A Storm of Blood and Stone (Myths of Stone Book 3) Page 2

  With all those thoughts, Euryale stood tall, proud, and unyielding in the face of Athena. “Your hero threatened my family and attacked me,” she said evenly. “As such, I’ve sentenced him to imprisonment until I’ve decided what I want to do with him.”

  Athena’s affect went flat, and other than a brief twitch of her finger, she remained motionless, no doubt using all of her energy to think about this unexpected news from every angle as well as to plan out her next hundred actions she’d take in response. “He attacked you physically?”

  “He did.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I wouldn’t let him kill my chimera.”

  Athena placed her fingertips together in front of her face and tilted her head slightly downward. “I see.”

  Though sweat beaded on the back of her neck, Euryale kept strong, knowing she owed not only herself that much, but her family as well. It was a tough stance to take while staring down the Goddess of Wisdom and War, but the longer she took it, the easier it became. “I’m assuming you would like his release.”

  Athena nodded slightly, and a small, genuine smile graced her face. “I think that would be for the best, wouldn’t you agree? As your Alex can attest to, I defend my champions.”

  “I know,” Euryale said. “But before I do, I need assurances that this will end well.”

  “End well?” Athena echoed. “If you mean you want the matter to be considered settled, then yes, it will end well, assuming Perseus hasn’t been permanently harmed.”

  “He hasn’t,” Euryale replied, “but I also had something else in mind.”

  Athena sighed and shook her head. “What more could you possibly want other than to keep this cordial?”

  Before the words graced her tongue, the fury behind them caught Euryale by surprise, and she let slip a growl. “I want my sister back.”

  Athena’s gray eyes narrowed, ever so slight. “Medusa?”

  “No, Stheno,” Euryale corrected. “You turned her into a whale, remember?”

  Athena chuckled as if recalling nostalgic times she’d nearly forgotten. “I’m sorry, Euryale,” she said. “But your sister is not part of these negotiations. She got what she deserved. Both of you should be grateful that’s all I did to her. It could’ve been much worse.”

  “What I could do to Perseus would be a lot worse than what’s happening to him now, too,” Euryale countered. “What do you think Ares would do to him had he stabbed him in the leg? Or your father, Zeus, for that matter? I think you’ll agree, me keeping Perseus chained and isolated is a mercy he’s lucky to be granted.”

  “I think,” Athena said, pointing a finger at Euryale, “that you’re lucky I’ve entertained this idea of yours as long as I have.”

  Euryale’s tail rattled at the challenge, her soul tapping into a primal strength that made her feel as if she could harness all of Chaos if she set her mind to it. “And I think a prisoner exchange is more than fair. If I were you, I’d consider that point one more time.”

  “Fairness? Is that what you’re after?” Athena asked. “If so, it’s only fair that your sister pay for her crimes.”

  “As should Perseus.”

  Athena set her jaw, and deep wrinkles formed in the middle of her brow, which led Euryale to wonder if she needed to strike first in order to survive the upcoming fight.

  “Euryale,” Athena said evenly. “We don’t have time for your pettiness. In case you’ve forgotten, we need to focus on Typhon.”

  “You’re wrong,” Euryale said. “There’s plenty of time for this, because all that needs to happen for it to be over is for you to release my sister.”

  “Are you insane? Me? Wrong?” Athena scoffed, pointing to herself. “I’m never wrong.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Euryale said. “And if you think my offer isn’t a fair one, I have to seriously question how deserving you are of being called the Goddess of Wisdom.”

  Yes, her response was a touch on the nasty side, and yes, it did little to help matters, but Euryale would be damned to exile if she hadn’t taken extra delight in seeing those words dig under the goddess’s skin.

  Athena, whose fair complexion was now red, scowled at Euryale and spoke with soft words full of command. “I am never wrong, gorgon, and if you walk out of here and don’t release my hero, I promise you your house will be in ruins faster than you can curse what fate you’ve dealt yourself.”

  Euryale, refusing to leave her sister condemned for the rest of time, glared back with a headful of hissing vipers. “You’re wrong,” she said evenly. “When I leave here, the only thing I’m going to regret is not standing up to you sooner.”

