grudges and keep this sense of inner peace after they gave me a new lease on life once they sent me to the Underworld. I tried to forget everything Poseidon forced me to do while I was his slave, just like I had forgotten my entire life before he made me his monster. I’d done a pretty decent job of moving on, but I could still be a petty little bitch when I wanted to be, and I wasn’t about to pass up the chance at killing Poseidon. It wasn’t just about what he did to me. He wiped out entire villages for no logical reason. He needed to pay for that.
Hermes had already riled Athena up. I’d never met her, but apparently, she had an excellent resting bitch face. I already knew she wasn’t a rational person, or Pavlina wouldn’t be a spider, and the Gorgon sisters wouldn’t be so angry all the time, but apparently, she could fake it like the nymphs faked orgasms if you were rotten in bed.
Hermes reported she didn’t lose her cool or give anything away, but she suddenly had a necessary hair appointment or something she needed to get to that she shooed Hermes out of her house really fucking quickly. I liked Hermes and was glad he was on our side. He had this innocent face, so everyone trusted him, and the Olympians were so ass-backward, they didn’t take him seriously because he was gay.
And that was just so fucking stupid. No one cared about that in the Underworld, and based on River and everyone in Hell’s response, at least three realms wouldn’t have forbidden them from being together like Zeus was doing. I’m sure there were judgey people in every place who were super interested in thinking their opinion mattered about what went on behind closed doors among consenting adults. Still, there wasn’t one man preventing it like in Olympus.
None of the Olympians were fucking around. Now that Artemis knew she’d get her handmaidens back, she was contributing more than just her bow and arrows. Despite the massive number of women she had sent to the Underworld, she still had more here. She had them scouting Zeus’s place. They were much better scouts than the servant Athena sent to watch his palace. They could see him, but he couldn’t see them.
They were reporting back to Artemis and Hermes via an earpiece. It was like some fucked up game of spy whack-a-mole. One of those handmaidens was literally right up the ass of Athena’s servant, and he didn’t know. So, we all knew when Ares came back to Olympus, knocked on Zeus’s front door, and we knew when Athena knew that too.
Just like the Olympians predicted, Artemis’s handmaidens reported her flouncing up Zeus’s front steps with Poseidon in tow, and they both looked ready for a fight. That was our cue. Everyone who was going to fight was in Dionysus’s sitting room and armed to the teeth. Everyone who fought with us from Hell used blades. Finn was the only one with some device that was noisy and caused a ton of damage. When I asked, he explained it was called a gun.
We didn’t have those in the Underworld, but Hephaestus was familiar with them. He made something called bullets for them. Finn kept insisting that if Pavlina and I didn’t need our revenge so badly, he could take the entire room out with just a few pulls of the trigger on that thing. Maybe he was right, but I trusted weapons I knew more than shiny toys I’d never seen before.
I was ready. I had blades strapped all over my body, and I’d always have my tentacles. Still, I wasn’t going into this blindly. I think we all made sure River could quickly get to her weapons. I knew Pavlina, and I could get our closure because Demos, Kimon, and Hephaestus would protect her. I’d lay odds Barbatos told the witches to make sure she was protected too. We all knew she wanted to kill Ares. No one was going to say to her she couldn’t either. As far as we were concerned, River could kill anyone who pissed her off, and we wanted Ares dead for hurting Hephaestus too.
“Remember, total silence,” Dionysus said. “Artemis only has one shot at getting her arrow into Zeus and taking him out of the equation. Zeus is a total shit, but he’s powerful. We need to get rid of him. If he knows we