Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 95187 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95187 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“Everything with the Thirteen takes longer than it should. But yeah, I’ll see it done.” He shakes his head, his strong brows drawing together. “And the captive?”
Despite myself, I can’t help my gaze tracking to the door of the room Icarus is currently locked in. There isn’t a sound coming from behind the thick wood, which is just as well. He can’t escape. “He may have information we need. I’ll deal with him when I return.”
I don’t bother to call for a driver as I leave the house. My truck will serve my purposes fine, and I prefer to drive myself unless having a driver is absolutely necessary. I recognize that employing one is the normal way of doing things among the legacy families in Olympus, but it’s silly to employ someone just to drive me around on the rare occasions I need it. My people have better things to do with their time. Most of the rich and powerful in this city already think I’m odd, and this is just one additional piece of proof to support that belief. Having realized they couldn’t use me to further their goals, they mostly leave me alone.
At least until Hera recruited me for her coup.
It takes far too long and yet no time at all to drive into the center city. I hate to spend time in this part of the upper city. No one says what they mean, and everything is a lie. Even the buildings themselves participate in the illusion, each of them nearly identical despite their disparate purposes. A bar looks the same as a pharmacy, which looks the same as an office building. It’s a low-level irritation, but an irritation nonetheless. It’s also a perfect representation of what Olympus is. Of what the Thirteen are.
I’m one of the last to arrive. It makes sense, since I had the farthest to come, except for Hades…but Hades isn’t here. Neither is Hermes, now that I start counting heads. The latter makes sense; she’s been missing more often than she’s been present in the last few months. But Hades? He shows up for every meeting like clockwork. He’s the one other member of the Thirteen that I can depend on to have a cool head and to have his priorities in order.
At least until the attacks in the lower city had him raising the barrier that runs along the River Styx. I assumed it had fallen with the exterior wall and that he would be present, but maybe my assumptions are false.
I take my customary seat midway down the large rectangular table, between Demeter and Artemis. Artemis is about ten years younger than me with light-brown skin, dark curly hair, and a selfish streak a mile long. That trait hasn’t gotten better with the death of her cousin, the former Hephaestus. Demeter…is more complicated. She’s a soft-looking white woman who’s on her way out of middle age, not that you can tell by looking at her. She has deep laugh lines around her full mouth and crow’s-feet branching from her hazel eyes, but there’s something about her that continues to be ageless.
It’s what drew me to her initially, at least long enough to have a short, ill-fated affair. Ill-fated because I had no interest in becoming one of her ex-husbands and she had no interest in sharing power, even if it was only the perception of shared power. I wouldn’t say we’re friends now, but we have an uneasy truce.
Across the heavy wooden table, Athena watches me with unreadable dark eyes. She’s a beautiful Black woman about my age with her hair cut fading up the sides of her head and leaving her curls longer on top. She’s not happy I chose to spare Icarus, and while I can understand that, I’m not one to let my emotions get the best of me. Most of the time. Icarus is a tool to be used; I didn’t spare him out of the goodness of my heart. But Athena doesn’t like to leave loose ends, especially when that loose end sent her on a wild-goose chase through Olympus before the confrontation in the marina.
Zeus clears his throat, drawing everyone’s attention to the head of the table. He’s only a few years younger than me, but there’s something untried about his energy. I can appreciate his having no interest in playing the games the others do, but that lack of interest is a weakness all the same. The last Zeus may have been a monster, but we relied on his charm to keep the people happy and the streets relatively safe.
Not that I think he would have been better suited to handle the crisis before us now. Knowing him, he would’ve tried to make a deal with the enemy so he could come out on top, even if that meant sacrificing large numbers of people. That wouldn’t work now anyway, not when she is the head of the enemy forces. The monster threatening Olympus is of the former Zeus’s making. A reckoning that has been a long time coming.