  Chapter The Prisoner

  With one hand gripping a rocky overhang, Zeus, dangling miles above the earth, studied the area around him.

  His eyes carefully swept every inch of every cloud, scouring for any sign of anyone foolish enough to have followed him. Once he was convinced no one joined him in the sky, his gaze drifted to the rocky, snowy slopes below where he repeated the process. This took a few seconds longer, as numerous crags in the terrain and small holes where animals had burrowed required extra attention, but in the end, he was convinced he was alone. Sure, his giant eagle sentries would have long ago alerted him to an intruder, but Zeus was as clever and careful as they came when the situation demanded it.

  And did the situation ever demand it.

  Grunting, the God of Thunder, Ruler of Olympus, yanked himself up and over the edge. His body, clothed in only his flowing chiton, relished the frigid air, and his nose delighted at how pure the world smelled at such unfathomable heights.

  As much as Zeus wanted to take a seat and let his feet dangle over the world and relax, he knew he couldn’t. Business had to be attended to. Business that involved the interrogation of a traitor. And by the Fates, he was going to get answers this time, or the world would be witness to his fury like never before.

  Zeus broke into a light trot, his bare feet hardly making a sound against the steep mountainside. Powerful legs with muscles that dwarfed those of Heracles careened him up to ledges forty, fifty, even a hundred feet away, while fingers that could peel the armor off the kraken as easily as they could split open a pomegranate, drove into the otherwise unyielding rock as needed to help him scale his way to the top.

  Finally, after another invigorating one-mile climb (that ended with him setting a new personal record which clocked in at twenty-one-and-a-third seconds), Zeus popped over another overhang and came face to face with a pair of giant eagles who flanked the entrance to the opening of a dark tunnel.

  Their chests, wider than a pair of oxen, held a beautiful array of plumage, while wings that could lift dragons were folded neatly on their backs. The two birds stared at the approaching god with brilliant yellow eyes, eyes that Zeus knew could spy any movement, pierce any illusion, and spot any would-be intruder a hundred miles away. And should any illusionist, intruder, or generally stupid being happen by without the god at their side, they’d be met with talons more dreadful than spears and beaks sharper and stronger than any ax forged by Hephaestus.

  “Polyxeinus, Tecton,” Zeus said, giving an approving nod to each. “Things are well, I take it?”

  Polyxeinus, the eagle on the left, screeched, and then Tecton did the same, although his held a higher, more energetic pitch than the other.

  “No, I haven’t forgotten,” Zeus said with a hearty laugh. From a pouch that hung off his belt, a pouch that happened to be fifty times bigger on the inside than the outside, Zeus pulled out two blue marlins and tossed one to each bird. They promptly tore into them with such speed and viciousness, a school of sharks worked into a feeding frenzy could not have devoured them faster.

  “Happy?” Zeus asked.

  Tecton wiggled his tail feathers and squawked with approval, while Polyxeinus, ever the pig with an insatiable appetite, looked at Zeus for more.

  “You’re worse than Aldora,” Zeus said, shaking his head. “An
d she had a never-ending supply of liver.”

  Zeus continued forward, scratching each of his eagles behind the head a few times before entering the tunnel. The path through the mountain snaked through the rock for a couple of hundred yards before opening up into a rounded, cozy cave.

  Well, cozy was relative. Bats, no doubt, would have enjoyed its spaciousness and numerous places to perch on the ceiling if it weren’t for the frosty air and the distinct lack of flying insects to dine on. The eight-foot-tall flesh-eating bull who was currently lounging on a large bed of straw certainly enjoyed being spoiled by the God of Thunder in exchange for guard duty. The goddess, however, who was chained, wrapped in a net, and stuck in a cramped, adamantine cage clearly wasn’t enjoying the accommodations whatsoever.

  “Well, woman,” Zeus said as he approached his wife. “Are you ready to talk?”

  Despite her imprisonment, Hera’s words dripped with venom. “I have nothing more to say to you. Not now. Not ever.”

