Electric Idol (Dark Olympus 2)

She’s extremely photogenic, but the pictures still don’t do her justice. There’s something about her presence in person that makes people sit up and pay attention, even when she’s dimming her light as best she can the way she always seems to at the parties we’ve both attended over the years.

She wasn’t dimming herself in the hallway or down in the bathroom where she patched me up. I don’t think it was on purpose, but I caught a glimpse of a bright and inquisitive mind behind that pretty face. She might play as if her looks are all she has going for her, but she’s smart. Too smart to get caught alone with me, and yet she took that risk and got burned. Why? Because I so obviously needed help. Because even monsters need help sometimes.

All this leads me to one very unfortunate conclusion.

Psyche Dimitriou might actually be what passes for a unicorn in Olympus—a good person.

I curse and close the window. It doesn’t matter if she’s hot or that I respect the way she’s so effectively dodged the power games since her family arrived on the scene or that she’s nice. My mother has a task, and I know the consequences of failing.

Exile.

Being left with nothing. Being nothing.

Aphrodite likes to remind me that the only thing I’m good at is hurting people. Even recognizing the blatant manipulation for what it is…she’s not wrong. I don’t know how to run a corporation like Perseus. I don’t know how to charm people and put them at ease like Helen. Fuck, I’m not even that good at breaking and entering like Hermes.

Not to mention more than a few victims of Aphrodite—of me—have suffered exile. If I end up sharing their fate, I don’t like my odds of lasting a year without one of them tracking me down and taking their just revenge.

Best not to think about that too closely. I’ll take care of the task, and then I’ll find a few partners and lose myself in a week of fucking and drinking and anything it takes to numb me out completely. Just like I always have.

With another curse, I pick up my phone.

A chirpy female voice answers. “Eros, my favorite little sex god. It’s my lucky day.”

Normally, it’s difficult to keep a smile off my face when I’m dealing with Hermes. She’s incorrigible and the only one of the Thirteen whose presence I actually enjoy. I don’t feel much like smiling today. “Hermes.”

She gives a sigh. “So it’s business, then?”

“It’s business,” I confirm. It’s not always business with Hermes and me. She and I have hooked up a few times over the years but ultimately settled into something resembling friendship. I don’t necessarily trust her—her title is practically spymaster, after all—but I like her.

“All business and no play makes Eros a dull boy.”

“We can’t all spend our time playing jester in Hades’s court.”

She laughs. “Don’t be mad just because Hades banned you from his sex dungeon. You would have done the same thing in his position.”

She’s right, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to admit it. The only reason Hades let me come and go across the River Styx without an issue was that we had something of a mutually beneficial relationship. He controlled the information I reported back to my mother. I enjoyed his hospitality. That all changed when Persephone entered the scene. She expanded his allegiance from himself to his now wife—and her mother, Demeter.

Seeing as how Demeter and my mother hate each other, that means I’m persona non grata in the lower city these days. When Hades cut me off, he cut off my main outlet to blow off steam. Not that that matters now, but Hermes always did know how to find a person’s buttons…and then do jumping jacks on them. “I have a message I’d like you to deliver, but it’s delicate in nature.”

A pause. “Okay, you have my attention. Stop toying with my emotions and tell me what you’re up to.”

I force a small smile as I sketch out what I need from her. Hermes’s role in the Thirteen is a little bit messenger, a little bit spy, a little bit agent of chaos for her own amusement. Her only real allegiance is to Dionysus, and even then, I’m not sure that friendship would hold if things got really intense. He’s not my aim, however, so I have no doubt she’ll do exactly as I request.

When I finish, she gives a merry laugh. “Eros, you sly rake, you. I’ll have the message delivered by morning.” She hangs up before I can respond.

I sit back with a sigh and rub my chest. No matter my personal thoughts on this, things are in motion. It’s too late to go back and change the past; I can only do what I’ve always done—come out on top.