Starcrossed (Starcrossed 1)

?The gods.?

Ariadne explained that the Trojan War was the most destructive

war the ancients had ever seen. It wiped out most of the Western

world, nearly ending civilization as we know it, and it was just as

destructive to the gods of Olympus as it was to the humans. Right

from the start, the gods were invested in the war. They chose sides,

either with their half-human children or with heroes who had particularly

pleased them. Some of the gods even came down from

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Olympus to fight in the war. Apollo rode in Hector?s chariot,

Athena fought with Achilles, and Poseidon fought on both sides of

the war, changing his mind as often as the tide. Even Aphrodite,

the goddess of love, flew down to the battlefield on one occasion to

protect Paris, and as she scooped him up to fly him away from certain

death, her hand was cut by a Greek blade.

?When her father, Zeus, saw Aphrodite?s injury, he forbade her to

return to Troy. She disobeyed him, of course, and that enraged

Zeus, but not enough to get involved. It wasn?t until his daughter

Athena and his son Ares nearly sent each other to Tartarus, a

hellish place of no return for immortals, that Zeus knew he had to

act. The human war was tearing his family apart, and it was threatening

his rule over the heavens.

?Zeus?s involvement was nearly too late. Ten years had passed

since the war began, and all the Olympians were so invested that

the only way Zeus could get the gods to stop fighting was to get the

Scions to stop fighting. Zeus had to bargain with the mortals, offering

them something they wanted. After ten years of the gods meddling

in their affairs, ten years of the gods dragging the war out and

making it worse, the only thing that both the Greeks and the Trojans

wanted was to be left alone. The mortals, the Scions, wanted