He moves closer, edging into my personal space, and lowers his voice. “It’s good to finally have a chance to speak with you. I’ve been trying to corner you for the last few months.” He smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s enough to make me think you’re avoiding me.”
“Of course not.” I can’t edge back without bumping into my mother…but I put several seconds of serious consideration into that option before discarding it. Mother will never forgive me if I make a scene before the all-powerful Zeus. Ride it out. You can do this. I dredge up a bright smile even as I begin chanting the mantra that’s gotten me through the last year.
Three months. Just ninety days between me and freedom. Ninety days until I can access my trust fund and use it to get out of Olympus. I can survive this. I will survive this.
Zeus practically beams at me, all warm sincerity. “I know this isn’t the most conventional approach, but it’s time to make the announcement.”
I blink. “Announcement?”
“Yes, Persephone.” My mother edges in close, shooting daggers from her eyes. “The announcement.” She’s trying to beam some knowledge directly into my brain, but I have no idea what’s going on.
Zeus reclaims my hand and my mother practically shoves me after him as he starts for the front of the room. I shoot a wild look at my sister, but Psyche is just as wide-eyed as I feel right now. What’s going on?
People fall silent as we pass, their gazes a thousand needles against the back of my neck. I have no friends in this room. Mother would say it’s my own fault for not networking the way she’s instructed me to time and time again. I tried. Really, I did. It took all of a month to realize that the cruelest insults come with sweet smiles and honeyed words. After the first lunch invitation resulted in my misquoted words being splashed across the gossip headlines, I gave up. I will never play the game as well as the vipers in this room. I hate the false fronts and slippery insults and knives hidden in words and smiles. I want a normal life, but that’s the one thing that’s impossible with a mother in the Thirteen.
At least, it’s impossible in Olympus.
Zeus stops at the front of the room and snags a champagne glass. It looks absurd in his large hand, like he’ll shatter it with one rough touch. He raises the glass and the last few murmurs in the room fade away. Zeus grins at them. It’s easy to see how he holds such devotion despite the rumors that circulate about him. The man practically has charisma oozing from his pores. “Friends, I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
“That’s a first,” someone says from the back of the room, sending a wave of faint laughter through the space.
Zeus laughs along with them. “While we are technically here to vote on the new trade agreements with Sabine Valley, I also have a little announcement to make. It’s long past time for me to find a new Hera and make our number complete again. I’ve finally chosen.” He looks at me, and it’s the only warning I get before he speaks the words that light my dreams of freedom on fire so completely I can only watch them burn to ash. “Persephone Dimitriou, will you marry me?”
I can’t breathe. His presence has sucked up all the air in the room, and the lights flare too bright. I teeter on my heels, only keeping my feet through sheer force of will. Will the others fall on me like a pack of wolves if I collapse now? I don’t know, and because I don’t know, I have to stay standing. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
My mother presses into me from the other side, all bright smiles and joyful tones. “Of course she will! She’ll be honored to.” Her elbow digs into my side. “Isn’t that right?”
Saying no isn’t an option. This is Zeus, king in everything but name. He gets what he wants when he wants it, and if I humiliate him right now in front of the most powerful people in Olympus, he’ll make my entire family pay. I swallow hard. “Yes.”
A cheer goes up, the sound making me dizzy. I catch sight of someone recording this with their phone and know without a shadow of a doubt that it will be all over the internet within an hour, on all the news stations by morning.
People come forward to congratulate us—really, to congratulate Zeus—and through it all he keeps his tight grip on my hand. I stare at the faces that move in a blur, a tidal wave of hate rising in me. These people don’t care about me. I know that, of course. I’ve known that since my first interaction with them, since the moment we ascended to this vaulted social circle by virtue of my mother’s new position. But this is a whole different level.
We all know the rumors about Zeus. All of us. He’s gone through three Heras—three wives—in his time leading the Thirteen.
Three dead wives, now.
If I let this man put his ring on my finger, I might as well let him put a collar and leash on me, too. I will never be my own person, will never be anything but an extension of him until he grows tired of me, too, and replaces that collar with a coffin.
I will never be free of Olympus. Not until he dies and the title passes to his oldest child. That could be years. It could be decades. And that’s making the outrageous assumption that I’ll outlive him instead of ending six feet under like the rest of the Heras.
Frankly, I don’t like my odds.
Chapter 2
Persephone
The party continues around me, but I can’t focus on anything. Faces blur, colors meld together, the sound of gushing compliments are static in my ears. A scream is building in my chest, a sound of loss too big for my body, but I can’t let it escape. If I start shrieking, I’m certain I’ll never stop.
I sip champagne through numb lips, my free hand shaking so badly that the liquid sloshes around in the glass. Psyche appears in front of me as if by magic, and though she’s got her blank expression firmly in place, her eyes are practically shooting lasers at both our mother and Zeus. “Persephone, I have to go to the bathroom. Come with me?”
“Of course.” I barely sound like myself. I almost have to pry my fingers from Zeus’s, and all I can think about are those meaty hands on my body. Oh gods, I’m going to be sick.
Psyche hustles me out of the ballroom, using her voluptuous body to shield me, dodging well-wishers as if she’s my own personal security. The hallway doesn’t feel any better, though. The walls are closing in. I can see Zeus’s imprint on every inch of this place. If I marry him, he’ll put his imprint on me, too. “I can’t breathe,” I gasp.
“Keep walking.” She rushes me past the bathroom, around a corner, and to the elevator. The claustrophobic feeling is even worse when the doors close, trapping us in the mirrored space. I stare at my reflection. My eyes are too large in my face, and my pale skin is leached of color.
I can’t stop shaking. “I’m going to be sick.”