Oh my gods. “You’ve got to be—”
The smoke envelops me completely, and my vision goes black. Only for a second. It’s like I slow blinked, and when it comes back, I am not in the den, watching all this happen on a tiny screen.
Instead, I’m standing at the entrance to the Temple of Zeus in a dissipating cloud of black smoke that smells of fire and brimstone, with Hades by my side.
With the worst timing ever, that bastard pulled me here mid-sentence, and my mouth finishes what I was in the middle of saying. “—shitting me.”
The two words drop into the stunned silence that has taken over the temple and all of San Francisco. Probably the entire fucking world.
Hades smiles directly at me—cunning and supremely satisfied, as if I couldn’t have thrilled him more with those crass words. Then he wraps his hand around mine, lifting both, and faces the crowds. “Lyra Keres!”
part 2
death’s virtue
This offending soul would like to thank Death for the honor…but decline.
8
Fortune’s Fools
I’m dead. I’m dead. I am so very, very dead.
“Don’t do this,” I whisper, ducking my head and hoping no one can read my lips or hear me as I essentially beg Hades to let me go. We’re still standing in front of the masses, waiting for I don’t know what.
“It’s done.” There’s no give. No pity.
He’s finally getting around to punishing me for earlier. That’s what this has to be. I have the worst luck with petty gods and this damned temple.
“Smile, my star,” Hades commands, soft but still compelling. “All the world is getting a good look at you before I take you away.”
In a disorienting flash followed by an immediate thunderclap that sends my ears ringing, someone else is standing with us.
Zeus.
Current power-hungry King of the Gods. I like to think of him as a narcissistic toddler.
Like Hades, this god is impossible to mistake, with pale curls that look like they’ve been shocked white forming a halo over his forehead, which strangely doesn’t make his fair skin look washed out. He doesn’t even look thirty…and Hades looks even younger, despite being the older of the two. I guess it’s true what they say about good genes and exercise. Zeus, though, is too pretty for my taste, although it is said his skin bears the scars of the Anaxian Wars. Something about Hephaestus and a volcano.
He’s dressed in an impeccable three-piece suit, though it is all white with a green tie that looks like he’s oozing algae from the neck.
Arrogant eyes so blue they almost hurt to gaze upon rake Hades from head to toe.
If I wasn’t so busy trying not to lose my shit over my own situation, I might’ve been amused by the comical mix of frustration and fury contorting Zeus’ otherwise angelic features. Turns out beauty, even godlike beauty, turns ugly with nasty thoughts.
The crowds trailing down the mountain, across the bridge, and into the city erupt at his appearance.
“The Crucible is of no interest to you, brother,” Zeus says with a smile, his voice booming across the headlands as he turns to play to his audience.
“And yet we both know you can’t stop me,” Hades muses casually for only us to hear. Then, in a voice that also rolls across the hillside, he says, “My brother wouldn’t be afraid of a little competition, would he?”
The responding cheers bring a scowl to Zeus’ angelic face, and electricity sparks over his head in tiny, popping bursts of light.
I lean in Hades’ direction. “Are you actively trying to get electrocuted?”
He’s watching Zeus, and I’m not sure if the sneer on his lips is for his brother or me. “I didn’t know you cared.”
For me, I guess. I give an inelegant snort. “I don’t. But I’m in striking range of where you stand, and I, unlike you, happen to be mortal.”
He still doesn’t look at me. “That instinct to save yourself first is going to serve you well.”
What in the Underworld is that supposed to mean? I might be cursed to never be loved, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about others. In fact, in a lot of ways, it makes me care too much, putting everyone else’s happiness before my own. But that’s not my biggest problem right now…
I open my mouth to tell him that if he thinks I’m going to participate in this farce of the gods’ one-upmanship, or whatever is going on here, he’s mistaken.
But before I can reply, before even Zeus can, Hades says above the roar of the crowd, “Let the games begin!”
Then there’s a flash of lightning the exact moment I do that blinking-disappearing thing again, this time without the smoke effects. The blinking thing lasts a little longer this time, and I swear I feel a steadying touch at the small of my back.
When my vision blinks back in, Hades and I are no longer standing before the temple in San Francisco at night. We’re on a wide, semicircular platform that protrudes from a mountainside and appears to hover over a sheer drop into clouds with the sun shining above.
We’re alone, but probably not for long.
I need to talk my way out of this. Fast. I look around for any ideas and freeze. All thoughts of escape move to the back burner as I gape at a sight mortals have only dreamed of witnessing.
Olympus—the home of the gods.
