“Hera?”
I stilled. I would have recognized that voice anywhere, and it was the last one I wanted to hear again.
Demeter.
“I have nothing to say to you.” I could’ve disappeared and returned to Hades’s palace, but I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of seeing me run from her. This was my home now. She would be the one to leave.
“Hera, I need to talk to you.” She touched my wrist, and I jerked away. “Please. It’s important.”
“Our definitions of important are vastly different now, I suspect.” I moved away from her, heading toward the ocean.
“Zeus wants to marry off the children,” she said. “Including Ares and Hephaestus.”
I stopped at the edge of the water, and the waves lapped at my feet. “Excuse me?”
“Zeus—he’s decided that Apollo, Hephaestus and Ares will marry Persephone, Aphrodite and Athena.”
That bastard. He wanted to do to his own children what he’d done to me. “Tell him I will never allow it.”
“He insists he doesn’t need your permission—”
“I am the goddess of marriage,” I thundered, turning on my heel to look at her for the first time in years. “Any marriage I do not bless will fail.”
Demeter stood there trembling, more frightened than I’d ever seen her before. She seemed older now, more like our mother, and for a split second I nearly didn’t recognize her. Her skin was paler than before, and she looked as if she hadn’t smiled in a decade.
This wasn’t my sister. Zeus had ruined her as well, just as he’d ruined me.
In that moment, I felt a spark of sympathy, but I squelched it before it could grow into a flame. She’d watched him do the same thing to me. She should’ve known.
“Please, Hera,” she whispered. “Come back. You can stop this—he’ll listen to you. He misses you, even though he doesn’t want to admit it.”
“Why do you care?” I snapped.
She swallowed. “Because when Persephone comes of age, he wants to marry her to Ares.”
The thought of my son marrying her daughter made my stomach turn, as I’m sure it made hers, though for entirely different reasons. Ares wasn’t known for his gentleness. “And who would you prefer she marry?”
“Someone she chooses,” said Demeter quietly. “Someone she loves.”
I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the fake ocean. “I will speak with Ares and Hephaestus, and in the meantime, tell Zeus I will never return. I’m happy here, and nothing he offers me will ever change my mind.”
Demeter hesitated. “He knows,” she said quietly. “And it hurts him.”
“Good.” The more pain he was in, the better. “I will meet with my sons immediately. Now go.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. She didn’t disappear yet, though. Instead Demeter hesitated, shifting her weight as if she wanted to move closer to me, but thought better of it. “I did it for you, you know. For us.”
I scoffed. “You had my husband’s bastard for me?”
“To even our numbers. To stop Zeus from taking over—”
“He’s already taken over,” I said, not bothering to hide my bitterness. “We lost a very long time ago, and I won’t listen to your lies. If you’d really wanted to help by having a child, you would’ve had one with Poseidon.”
“Zeus would’ve never allowed her onto the council then,” said Demeter, and though I knew she was telling the truth, it wasn’t the excuse she wanted it to be. It was simply another example of how he’d already won.
“I would have fought for her place,” I said. “I would’ve fought for you. Now I have no one left to fight for but myself. I hope you’re proud.”
An unbearable sadness settled over her expression, and she exhaled, as if breathing out any last hope she had. Good. “Proud is the last thing I am. You of all people should recognize that.” She nodded to me once. “Goodbye, Hera. For what it’s worth, I will forever be sorry for what I did to you.”
I sniffed. “As you should be.”
Demeter turned and walked back toward the stone wall. For a moment, something inside me, something I’d buried so long ago that it had nearly suffocated underneath my resentment and quiet rage, wiggled free. And I wanted nothing more than for her to turn around and come back to me.
But she’d made up her mind long ago, as had I. That path was gone now, and no matter how badly I ached to be sisters again, circumstances would never allow it. Not anymore.
As soon as she was gone, I wasted no time. Less than an hour later, I met Ares and Hephaestus on the island scarred by Cronus’s imprisonment. “What do you two want?”
Ares scoffed. He was so much taller than me now, and he’d cropped his dark curls short. “I’d rather never marry. I see no point. Unless, of course, it was Aphrodite.” He grinned, and Hephaestus scowled. Apparently Ares wasn’t the only one who had fallen under her spell. “Wouldn’t mind having a go with her.”
Yes, Ares was every bit his father’s son. “And you, Hephaestus?”
“I wouldn’t mind marrying,” he said quietly as he watched the waves wash away his uneven footprints. “But I would rather choose my partner.”
And Hephaestus was every bit mine. “I’ll take care of it,” I said, touching his hand. “Zeus is a tyrant, and you both deserve better than this.” I wouldn’t let what had happened to me happen to them. Even Zeus’s daughters didn’t deserve it, though my sons had both apparently taken a liking to Aphrodite. But she was not their property, and they had no right to choose for her.