Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,10

afraid of hurting the baby that was now stuck inside him.

“Cough her up!” Rhea demanded.

“Can’t,” Kronos said. “I have this super-strong stomach. Once something goes down, it doesn’t come back up.”

“How could you swallow her?” she shouted. “That was our child!”

“Yeah, about that…” Kronos tried to look apologetic. “Listen, babe, it wasn’t going to work out with that kid.”

“Work out?”

“There was this curse.” Kronos told her what Ouranos had prophesied. “I mean, come on, sweetcakes! That baby wasn’t even a proper Titan. She was trouble, I could tell! The next kid will be better, I’m sure.”

This sounded perfectly reasonable to Kronos, but for some reason Rhea wasn’t satisfied. She stormed off in a rage.

You’d think Rhea would never forgive him. I mean, your husband eats your firstborn child like a slider hamburger….Your typical mother isn’t going to forget that.

But Rhea’s situation was complicated.

First, Kronos had swallowed the baby Hestia whole. Hestia, like her parents, was technically immortal. She couldn’t die, even inside her father’s stomach. Gross in there? Yes. A little claustrophobic? You bet. But fatal? No.

She’s still alive, Rhea consoled herself. I can find a way to get her back.

That calmed her down a little, though she didn’t have a plan. She couldn’t use force to get her way. Rhea was a gentle goddess. Even if she tried to fight, most of the strongest Titans, like Hyperion and that big goon Atlas, would back Kronos up.

She couldn’t risk a sneak attack with a knife or the scythe or even her lions, because that might hurt the baby.

Maybe you’re thinking, Wait a minute. If the kid is immortal, why is Rhea worried about hurting her? But, see, immortals can be hurt badly, crippled, or mutilated. An injury might not kill them, but they also don’t always heal from damage. They just stay crippled forever. You’ll see some examples of that later on. Rhea wasn’t about to cut open Kronos and risk chopping up her baby, because being in pieces is no way to live, especially when you live forever.

She couldn’t divorce Kronos, because nobody had invented divorce yet. And even if they had, Rhea would have been too scared to try. Can you blame her? As you may have noticed, Kronos was one crazy piece of work. Rhea had known that fact ever since he chopped up their dad with the scythe and then walked around the after-party in his ichor-stained shirt shouting, “Awesome murder, guys! High five!”

She couldn’t run, because Kronos was lord of the whole world. Unless she wanted to jump into Tartarus (which she didn’t), there was no place to go.

Her best bet was to stick it out, bide her time, and wait until she found a way to get Hestia back.

Kronos tried to be nice to her. He bought her presents and took her out to dinner, as if that could make her forget about the baby in his stomach.

When Kronos thought enough time had passed—like three or four days—he insisted that they try to have more kids.

Why? Maybe he had a secret death wish. Maybe he became obsessed with Ouranos’s prophecy and wanted to see if the next kid would be a proper Titan or one of those horrible, too-powerful, too-perfect little gods.

So Rhea had another baby—a little girl even cuter than the first. Rhea named her Demeter.

Rhea dared to hope. Demeter was so adorable, maybe she would melt Kronos’s heart. He couldn’t possibly feel threatened by this little bundle of joy.

Kronos took the child in his arms and saw right away that Demeter was another goddess. She glowed with an aura even more powerful than Hestia’s. She was trouble with a capital tau.

This time he didn’t hesitate. He opened his jaws and swallowed her down.

Cue the screaming fit from Mom. Cue the apologies.

Rhea was seriously tempted to call out her lions, but now the stakes were even higher. Kronos had two kids in there.

I know, you’re thinking it must’ve been getting crowded in the Titan lord’s gut. But gods are kind of flexible about their size. Sometimes they are huge. Sometimes they’re no bigger than humans.

I was not there in Kronos’s stomach, thankfully, but I’m guessing the little immortal babies just made themselves small. They continued to mature, but they didn’t get any bigger. They were like springs getting wound up tighter and tighter, hoping that someday they would get to burst out fully grown. And every day praying that Kronos wouldn’t have hot sauce with his dinner.

Poor Rhea. Kronos insisted they try again.

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