The Call of Monsters (My Beautiful Monsters #3) - J.B. Trepagnier Page 0,6

kind of guy you can reason with,” I pointed out.

“He’s not,” Tryphon said. “He’s worse than Poseidon. But even with those weapons, all the Olympians together in one place are a lot stronger than some humans Artemis conscripted into her army. There are also demigods and chosen humans in Olympus who are innocent in all of this. Their only crimes were that they were liked enough to be allowed in. Most of the time, that just means they kissed a lot of asses. It’s going to be a bloodbath on both sides, and a lot of innocent people will end up dying if Hades doesn’t at least attempt to negotiate first. That way, he can say he tried and plead his case to the people left standing so they don’t retaliate.”

I deflated because I knew he was right. As much as I wanted Hephaestus back, a lot of these demons who had agreed to help would die. My monsters could die, and so could I. I had to be patient.

I wasn’t holding my breath. The man was a serial adulterer and rapist. He injured Hephaestus for asking him not to hurt Hera.

But sure, he would totally listen to reason when it came to Hades and Persephone trying to explain everything Demeter had done to deserve that knife to the heart.

Chapter 4

Hephaestus

O

lympus didn’t have jails when Zeus kicked me out. If someone wanted to get rid of you, they did it in the Pits of Tartarus with the Olympians. The only reason I wasn’t there right now was that Zeus wanted to know about the weapon I used to kill Demeter. Not that he was mad Demeter was dead. He’d only ever liked her to warm his bed. Zeus wanted that weapon. It would mean he could kill Olympians without having to lure them to the Underworld first. That didn’t work anymore. Everyone knew if an Olympian asked you there, it was to get rid of you for good.

I knew exactly where I was. I was in Ares’ playroom. Ares like to pretend he was this fantastic Dom, but he was just a sadist who enjoyed hurting women. He had to stick to humans because Aphrodite was the only Olympian who would play his games anymore. After I trapped them, he refused to play with her anymore. Minor victories, I guess.

They had chained me to his playroom wall for the longest time. A human servant came in sometimes, but rarely enough to give me food and water. My bad leg was screaming since I’d been standing for so long. Sometimes, I’d try to relieve my leg by hanging from my arms, but I couldn’t do that for very long.

Zeus had only visited once. He beat me with his fists and demanded to know how to make the weapon. I refused to tell him. I hated him, and he had no way of killing me here. Yeah, I taunted him and just took his fists. It wasn’t the first time he beat me like this, but it would be the last when this was done.

After his first visit, he just left me alone, and that wasn’t Zeus. This wasn’t some form of isolation torture. That was too nuanced for him. He was more of a fist and lightning type of guy when he wanted information.

When the door opened, I expected it to be him. He’d left me alone way too long when Zeus wanted information. It wasn’t someone bringing me food and water because they did that last night, and they were pretending like I didn’t need to eat and drink regularly.

I was totally shocked when my fucking ex-wife walked in. What was Aphrodite doing here? She preferred living with humans. As far as I knew, she still was. She looked at me with pure hatred when she saw me chained to the wall. Fuck her. I had someone who looked at me with total adoration now. Aphrodite could take her stink eye and go straight to Tartarus.

She tossed her long, blonde hair over her shoulder and glared at me. She was still beautiful, but she’d changed since living with the humans. It looked like she was consistently baking herself in a tanning bed, even though when we were married, she’d insist on bathing in milk so her skin would be creamy white. Her clothing had a lot of things sucked in or pushed up. She might have used to be the Goddess of Love, and humans thought she was the most