“Don’t bother. We’ll catch our own ride.” She pops up onto her tiptoes and presses a quick kiss to my cheek. “Have fun with your captive.”
“She’s not my captive.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Then she’s gone, dancing out of the room in her bare feet as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. The woman exhausts me.
Dionysus seems to have no intention of leaving my mug behind, but he stops in the doorway. “You and the sunshine girl might be able to help each other.” He grimaces at my look. “What? It’s a perfectly legitimate thought to have. She’s probably one of the few people in Olympus who hates Zeus as much as you do.” He snaps his fingers. “Oh, and I’ll have that shipment for you by the end of the week. I didn’t forget.”
“You never do.” As soon as he walks out the door, I snag Hermes’s abandoned coffee cup and put it in the sink. The woman leaves mess wherever she goes, but I’m used to it at this point. Last night was relatively tame on the Hermes-Dionysus scale. Last time they broke in, they brought a chicken they’d found gods alone knew where. I was finding feathers for days afterward.
I stare at the coffeepot, pushing away thoughts of those two troublemakers. They aren’t the ones I need to be worried about right now. Zeus is. I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t contacted me already. He’s not one to sit back and wait when someone takes away one of his toys.
It’s so fucking tempting to reach out first, to rub his nose in the fact that this little socialite was willing to run to me rather than marry him. Doing so is too impulsive and petty. If I intend to use Persephone to actually get some measure of revenge…
I’ll be just as bad as he is.
I try to push the thought aside. My people have suffered from Zeus’s machinations. I have suffered, have lost just as much as anyone. I should be jumping at this chance to get a measure of revenge. And I do want revenge. But do I want it at the expense of this woman who has already played a pawn to both her mother and Zeus? Am I cold enough to push forward despite her protests?
I suppose I could ask her what she wants. What a novel thought.
I grimace and pour a second cup of coffee. After a moment’s consideration, I find the cream and sugar and dose it. Persephone doesn’t seem the type to drink her coffee black. Then again, what do I know? The only information I have on her is what’s written in the gossip columns that follow the Thirteen and the people in their sphere. Those “journalists” adore the Dimitriou women and follow them around like a pack of dogs. I’m actually kind of impressed Persephone made it out of that party without acquiring an entourage.
How much is real and how much is creatively put together fiction? Impossible to say. I know better than most that reputation often has little to do with reality.
I’m stalling.
The second I realize it, I curse and stalk out of the kitchen and up the stairs. It’s not late, but I’d half expected her to be up and terrorizing someone in the household by now. Both Hermes and Dionysus managed to stir from the drunken coma they call sleep and leave before Persephone woke.
I hate that tendril of concern that worms its way through me. This woman’s mental health is not my business. It just fucking isn’t. Zeus and I already dance on the edge of a sword every time we’re forced to interact. One wrong move and I’ll be sliced in two. More importantly, one wrong move and my people suffer the consequences.
I’m putting myself and my people in danger for this woman who’s probably just as power hungry as her mother and will likely wake up realizing that her best way to that power is with Zeus’s ring on her finger. It doesn’t matter what she said on the phone last night to her sisters. It can’t matter.
I knock on the door and wait, but no sound emerges. I knock again. “Persephone?”
Silence.
After a quick internal debate, I open the door. There’s the slightest bit of resistance, and I push harder, making something crash on the other side. With a long sigh, I step into the room. It takes one look around the room—to see the tipped-over side table and the missing comforter—for me to come to the conclusion that she hid in the bathroom all night.
Of course she did.
She’s in big, bad Hades’s house so she just assumes that she’ll be harmed in some way while she’s defenseless in sleep. She barricaded herself in. It makes me want to throw something, but I haven’t allowed myself that kind of loss of control since I was barely out of my teens.
I set down the coffee mug and pick up the side table, taking a moment to put it back exactly where it belongs. Satisfied with the placement, I stride to the bathroom door and knock.
A shuffling on the other side. Then her voice, so close she has to be pressed against the door. “Do you often break into people’s rooms without permission?”
“Do I need permission to enter a room in my own house?” I don’t know why I’m engaging in this. I should just open the door, drag her out, and send her on her way.
“Perhaps you should have people sign a waiver before crossing the threshold if that’s how you think home ownership works.”
She’s just so strange. So…unexpected. I frown at the whitewashed wood. “I’ll consider it.”
“See that you do. You woke me rather abruptly.”
She sounds so damn prim that I want to rip this door off the hinges just to get a good look at the expression she’s wearing right now. “You were sleeping in a tub. Hardly the recipe for a good night’s rest.”
“That’s a very narrow worldview you have.”
I glare, though there’s no way she can see it. “Open the door, Persephone. I’m tired of this conversation.”
“You seem to do that a lot. If you find me so tiresome, you shouldn’t be breaking down my door at ungodly hours of the morning.”
“Persephone. The door. Now.”
“Oh, if you insist.”
I step back at the click of the lock and then she’s there, standing in the doorway and looking deliciously rumpled. Her blond hair is a mess, there’s a crease pressed into her cheek from her pillow, and she’s got the comforter wrapped around her like a suit of armor. A very fluffy, very ineffective suit of armor that requires her to shuffle into the room with tiny steps to avoid falling on her face.
The ridiculous urge to laugh rises, but I smother it. Any reaction will only encourage her, and this woman already has me set back on my heels. Get her sorted out. Either use her or get her out. That’s all that matters. I wave at the mug. “Coffee.”
Persephone’s hazel eyes widen the tiniest bit. “You brought me coffee.”