overthrew Zeus. It wasn’t just electing a government and allowing travel. They had some major infrastructure changes to make from the looks of things, and I couldn’t see humans sticking around to redo golden roads constantly. If that was my job and I had the option to leave, I’d do it five minutes ago.
“I like the idea of trade,” Apollo said. “Zeus didn’t think of it, but when he recalled us to Olympus, many of us took seedlings back to grow in our gardens. A lot of us learned recipes from the mortals and still cook them. Dionysus gave them our wine recipe, and they just ran with it and created new wines that many of us miss. We could still learn a lot from the various realms that will agree to trade with us.”
Solron let out this little moan.
“The Fae make excellent wine. If you aren’t dicks to them, they may let you import it.”
“The Fae have several excellent inventions,” Barbatos said. “They are a very proud people with a long history of magic and traditions. If you would like an alliance with them, you would do well to treat them with respect and not knock any tradition of theirs you might not like. The same goes for Hell. We aren’t humans who will roll over and kiss your ass because you have magic. We have our own various types of magic.”
I was shocked no one got pissed off at that. I mean, back when they were pretending to be gods, they punished people for way less. I at least expected some sort of posturing about how Olympian magic was superior. They were all just grinning like fools at my father like they weren’t upset at all.
“We don’t expect you to. A lot of us hated the whole gods and goddesses thing. I think I speak for many of us when we say we’ve never met demons before and aren’t sure what a Fae is, but we’re curious about your powers.”
“Thank you!” Kimon said. “Is anyone going to explain what a fucking Fae is? I keep hearing about them, but how are they different from demons? There are all different kinds of demons I’m learning about that can do impossible things like disappear and reappear into shadows, and my mate can turn into this sexy cat woman with bat wings, but can someone explain the Fae?”
Kimon seemed to take in demons with no problem, and I knew he liked my demonic form, but I had no idea he was worried about the Fae. I only knew what I had read in fiction, and there was so much conflicting information. Unlike Kimon, I had heard of them before because of where I lived. Kimon really had his world shattered with this whole different realms thing. I can’t say I wasn’t curious.
“The Fae are harmless unless you offend them. They have a monarch society with warriors who consider it an honor to fight and die for their king. They have a society with light and dark Fae, but it’s not good and evil. The light Fae are healers, and the dark Fae are more hard scientists. I will tell you this. No matter which ones you are with, you probably don’t want to make a deal with either. They are brilliant, and you might think you are getting what you want in the deal, but the Fae will always end up coming out ahead unless they are desperate. That rarely happens.”
“Can you kill them with iron?” I asked.
“Yes, but please don’t mention that around them. They are very sensitive about it and take great pains to keep it out of their realm. It makes them sick. The Fae are quite lovely now that they have a new king. You don’t have to worry about killing them.”
Still, I didn’t know about all these different realms that existed, and it wouldn’t hurt to know how to kill the various things that lived there if they acted up in the Underworld if Hades opened the gates.
“We’re getting distracted again,” Hephaestus said. “We can talk about the various realms and creatures all day, but we need to worry about Olympus. I don’t particularly want to stay here any longer than I have to. Artemis was only in if we could get her handmaidens back. Hades has agreed to send them back to her when this is over. We need to make our move.”
Hermes was sitting in the corner with a laptop and a headset but