The Call of Monsters (My Beautiful Monsters #3) - J.B. Trepagnier Page 0,24
made my way down the streets, I realized how fucking spoiled my family was. It didn’t hold up to horses back in the day, and it wasn’t holding up to cars now, but they still insisted on paving the streets with gold.
It caused a horrible glare when you were driving in our bright sun, and it needed constant maintenance. I hadn’t been back here in forever, but there were humans out slaving away trying to repair it like back in the old days. This had always been a constant—humans in the scorching sun trying to repair golden roads. They could have easily switched to stone or asphalt. We had some beautiful stones here in Olympus that would have given the streets a lovely sheen and held up better. My family would rather deal with road closures and traffic just to brag they had solid gold roads here.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and kept my head down as I walked down the street. I wanted to do something, and I would. I just couldn’t right now. These humans working on the roads were descendants of humans who were kidnapped here or lied to and said the gods chose them to live in paradise.
Olympus wasn’t paradise unless you shared DNA with my family. Artemis treated her little army well, but she sent them to die in the Underworld. If you were a human in Olympus, you were expected to serve, and depending on who your master was, you could either be looked down on but still have a roof over your head and food in your belly every night, or you could be a slave to their whims and hoping for scraps.
I could tell by the hollowed-out eyes of these humans fixing the road that they weren’t well fed. I wanted to tell them just to go home and find a place to hide. I wanted to promise them things were going to change. I couldn’t do a damned thing for them just yet, so I kept my head down and kept walking, despite this nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach just leaving them there.
The three Horae lived in a small cottage near the gate. They never lived like the rest of the Olympians. They didn’t have some massive palace or human servants. They had a cozy, six-bedroom cottage and did everything themselves. That was probably why they were always so lovely to me. They didn’t have any preconceived notions about how Olympians were superior to everyone and couldn’t have any visible flaws.
I knew Zeus didn’t have anyone watching their cottage because I listened to all of his plans, but at the same time, I didn’t want to bring any more trouble to their door than I already was. When I used to visit them and bring them trinkets, I always snuck through the gate in the back and knocked on the backdoor. They always told me I could come through the front door, but it was such a crime in Olympus for one of their own to have a limp. I knew something terrible would happen to them if they were seen being nice to me. I just hoped they remembered that when I broke into their back gate.
Thallo, Auxo, and Carpo were all sitting in their garden having tea when I stuck my head through the back gate. Their heads turned, and they didn’t look shocked to see me. They just sipped their tea and smiled.
“What took you so long, Hephaestus?” Thallo said.
“I made your favorite tea cakes,” Auxo said.
“Come sit, my boy,” Carpo said.
They all stood to hug me as I joined them at the table. They’d always been the three mothers I wished I had. Hera and I had been close until I was injured, then it was like I was dead to her. Auxo made these honeyed tea cakes that were to die for, but she refused to give me her recipe because she insisted I wasn’t old enough for it yet. Age was so relative to us since we never aged, and until I made it, nothing could kill us.
I took my usual seat at their table and grabbed a tea cake.
“You were expecting me?”
They all just started laughing.
“All things must come to an end, Hephaestus,” Thallo said.
“Atropos visited us and said a lot of strings here are about to get cut. Change is coming. Clotho said you would bring it and that we should help you. As if we needed a