For obvious reasons, its existence is kept a closely guarded secret. It effectively paints a target on ten out of the Thirteen and would breed utter chaos if widely known. Yet if Cassandra’s parents had succeeded, her role in Olympus would be very different. She’d be the daughter of one of the Thirteen rather than the daughter of a disgraced house.
Her parents would still be alive.
Ares shrugs. “Olympus is what it is.”
A vague and unsatisfying statement. Our city might be home, but very few people would go so far as to claim it’s fair and just. Not with power skewed so heavily in one direction. Maybe that will change with our new leadership…
I turn my attention back to Zeus’s door as Ares nods goodbye and leaves me to my work. Zeus truly entered a trial by fire when coming unexpectedly into his title. Between how things hashed out with his sister claiming the title of Ares and the exile of the old Aphrodite, the transfer of power has been anything but easy. I glance down at the file in my hands. The information it contains is worrisome if not downright damning.
Olympus is in trouble.
But even with all the resources at my disposal, I can’t say for certainhow muchtrouble.
Up until this point, Olympus has mostly existed in its own little snow globe. The greater world wrote us off long ago as an unreachable prize. We all took for granted that it would always be that way, that the barrier keeping Olympus from the rest of the world would hold forever.
Now, it’s failing. And no one can figure out why.
A problem for another day. We have enough to worry about right this second.
I step back into Zeus’s office and close the door behind me. “Sorry about the interruption.”
He sits behind the big desk in the middle of the room, a white man with blond hair and a perfectly tailored suit. He’s the spitting image of his late father, though he wouldn’t thank me for pointing it out. That’s where the comparison ends, though. This Zeus doesn’t have the same mercurial charisma that the last one could turn on at the drop of a hat, and that fact has made his taking of the title challenging.
Honestly, I prefer it. He might be difficult to work with at times, but I don’t have to worry about any nasty surprises. It’s a relief after dealing with his father.
He nods, and I resume my seat across the desk from him. Only then does he speak. “You were saying…”
I set the file aside. I don’t need it, though I appreciate Cassandra taking the time to bring it all the way here. The woman is as foul-tempered as a wet cat, but she’s remarkably kind when she forgets to snarl at everyone around her. “Despite exhausting my information network, I still don’t know where Minos came from. He and his people are ghosts. For all intents and purposes, they appeared out of nowhere a few weeks ago to participate in the Ares tournament. We can’t even pinpoint how they knew to come in the first place.”
Zeus steeples his hands before his face. “They paid dearly to enter the city. That kind of money doesn’t just appear when someone wishes upon a star.”
“I’m aware, but maybe Poseidon should have asked more questions before he arranged transport.”
“That’s his prerogative.” Zeus leans back. “If I start asking too many questions, he’ll start growling about overreaching.”
He’s not wrong. Poseidon doesn’t participate in most of the political squabbling, but he’s no pushover. “This is important. Surely he realizes that.”
“Possibly.” Zeus shrugs. “But that’s less important to him than protecting his territory and his power base. We know he brought in Minos and his people. That’s enough. He was entitled to do so, thanks to the tournament. It’s open to everyone.”
I hardly agree that it’senough, but I let him move us along all the same. Ultimately, all that matters is that Minos and his people are still here despite the tournament being over. “It’s no accident that Minos pushed his way into the city and is now brokering secret information about Olympus’s enemies in order to stay.”
“I know.” Zeus sighs. “He was planning this from the beginning. If one of his people became Ares, we’d have less maneuvering power than we do now, but we’re still not in a good position to ignore whatever information he claims to have.”
If thereisan enemy capable of taking the city, we need to know about it before we lose our main defensive measure—and so far, Minos has given us very little of what he supposedly knows. “I’ve spent the last few weeks searching, and there’s nothing. Either Minos is bluffing or this group rallying against Olympus is good enough that they’re essentially invisible.”
“Fuck.” Zeus presses his fingers to his temples. “We can’t risk it if he’s not bluffing. The information he’s already let drop is enough to make me think there really is a threat.”
“I agree.” I, of all people, am aware that knowledge is power. There’s no telling how much this shadowy enemy might know about us. Olympus might not broadcast all its secrets, but there are always exiles and I imagine most of them would be willing to talk for a price. Or out of sheer spite. “We have to assume worst-case scenario, that they know plenty about us.”
“And we know nothing about them. Not without Minos.”
Minos is well aware of the position he’s put us in, and he’s leveraging it for all he’s worth. That’s why we’re having this meeting today. He’s offering to tell usallhe knows about this supposed enemy. In exchange, he wants money, a home, and Olympic citizenship for all the members of his family.
The first two are easy enough. The latter is complicated because Zeus granting citizenship is as good as elevating the family to the highest levels of Olympic society. It will change the balance within the upper crust of the city, and we might have a revolt on our hands as a result.
If there’s anything Olympus hates, it’s change, and we’ve had more than our fair share of it in the last year.
“We have to give him what he wants.” Zeus curses. “This had better be worth it, because we can’t take it back without an even bigger mess.”