God of Thieves

No, she hadn’t, which was a damn good thing for me. “Persephone fell in love with a mortal. Unfortunately for her, Aphrodite was already sleeping with him—”

“Who isn’t Aphrodite sleeping with?” muttered Iris, and I smirked.

“Ares was his usual violent self and decided to take out the competition. Wild boar,” I added when her mouth opened. She winced and touched her stomach in sympathy. “Apparently the mortal’s afterlife wasn’t so great, so Persephone decided to sacrifice her immortality and die in order to give him an incentive to leave his own personal hell for something better.”

“Oh.” Iris let out a romantic little sigh, and now it was my turn to make a face. “Did it work?”

I shrugged and averted my eyes under the guise of fetching the ball. “No idea.”

“You mean Hades hasn’t mentioned it?”

“We’re not exactly on speaking terms.”

“No surprise there. But none of the others brought it up?”

“We’re not exactly on speaking terms, either.”

Her eyebrows arched. “They’re taking this whole ganging up thing seriously, aren’t they?”

“You’re telling me,” I muttered.

She crossed the space between us and set her hand on my cheek. Against my better judgment, I tilted my head into her touch. First time anyone had bothered in months. For a second, our gazes met, and her weird purple irises seemed to turn an even darker shade of violet.

“Your eyes are the shade of ripe grapes,” I said. “What does that mean?”

She dropped her hand and gave me a look, and her eyes reverted to their normal purple. Or at least it was normal around me. They changed color with her mood, I knew that much—sort of like Persephone’s hair with the seasons—but what those colors meant, she refused to tell me. Not that I blamed her, but still. The few clues I had weren’t much to go on. When I wasn’t public enemy number one, Ares had informed me in no uncertain terms that her eyes were blue, and Aphrodite swore up and down they were green.

Didn’t matter anyway. Eyes were eyes, and Iris didn’t deserve to have her emotions splashed all over the place. We might not have been big on privacy, but even that was crossing the line.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s terrible of them to put you through that. Not even you deserve the cold shoulder from your whole family, even if you are an ass.”

“I think that’s about the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.” She touched my hand this time, barely a brush, but again it was more affection than anyone else had shown me. “I’m afraid I don’t exactly have the best news, either. You might want to stick around—there’s a good chance Zeus is going to call a meeting as soon as I find him.”

Fantastic. Another opportunity for the rest of the council to pretend I didn’t exist. “What sort of news?”

“The kind they’ll need Hades for,” she said, and I grimaced. Definitely not good. Hades normally avoided coming up here, only bothering for the big stuff that would affect his realm, too. And the things that affected the Underworld were never warm and fuzzy. Or easy to work out.

So much for having a halfway decent day, relatively speaking. And with Iris back, it would have been.

Sure enough, shortly after she ran off to track down Zeus, a booming voice filled my head. The council will convene in five minutes. Everyone is required to attend.

Apparently Iris hadn’t been overreacting. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been required to attend a council meeting. Generally everyone came because if we didn’t, we’d risk getting kicked off, and going from kings to paupers wasn’t exactly the greatest feeling in the world. But being required to come was definitely something new.

I reached my throne first, of course, considering I was in the room anyway. Everyone else arrived promptly, and even Hades made it in under the wire, appearing right as Zeus took his seat. I eyed my father’s face. Brow knit, prominent frown. His usual cheery self.

“I am afraid Iris has brought news of Helios and Selene,” he said quietly. That was odd. No formal announcement that the meeting had started, no showing off and making sure everyone knew he was the one in charge. Just this. Dread settled over me. This wouldn’t be good.

“What about them?” said Demeter, her frown matching Zeus’s. At least I wasn’t the only one who had no idea what was going on. Why was Zeus worrying about Helios and Selene anyway? They were ancient gods, older than Athena, and while they weren’t part of the original six siblings that formed the council, they were powerful in their own right. God of the Sun and Goddess of the Moon, at least until Apollo and Artemis had more or less hijacked their roles. No doubt they could take care of themselves without Zeus’s so-called help.

He hesitated, focusing on the portal in the middle of our circle. “They’re gone.”

A murmur rippled through the council, and I sat up straighter. “What do you mean, gone?”

But of course Zeus didn’t respond. After ignoring me for so long, it was entirely possible he’d trained himself to tune me out. Wouldn’t put it past him. Across from me, however, Ares jumped to his feet, already reaching for his sheathed sword. Typical.

“We will scour the world until we find them, and we will show their captors what happens when one dares to kidnap a god,” he growled. “Hermes! Where are they?”

So now they wanted to talk to me, when I was the only one who could help them. But I wasn’t exactly in a position to demand any niceties, so with a sigh, I closed my eyes and dived down, focusing on the one clear memory I had of Helios. When I was six, he took me for a ride in his chariot—which, contrary to popular belief at that point in time, was not actually the sun. Just a representation of it, more or less. And that was when I spotted Apollo’s cattle, and the plotting started from there.

I focused on Helios’s face. Tan, with deep-set pale eyes and a narrow nose. The details were important; names sometimes weren’t enough, and the more I could picture who or what I wanted to find, the easier it was. Though I didn’t actually go anywhere, I felt as if I was flying above the earth, scouring the land for any sign of him. He’d be easy enough to spot—whatever I wanted to find stood out like sunshine against the greens and browns of earth.

But I couldn’t find him. I mentally circled the world three times, but nothing jumped out at me.

Great. I repeated the process again, this time picturing Selene’s pale, oval face and her doe eyes. I’d never met anyone who looked like her before, and it should’ve been easy to spot that unique glow.

Three times around again, and still nothing. I huffed with frustration. This never happened. I always found what I was looking for.

I opened my eyes, and everyone—even Demeter and Hades—was staring at me. My lips thinned. This wasn’t exactly the break I needed to get back on their good side. “I couldn’t find them.”

“What do you mean—” started Ares, but I cut him off.

“I mean, I couldn’t find them,” I snapped.

“Did you check the cold lands?” said Ares, and I nodded. “What about the Underworld?”

“Of course.” I wasn’t stupid. “They aren’t anywhere.”

Silence. Ares sat back down slowly, while everyone else glanced at one another, too afraid to say anything.

“You are sure?” said Zeus in a low voice, glaring at me as if this was my fault.

“I’m sure,” I said. “I checked three times. It’s like they don’t exist anymore.”

“Cronus warned us this might happen,” said Hera. “He said we would not last forever, dependent as we are on mortals. Our purpose is so wrapped up in them that when we are no longer needed—”

“But who among us is more necessary to mortal life than the sun and the moon?” said Demeter. The two of them glared at each other, and while normally I would’ve been on the edge of my seat in anticipation of a catfight, somehow now didn’t seem like the time.

Hera raised her chin half an inch so she could look down her nose at Demeter. Not that I was judging—I wasn’t Demeter’s biggest fan right now, either, after the way she’d treated Persephone. But still. Life and death, people. “I hardly see their importance now that Apollo and Artemis have usurped their roles.”

“We didn’t usurp anything,” said Artemis, bristling. On the other hand, maybe a catfight would help take our minds off this. “We apprenticed with them. We didn’t steal their jobs.”

“And yet here we are, with every shred of evidence pointing to Helios and Selene having faded,” said Hera. “Tell me, do you have any other explanation?”

Artemis clenched her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe Rhea went rogue.”

“And decided to kill them instead of us? I highly doubt it.”