Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
I managed to hide my late-night wanderings and inability to sleep from my sisters, but Hercules caught me on more than one occasion. He never said anything—that’s not how he operates—but we would share a moment of perfect understanding before we’d go on our separate ways. Fuck, I miss him. I hate him, too. Our father’s love, if you want to call it that, is a burden we four were meant to share in equal parts, but Hercules didn’t play the game. He walked away and never looked back. I’m so jealous I can barely see straight.
I roll onto my side and prop my head in my hand. Hera—Callisto—lies on her back, one arm thrown carelessly wide and the other resting lightly on her stomach. Her stomach that feels different than it has previously.
I reach out with a shaking hand and hover it a bare inch above the gently rounded curve. It’s not much; I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if we didn’t share a bed so regularly, but there’s no denying its presence. In the light of the full moon, I finally allow myself to study the other changes I’ve been too distracted to notice. Those marks on her cheekbones—broken blood vessels. I would’ve registered them earlier if I was paying closer attention instead of letting my anger guide me. She wears makeup to cover the marks during the day, but I’ve caught sight of them and wondered. Her breasts are larger, too, her nipples several shades darker.
She’s…pregnant.
I don’t make a conscious decision to move, but I find myself outside the bedroom and stalking down the hall before my brain fully catches up to my body. Surely I’m wrong. She would’ve said something if she was actually pregnant. Except, this is Callisto. Of course she wouldn’t have said anything. She wants me dead, and if she’s carrying the next Zeus, she can remove me with little consequence. Suddenly it all makes sense. Why she decided to move now instead of months ago.
I’ve been such a fucking fool.
I still am, because I can’t stop the bright kernel of something light and hopeful taking up residence in the base of my throat…but it only lasts a moment before sheer terror snuffs the feeling out. I never intended to let my wife murder me, but if she doesn’t, if I live, if we annihilate Circe?
She’ll have the baby.
I’ll become a father.
I don’t know how to be a father. Or at least not a good one. I can barely handle being Zeus, and one could argue I’m failing at that spectacularly. But to take on a new role, one where the stakes are so much higher…
I lose time again. One moment I’m standing in the hallway, feeling like an abyss has opened up beneath my feet, ready to send me hurtling into an eternal darkness. The next, I’m out on the balcony again, my phone in my hands.
I dial the memorized number by rote, but even as I lift my phone to my ear, I don’t actually expect him to answer. He hasn’t in a very long time. Whether that’s because I don’t call often or because he got tired of arguing with me about whether he should come back to Olympus now that our father’s dead… Well, I know the answer to that, don’t I? And it’s late. Any respectable person will be tucked into their bed with their two lovers, not answering their phone.
When the ringing clicks over to voicemail, I don’t think. I just dial him again. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I need my brother right now. He’s the only one who will understand.
He picks up the third time I call. “Damn it, Perseus, I told you I want nothing to do with your war or whatever the fuck you have going on right now.” He never calls me Zeus. I love him all the more for his rejection of anything related to the title. “I’m busy and—”
“My wife is pregnant.” My wife is pregnant. My knees buckle and I sink onto the metal chair on the balcony. This is real. This is happening.
The words hang between us. Of anyone, Hercules understands what I’m feeling right now. He never wanted children. Eris doesn’t, either. I think Helen does, but she’s always been the healthiest of the four of us, the one who refused to bend or break under our father’s abuse. She’ll be a particularly vicious mother, but only to those who threaten her children. But me? The heir, the one molded in our father’s image? How can I be anything other than the monster he created?
My brother exhales slowly. “Congratulations?”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“Yeah, Perseus, I do. I know you want kids—and not just because you are a good, obedient Zeus who needs to breed heirs.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice has lost some of the venom. “Why are you calling to tell me about this?”