t deserve to have her emotions splashed all over the place. We might not have been big on privacy, but even that was crossing the line.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s terrible of them to put you through that. Not even you deserve the cold shoulder from your whole family, even if you are an ass.”
“I think that’s about the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.” She touched my hand this time, barely a brush, but again it was more affection than anyone else had shown me. “I’m afraid I don’t exactly have the best news, either. You might want to stick around—there’s a good chance Zeus is going to call a meeting as soon as I find him.”
Fantastic. Another opportunity for the rest of the council to pretend I didn’t exist. “What sort of news?”
“The kind they’ll need Hades for,” she said, and I grimaced. Definitely not good. Hades normally avoided coming up here, only bothering for the big stuff that would affect his realm, too. And the things that affected the Underworld were never warm and fuzzy. Or easy to work out.
So much for having a halfway decent day, relatively speaking. And with Iris back, it would have been.
Sure enough, shortly after she ran off to track down Zeus, a booming voice filled my head. The council will convene in five minutes. Everyone is required to attend.
Apparently Iris hadn’t been overreacting. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been required to attend a council meeting. Generally everyone came because if we didn’t, we’d risk getting kicked off, and going from kings to paupers wasn’t exactly the greatest feeling in the world. But being required to come was definitely something new.
I reached my throne first, of course, considering I was in the room anyway. Everyone else arrived promptly, and even Hades made it in under the wire, appearing right as Zeus took his seat. I eyed my father’s face. Brow knit, prominent frown. His usual cheery self.
“I am afraid Iris has brought news of Helios and Selene,” he said quietly. That was odd. No formal announcement that the meeting had started, no showing off and making sure everyone knew he was the one in charge. Just this. Dread settled over me. This wouldn’t be good.
“What about them?” said Demeter, her frown matching Zeus’s. At least I wasn’t the only one who had no idea what was going on. Why was Zeus worrying about Helios and Selene anyway? They were ancient gods, older than Athena, and while they weren’t part of the original six siblings that formed the council, they were powerful in their own right. God of the Sun and Goddess of the Moon, at least until Apollo and Artemis had more or less hijacked their roles. No doubt they could take care of themselves without Zeus’s so-called help.
He hesitated, focusing on the portal in the middle of our circle. “They’re gone.”
A murmur rippled through the council, and I sat up straighter. “What do you mean, gone?”
But of course Zeus didn’t respond. After ignoring me for so long, it was entirely possible he’d trained himself to tune me out. Wouldn’t put it past him. Across from me, however, Ares jumped to his feet, already reaching for his sheathed sword. Typical.
“We will scour the world until we find them, and we will show their captors what happens when one dares to kidnap a god,” he growled. “Hermes! Where are they?”
So now they wanted to talk to me, when I was the only one who could help them. But I wasn’t exactly in a position to demand any niceties, so with a sigh, I closed my eyes and dived down, focusing on the one clear memory I had of Helios. When I was six, he took me for a ride in his chariot—which, contrary to popular belief at that point in time, was not actually the sun. Just a representation of it, more or less. And that was when I spotted Apollo’s cattle, and the plotting started from there.
I focused on Helios’s face. Tan, with deep-set pale eyes and a narrow nose. The details were important; names sometimes weren’t enough, and the more I could picture who or what I wanted to find, the easier it was. Though I didn’t actually go anywhere, I felt as if I was flying above the earth, scouring the land for any sign of him. He’d be easy enough to spot—whatever I wanted to find stood out like sunshine against the greens and browns of earth.
But I couldn’t find him. I mentally circled the world three times, but nothing jumped out at me.
Great. I repeated the process again, this time picturing Selene’s pale, oval face and her doe eyes. I’d never met anyone who looked like her before, and it should’ve been easy to spot that unique glow.
Three times around again, and still nothing. I huffed with frustration. This never happened. I always found what I was looking for.
I opened my eyes, and everyone—even Demeter and Hades—was staring at me. My lips thinned. This wasn’t exactly the break I needed to get back on their good side. “I couldn’t find them.”
“What do you mean—” started Ares, but I cut him off.
“I mean, I couldn’t find them,” I snapped.
“Did you check the cold lands?” said Ares, and I nodded. “What about the Underworld?”
“Of course.” I wasn’t stupid. “They aren’t anywhere.”
Silence. Ares sat back down slowly, while everyone else glanced at one another, too afraid to say anything.
“You are sure?” said Zeus in a low voice, glaring at me as if this was my fault.
“I’m sure,” I said. “I checked three times. It’s like they don’t exist anymore.”
“Cronus warned us this might happen,” said Hera. “He said we would not last forever, dependent as we are on mortals. Our purpose is so wrapped up in them that when we are no longer needed—”
“But who among us is more necessary to mortal life than the sun and the moon?” said Demeter. The two of them glared at each other, and while normally I would’ve been on the edge of my seat in anticipation of a catfight, somehow now didn’t seem like the time.
Hera raised her chin half an inch so she could look down her nose at Demeter. Not that I was judging—I wasn’t Demeter’s biggest fan right now, either, after the way she’d treated Persephone. But still. Life and death, people. “I hardly see their importance now that Apollo and Artemis have usurped their roles.”
“We didn’t usurp anything,” said Artemis, bristling. On the other hand, maybe a catfight would help take our minds off this. “We apprenticed with them. We didn’t steal their jobs.”
“And yet here we are, with every shred of evidence pointing to Helios and Selene having faded,” said Hera. “Tell me, do you have any other explanation?”
Artemis clenched her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe Rhea went rogue.”
“And decided to kill them instead of us? I highly doubt it.”
Poseidon cleared his throat. He never spoke up much during meetings, since we mostly dealt with mortal problems, and the sea was his realm. But when he did, everyone paid attention. “If Hermes believes they are no longer present in any of the realms, then we have no reason to question it. His judgment is as sound as each of ours.”
Across from me, Hades hissed, but he said nothing. Co
ward. If he had something to say to me, he should’ve said it to my face.
“Hermes, do you believe they are gone?” said Zeus, and I nodded. Had to focus on the big picture here. Hades was never going to like me again no matter what I did—no point in wasting energy trying to win him over.
“If I can’t find them, then they’re nowhere at all. And the only explanation is that they’ve faded.”
A hush settled over the council again, and in the throne beside Ares, Aphrodite dabbed her eyes. “Are we next?”
“No.” Hephaestus set his hand over hers, ignoring Ares’s glares. “We are simply too important to fade like that.”
“So were Helios and Selene and who knows how many others,” said Athena. “How can we possibly be sure this isn’t the end of the age of gods?”
“How could it be?” said Hera. “Perhaps some minor gods may be facing the end, but we are indispensable. Mortals still need us.”
“For how long?” said Athena. “For another century? Millennia? How long until they have moved beyond us? Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, we are in danger, and we cannot continue to revel in ignorance. We must figure out why this is happening. If Helios and Selene are missing, there may be others, and our best shot is to find out who is gone and discover a common link.”
“I can help with that,” I said. It would take a while, tracking down every single god and goddess, but if it meant they would start treating me like family instead of a fungus, the time and effort had to be worth it. “And maybe I could go down to the surface as well, see what I can find.”
“Are you sure that is wise?” Hades’s voice seemed to fill the throne room, even though he was practically whispering. “May I remind the council what happened the last time Hermes offered his help where it was not welcome?”
My face grew hot. Who the hell did he think he was, talking to me like that? “Persephone has nothing to do with this,” I said.
“On the contrary. Perhaps if you had not been so engrossed in your affair, you would have done your duties and realized Helios’s and Selene’s absences sooner.”