  “Tell me who else is working with you and Typhon!” he bellowed, storming up to the cage. “Tell me or I’ll feed you to Crios, one limb at a time!”

  Hera broke into a fit of laughter. “We both know your bull likes me more than he likes you,” she finally said. “Your threat is hollow.”

  Zeus snorted, and though he had to concede her point, he had no intention of playing games. “Woman, my patience wears thin,” he said. “I showed you mercy the first time you rebelled against me after you promised never to do so again. What makes you think I’ll be merciful this time around?”

  “As if you have any grounds to judge me for broken promises,” she spat. “How many harlots have you run off with? How many children have you sired out of wedlock?”

  “None of that holds a candle to you betraying all of us!” he bellowed. “By the Fates, you could have killed everyone!”

  “I had nothing to do with Typhon!” she shot back. The goddess caught herself before launching into a full tirade, and as she calmed, a new emotion, regret, quickly took hold. Her posture fell, and her usually sharp features softened. “With the Fates as my witness, I had no idea Hephaestus was working with that monster.”

  “You expect me to believe that Hephaestus outwitted you? That he moved in ways that even your eyes could not see?”

  “He had nothing to do with it,” she countered. “Typhon did. That titan outwitted us all. All I wanted—” Hera’s words caught in her throat, and it took her a hard swallow and the shedding of a few tears before she spoke again. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Zeus, at the sight of his wife’s anguish, backed from the cage and lowered his voice. “Tell me.”

  Fresh tears found Hera’s cheeks, and the goddess averted her gaze to her husband out of shame. She spent a few moments breathing slow and deep as she recomposed herself, and when she returned to the conversation, her eyes flashed with anger. “All I wanted was for you to feel half the pain I felt every day,” she said. “To know what it was like to be humiliated in front of everyone, to finally have to show me some courtesy and respect. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, to be treated with dignity, but instead, all I ever got from you were lies and disgrace.”

  Though her accusations struck a painful chord in his heart, Zeus quickly hardened himself. “Perhaps if you’d acted in a way deserving of respect, I would have,” he said. “Your nagging, your constant second-guessing, your refusal to want anything to do with me other than hound my every decision is more than enough to drive any husband away. Don’t you dare act as if you’re the innocent, wounded party in all of this. There’s not an Olympian alive who’d say otherwise.”

  “Think what you like,” Hera said, dismissing his words with a snort. “None of them side with you, except out of fear. Take that fear away, and they’d have a plot to take your throne before the day ended.”

  “Your desperate attempts to cause trouble will get you nowhere.”

  “Desperate? Hardly,” Hera shot back. “I can hear it in your voice. You know I’m right. In fact, I’m confident one schemes against you as we speak.”

  The certainty in his wife’s voice gave Zeus pause. He knew all the gods, save one or two, could be incredibly ambitious and jealous, and that combination always led to trouble. Always. And while he refused to believe that any of them would accuse him of wrongdoing when it came to Hera, he did fear that should he be seen as weak, a second attempt at usurping the throne might soon come to pass. “Who?”

  “Oh, so many to choose from,” Hera purred. “They’ve all had desires to rule the world, haven’t they, your brothers especially.”

  “They have their sovereign realms,” Zeus countered, now feeling as if his gut reaction had been correct. The goddess was trying to sow seeds of distrust for no other reason than petty revenge.

  “True, but that still leaves the rest, and I, for one, wouldn’t put it past your newest Olympian to seize the opportunity.”

  Zeus erupted into thunderous laughter. “The gorgon? You’ve gone mad. She wants nothing to do with my throne. Besides, she had her chance with Typhon and turned it down.”

  “Did she because she didn’t want it? Or did she because she had higher ambitions than to serve beneath him?”

  “She doesn’t want it,” Zeus said with finality.

  Hera smirked. “You see? Even now with all that’s transpired, you still have no idea what happens inside your kingdom.”

  “As if you do, woman, locked away where no one will ever come,” he retorted.

