Neon Gods (Dark Olympus 1)
“Better than him being here to act out Aphrodite’s vengeance.” Something he’s rumored to do on the regular.
She looks around the room, and I can practically see her mind whirling as she’s finally able to make out the faces of the crowd. “There are a lot more people from the upper city here than I expected. People who attend the same parties I used to.”
“Yes.” I wind a strand of her blond hair around my fingers, waiting for her to work through whatever she’s chewing on.
“They knew you were here. Why are you only a rumor if all these people know you exist?”
I stroke my thumb over her hair. “That’s an easy question and a complicated answer. The simplified version is that Zeus has a vested interest in keeping me a myth.”
She looks at me. “Because it gives him more power. Poseidon mostly keeps to his territory around the docks and doesn’t have the patience for politicking. You’re the only other legacy title. Without you in the mix, there’s no one to stand in the way of Zeus playing king of all Olympus.”
Smart little siren.
“Yes.” All the other Thirteen answer to Zeus in their way. Not a single one of them can bring forth the power that one of the legacy titles can. Not even Demeter, with her control of the city’s food supply, or Ares with his small army of private contract soldiers.
When Persephone keeps frowning, I give her hair a gentle tug. “What else?”
“It’s just so…hypocritical. In the upper city, it’s all purity culture and pretending that they’re above such base human needs, putting value on denying themselves. Then they come down here and take advantage of your hospitality to play the kind of sex games that would get them exiled from their social circles and publicly shamed.” She looks around the room. “Though it’s not only sex games, is it? They come to the lower city for a number of things they don’t want others to know about.”
It doesn’t really surprise me that Persephone connects the dots so quickly, not when she’s already proven to have a sly mind behind that persona of pretty fluff. “If their sins happen in the dark, do they even count?”
Her expression is downright ferocious. “They use you and then they tuck you back into the shadows and pretend you’re a boogeyman. It’s not right.”
That strange pulse in my chest strengthens. I think I’m speechless. It’s the only explanation for me staring at her like I’ve never seen her before. That’s not only it, though. I’ve seen her fierce as fuck, but she’s never directed that in defense of me. It’s strange and novel and I don’t know what to do with it.
Thankfully, I’m saved from having to come up with a response by Hermes and Dionysus strolling up. Since the shows—official and unofficial—are finished, everyone around us are in various states of undress and beginning scenes. Not these two. They always show up, but Hermes is the only one who ever participates, if rarely. For Dionysus’s part, his vices don’t include sex of any flavor.
Dionysus points at a chair occupied by two women. “Move.”
They move, taking themselves a few feet away, and he drags the chair over to ours. “Nice party.”
“Glad you like it,” I say drily. He drops into the chair and Hermes perches on the arm of it. She runs her fingers through Dionysus’s hair absently, but her dark eyes are shrewd. I sigh. “Yes, Hermes?”
“You know I don’t like to tell you how to live your life.”
“When has that ever stopped you?” I feel Persephone tense like a coiled snake, and I smooth my hands down her body, tucking her more firmly against me—and banding an arm around her waist. I don’t think my little siren will physically attack someone, let alone one of the Thirteen, but I didn’t expect her to cut Eros down so efficiently, either. She’s full of surprises, which shouldn’t delight me nearly as much as it does.
Dionysus wraps an arm around Hermes’s waist and tilts his head so she has better access to keep up her absent stroking. No matter how relaxed he appears, he’s just as sober and shrewd as she is right now. “You’re poking the bear, my friend. Are you prepared for what happens next?”
It shouldn’t be possible that both Hermes and Dionysus are more dramatic when they’re sober than when they’re drunk. And yet here we are. “Not all of us make decisions on the fly.”
“You know, when we said you should loosen up, we didn’t exactly mean you should bang Zeus’s fiancée in front of fifty people who are frothing at the mouth to run back to the upper city and tell him what they’ve seen in explicit detail.” Hermes adjusts her glasses. “Not us, of course. We don’t indulge in spreading tales like that.”