turned to me. She blinked as her green eyes focused.
“Okay…” she said after a moment. “This is weird even for you.”
“Are you okay?” Dumb question. She’d been curled up in the fetal position, spending her sleeping hours in tears.
“What do you care?” She climbed to her feet and swept a tangle of wavy blonde hair off her shoulders. “So what are you going to do next? Annoy me to death?”
“What?” I drew my eyebrows together in confusion. “Look, we don’t have much time. I don’t know how much longer Zeus is going to let you sleep. Where are you?”
She snorted and sank back to the ground, drawing her knees up to her chest beneath her long floral patterned skirt. The skirt covered her feet, pooling onto the floor around her. Persephone crossed her arms over her knees and ducked her head, sending her hair cascading down her shoulders and over her arms. I bit my lip, recognizing a shield when I saw one. Not a real shield—she wasn’t using power. Pressed up to the wall behind her, Persephone vanished into herself as a shapeless blob of fabric and hair. “Go away.”
“Look—” I knelt beside her. “I get you’re mad at me. I didn’t want to help Zeus, but I didn’t have a choice. It’s a long story, and Hades can explain it better than I can anyway. Hades and I…” I trailed off, trying to get my thoughts together. She was acting so weird it was hard to stop babbling and get to a point, but I couldn’t have much time left.
“Right, she and Hades. He’s never given her a second look, so you can stop that train of thought right there.” Her voice was muffled as she spoke into her skirt. She wouldn’t look at me.
“Um. No. Hades is like, ancient.” He was also off-the-charts hot, even for a god. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t given it a thought, but he and Persephone seemed to be going for the whole monogamy thing, and I respected her way too much to steal her guy.
Still, he’d give me way more than a second look if I wanted him to. But she didn’t need to hear that right now.
Wait a minute! Persephone said “she,” like I wasn’t me. “You think I’m Zeus. I’m not. I’m Aphrodite, no tricks, no deception. Hades and your mom and pretty much every other god on the planet are looking for you. So I’m going to ask one more time. Where are you?”
She raised her head, green eyes searching my face. “Aphrodite?” She let out a long breath. “Is this real? Sometimes I…I see things that aren’t…” She trailed off, looking small and frail.
“I’m real,” I assured her.
“I’m in his realm, in a castle in the sky.” She looked around like she could find something else to help me find her, but all that surrounded her were windows looking out to endless sky. “It was daylight when I passed out. You?”
I nodded. “Daylight, so you’re in the same hemisphere.”
“Glad to help narrow it down.” Her voice was bitter.
“It’s more than we knew ten minutes ago.”
“What happened to Hades?” She sounded so scared I did a double take. “I can’t hear him. Is he…?”
“He’s fine. Going nuts trying to find you, but that’s what I’m here about.” I took a deep breath. “He’s hoping to convince one of Zeus’ other kids to kill off Zeus—”
“But failing that, I need to do it.” She sighed. “Aphrodite, I’m not strong enough. I’ve been fighting back. I just—”
“I know. And Hades doesn’t want you to get your hands dirty. His plan is stupid, Persephone. And dangerous.”
She gave me an expectant look, so I continued.
“He wants to reset the rules. Make it easier to kill gods.”
“He can do that?”
I snorted. “Persephone, he helped create the world. As long as he can get enough of the original six on board, he can do anything. But there’s a price. A balance. And if he screws it up, all of creation could be forfeit.”
“He won’t do it then.”
“I think you underestimate his devotion to you.”
She shook her head. “He has a life outside of me with people who matter. He won’t risk them for me anymore than I would risk my people for him. He’s panicked, and worried, but I don’t believe he’ll risk all of creation to find me.”
“Okay.” She hadn’t seen his face when he said he was going to kill Zeus. “But last resort, Persephone, I need you to