Silence. Zeus gaped at me, and I stared back. He wouldn’t win this one. I would not allow him to put a collar on me and parade me around as an ornament. I was the daughter of Cronus. I should have been a queen, but not his queen. A queen in my own right.
At last he left without a word. It wouldn’t be the end of it—when Zeus set his mind to something, nothing would dissuade him, as the Titan War had proven—but for now, I needed to rest. We’d only just seen the end of one battle. I wasn’t prepared to start another.
* * *
On the morning the council gathered for the first time, I spent ages in front of my mirror, searching for any flaws in my reflection. It’d been nearly a month since the end of the war, giving us all time to assess the damage and do what we could to heal it. While our brothers tried to form some semblance of order within their new domains, my sisters and I had roamed the earth, observing humanity and discovering the natural passages between the three realms. Every time we’d found a cave that led into the Underworld, I’d been tempted to go down and visit Hades, but my sisters had insisted he’d be far too busy. I wasn’t so sure, but the last thing I wanted to do was burden him further.
Technically Zeus should have come with us, but I suspected part of the reason my sisters had dragged me out of Olympus was to get away from him. He and I had barely spoken a word to each other since his proposal, and for all intents and purposes, he seemed to have dropped it. Unlikely as it was, perhaps he wasn’t as thickheaded as I’d thought.
At last, as the weeks had passed, I’d begun to feel at peace with everything. I didn’t have to have a title in order to have power. I was who I was; no one, not Cronus, not Zeus, could take that from me.
But now that we were all to gather again, I couldn’t shake the giddiness inside me. Maybe it was the idea of our family once again reuniting. We were never as powerful apart as we were together, after all. Whenever I envisioned what the morning would bring, however, all I could picture was one face: Hades’s.
At last it was time, and I pushed aside my curtain to leave. Instead of an empty hallway, however, a peacock sat on a satin pillow in front of my rooms, blocking my exit. A gift?
The bird stood, revealing its magnificent plumage of blue, green and gold, and it walked directly into my chambers as if it had been waiting for me. Yes, a gift. But from whom?
I picked up a stray tail feather that remained on the pillow, tickling my nose with its soft ends, and I smiled. Zeus would never get me something so thoughtful. He would try to win me over with jewels and other cold, meaningless things. And that left only one person who would gift me something so extravagant.
Hades.
Was it possible he was as excited about seeing me as I was him? Maybe after a month alone in the Underworld, he’d come to his senses and decided to ask me to be his wife, after all. My excitement increased tenfold, and I all but skipped down the sky-blue and sunset corridor, still holding the feather. At last, a chance to escape. A chance to choose my own destiny. And I had no doubt about it—I would have chosen Hades again and again, until the end of time. Especially over Zeus.
The throne room was set in the center of Olympus, laid out in a circle with over a dozen hallways leading from it, in the shape of the sun and her rays. It had been the seat of our power during the war, untouchable even to Cronus, and it was the one place where we’d all been safe. Now that it was Zeus’s domain, somehow the sun seemed darker. But that day, nothing, not even Zeus, could’ve brought me down.
No, not nothing. The moment I stepped into the throne room, my heart sank. Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter and Hestia were already there, waiting for me, but Hades’s throne was empty.
“Good morning,” I said, keeping the disappointment out of my voice. He was late, that was all. He had a much longer way to travel than the rest of us.
“Good morning,” said Zeus. He’d aged himself a few years, but not even a beard could make him look like a king. “Now that we are all here, I will call this meeting to—”
“What about Hades?” I said. “Shouldn’t we wait for him?”
“Hades won’t be coming,” said Zeus, sounding annoyed.
I lowered the tip of the feather from my nose. “Oh.”
Across the circle, Demeter gave me a sympathetic smile. So everyone knew then, even Zeus. Enough to realize that Hades was at least part of the reason I’d refused his proposal. One of our sisters must have told him, then,
I frowned. Hades felt like a secret, something I opened up when no one was there, and the thought of my sisters discussing Hades and me with Zeus made my skin crawl.
Zeus cleared his throat, and he gestured toward me. “I see you got my gift. Consider it an apology for how I’ve treated you. I would give you the heavens if I could, but Demeter insisted something simpler would be better.”
I nearly dropped the feather. His gift? One Demeter had helped pick out? “Thank you,” I mumbled, glaring at my sister. She knew how I felt about Zeus, and encouraging him like that wasn’t only cruel to him. It was cruel to me, as well.
The meeting began, a mostly neutral affair with no one raising their voices. Poseidon and Zeus talked about the progress they’d made, protecting their subjects from predators and showing them how best to care for themselves now that they no longer had the threat of the Titans hanging over their heads, while my sisters spoke of what we’d discovered on earth. I remained quiet, however, my gaze focused on Hades’s empty throne. His realm was the largest; and after a war, of course he wouldn’t have time to spare.