Page 4 of Crown of Olympus
No god would remain blind to the choice I had just made.
I felt it too, the crushing weight of what I had done. But I pushed past the guilt for the sharp, satisfying burn of vengeance. Those damned consequences would come to call before long. But to my surprise, I found I didn’t care.
Let them come.
I straightened, lifted my chin, and inhaled deeply.
Furies take him and spare no mercy for his soul.
CHAPTER 2
Caelus
Fuck.
My father was dead.
Murdered in his own bed.
The Kingof Olympus had somehow been caught in nothing but his undershorts.
Slain in his tight white undergarments.
All while I slept soundly in the east wing of the Palace of Aetherion — blissfully unaware and disgustingly intoxicated. The consequence of letting a son of Ares convince me to join him at The Prancing Satyr, I supposed. But I loved that derelict little tavern on the fringes of the city, built cascading down the side of Mount Olympus.
Unfortunately, the trek back up to the palace — and my disturbingly bright bedchamber — was a slow and winding one. I’d collapsed on top of the bedcovers somewhere between midnight and dawn, reeking of ale and sweat.
When I awoke mere hours later, it was to the jarring screech of my mother, bursting through the marble doors in a goldenwhirlwind of her own making. It was so unexpected to my still-inebriated mind that I flipped out of bed and landed hard on the tiled floor. I groaned.
“Caelus!” she shrieked, her shrill pitch far too painful for the early hour and the sheer volume of liquor I’d downed just a few hours prior. “What did you do?! What did you see?”
“What do you mean, what did I see?” I asked, perplexed, gracelessly pulling myself to my feet. “I was seeing the back of my eyelids until a few moments ago.”
“You must have seen something! Heard something?!”
It was then that I noticed her golden gown was not golden at all, but a pale blue stained gold with the blood of the gods. Ichor. A supposed sign of our divinity, though it looked less divine and more macabre coating my delicate mother.
“Whose blood is that?” I questioned, unsure I wanted to know. A pit of dread settled low in my belly, and I felt that telltale rush of adrenaline one feels just before a freefall.
“Your father’s,” Hera said quietly. “I found him twenty minutes ago. With this sticking out of his heart.”
She opened her palm to reveal a slightly curved bronze dagger, no bigger than my hand. Its blade bore markings, though I couldn’t make them out beneath the ichor.
“How could such a tiny blade kill a god?” I frowned, staring at its strange design.
“This is no ordinary blade,” my mother murmured. “It’s a Titan dagger. They were destroyed…” She sank to the edge of my bed. I hoped she couldn’t smell the leftover alcohol leaching from my pores. “They were forged and used in the Titan War. We lost many good, brave Olympians to their wicked edges…” She trailed off, lost in memories long since buried.
“I guess one survived,” I replied gently, as tears tracked silently down her cheeks.
Hera was many things, but a loving mother was not one ofthem. She was a devoted wife, without question. But when it came time to raising a child — the byproduct of her idyllic marriage — she had no interest. That’s why I was her only babe, and why I was raised mostly by servants and tutors.
“I guess so,” she replied absentmindedly.
“Is he gone, then?”
“Yes. His body faded the second I pulled the blade free,” she whispered, tears glistening on her sun-kissed face.
I did not know how to comfort my mother in her grief. I sat beside her silently, awkwardly patting her hand. She didn’t seem to notice.