  “I know I stripped her curse a moment before she died,” Hera replied. “I know Aphrodite brought her body to Nyx, and I know Cronus restored her. So, ask yourself, dear husband, what price did Euryale pay for such a favor? Or perhaps a better way to phrase it would be, since she had nothing to pay with, what sort of deed did Cronus demand of her?”

  Hera’s words seeped into Zeus’s mind, and he hated that he hadn’t thought of her insinuations first, even if they would likely prove untrue. That said, he didn’t have an answer as to why Cronus would help Euryale, especially since that help would prevent Typhon’s successful return, and both the titan and Nyx were not fond of Zeus whatsoever. Cronus and Nyx would be more than happy to see Zeus’s rule come to a violent end.

  Did the titan strive to set Euryale against him? Possibly. Unlikely? As far as he knew, yes, it would be unlikely, but possible. And if Hera’s theory proved true, Zeus knew he’d have to act swiftly.

  “I know that look, husband,” Hera said, chuckling. “Perhaps it’s time you and the gorgon had a little talk of your own.”

  Chapter Declaration of War

  As she snaked her way back home, Euryale kept her arms folded across her chest and dug her nails into her skin. Her tail rattled behind her, and more than one hapless satyr or dryad who wandered the streets of Olympus nearly became a permanent fixture when they inadvertently crossed in front of her path, and she had to slow. In the back of her mind, the gorgon didn’t want to lash out at them, but the more she brooded over Athena’s stubbornness, the more Euryale needed an outlet, and ripping into her own arms would only take her so far.

  Euryale halted, lowered her hands, and took a deep breath. She had to concentrate. Torturing herself would get her nowhere and certainly wouldn’t see Stheno restored. She needed clarity. She needed focus. She needed to see that arrogant bitch of a goddess humbled.

  “Threaten me, will you?” Euryale hissed, not at all bothering to keep her voice low. “We’ll see about that.”

  Euryale sharpened her claws against one another and resumed her trek home, faster and more determined than ever. Her abode rested at the top of a large hill on the southeast side of Olympus. It was far from the monumental estate Zeus and Hera enjoyed, with towers that could swallow small countries with ease and swimming pools that could hold a score of armadas in the shallow end. That said, her new home on Olympus was not without its perks: three dozen rooms for servant quarters (not that she had any at the moment), a personal movie theater which could
seat every Super Bowl attendee (Alex’s request), and a vineyard in the back that grew the most delicious grapes anyone shy of Dionysus could ever hope to cultivate. The cherry-red ones were her favorite.

  What Euryale did not have, or rather, what she never knew she had, were a pair of eight-inch howitzers standing on either side of the steps that led to her home, barrels pointed skyward. Each of the massive artillery pieces sat atop a tank chassis, and stacked nearby were about three dozen shells.

  Thoughts of her troubles with Athena vanished with this new mystery, and Euryale quickly hurried inside, hoping Alex would be able to shed some light on what was going on.

  “Alex?” she called out once she was in their inner courtyard. “Alex, where are you?”

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Euryale eased to a halt at the unexpected pair of sounds, the likes of which she’d never heard before. The vipers on her head tasted the air and recoiled. There was a soapy, metallic scent floating about.

  Pop. Pop.

  Another brief pause, and then whatever was making the noise rattled off like a machine gun.

  Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop!

  “Alex!” Euryale yelled, chasing after the noise. Her search led her through the dining hall and through their kitchen that was in dire need of tidying, and eventually she darted out a side door to where the start of her vineyard lay.

  “I got you!” Cassandra yelled, shooting free of a cluster of grapevines. The twin was covered head to toe in bright yellow paint, and she clutched a paintball marker firmly in her little hands while wearing a plastic mask on her head.

  “Nuh-uh!” Aison shouted. The little gorgon, dressed like his sister, darted out of another cluster, sporting a couple dozen bright, gooey splats across his body.

  Euryale watched, stunned, trying to make sense of it all as her twins sprayed a hundred shots at each other in under a few seconds. They squealed with delight, running back and forth, trying to duck, dodge, and dive out of the way of the wanton spray of paint.