realized Hephaestus wasn’t here, and neither was Tryphon.
“Where is he?” I demanded. “Where is Tryphon?”
My father just smiled at me.
“Stealing from the kitchens. You need to eat if you’re going to be killing gods, River. I can’t wait for you to visit Hell. I have an amazing chef. They approved him to go topside and apprentice with chefs all over the world. While I’m gone, he’s off with the Fae learning their cooking. I’m going to throw a feast when you arrive, and we are going to have a gigantic party.”
I just laughed.
“It’s not going to be like those baby demon reveal parties where I’m going to have to show off my cat and wings, is it?”
Barbatos just grinned.
“Not at all, but if you wanted to flash a little claw, it would not upset me.”
Meeting my father wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be, even if he was Hell royalty and wasn’t even human. He just had this way of being so fucking cool about everything. It was like nothing I did bothered him, and he’d never judge me. It could have been awkward meeting him again, especially with everything going on, but it wasn’t. I don’t think he knew how much I appreciate that. Or the massive army he brought with him just to help me.
Kimon stretched and rolled over in bed.
“Are we going to talk about the whole Hera thing?”
“I get she’s Hephaestus’s mom, but she’s fucking Hera,” Demos said.
“I believe her,” Pavlina said. “Men are wholly irritating, and I would imagine being married to an abusive fuck who won’t grant you a divorce because of his ego is enough to make anyone go crazy for a little while. I’m not excusing everything she did, and she took things too far, but I blame Zeus for driving her insane. I would imagine he took the rapist thing to their marriage bed too.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. I listened to Hera, and I gave her the benefit of the doubt for now because Hephaestus was. She sounded earnest when she talked to him, but I didn’t know her well enough to say she was lying straight to our faces.
Hera hurt people. She took that to some extremes. I wasn’t excusing what she’d done. Hephaestus didn’t call her out when she said Hercules was married to her daughter now. My professor spent two whole weeks on Hercules, so I knew exactly how she tortured him. It was beyond cruel.
I don’t think he would have gone anywhere near her daughter when he got to Olympus if they hadn’t made peace. After everything she did to him on Earth, I couldn’t imagine him even risking that in Olympus by setting his sights on her daughter unless he knew he wasn’t in for the same antics for all of eternity.
“I believe her too,” I said. “Why would Hercules even approach Hera’s daughter here unless he knew she wasn’t going to put him through what she did on Earth?”
Demos just shrugged.
“You heard her. Zeus strung her up by her arms and would have left her there if Hephaestus hadn’t cut her down. They are so concerned about his limp and how it makes him less than them. Maybe she was worried Zeus would permanently disfigure her if she kept it up when Hercules got here. Maybe she’s not okay with the union, but she’s too scared of getting thrown through several realms to do anything about it. You know how much she hated Hercules. We give her one of these blades, and she could just as well kill him.”
Also, a good point. Damn. This was so much less complicated before she showed up out of the blue. We needed Hephaestus here to talk this out, but I was also starving. I was worried about both of them getting caught too. Wasn’t someone going to notice all that food missing? I could just feel in my gut Hera wasn’t going to tell Zeus we were here, and that was only because she wanted him dead. Sneaking around this massive palace had risks, no matter how many secret passages and bedrooms Zeus built because he thought Hera didn’t know about them. If Hera knew we were here, it was just a matter of time before someone else did too.
Hephaestus and Tryphon finally came back in with picnic baskets. I got that they needed them to carry food back, but we needed to make sure that as few things as possible went missing. Hephaestus