The Goddess Queen. Aimee Carter

never be alone.”

      His words warmed me from the inside out, quelling the last of my frustration. “Why do you have to be so good, Hades? Why can’t you be more like Poseidon and Zeus? It’d be easier to insist the lot of you weren’t fit to rule.”

      He squeezed my shoulder. “Because if I were, we would be warring amongst ourselves, and we all know what would happen then. Go back to Olympus, Hera. Rest. I will see you soon, and in the meantime, try not to let Zeus get to you. He’s overwhelmed with victory and relief, and that does strange things to men.”

      “He’s not a man,” I said. “He’s a god.”

      “Then we can expect this to last much longer than it otherwise would.” He embraced me for a brief moment before letting me go. “Do not forget your worth.”

      With that, he turned and walked toward the sealed crack in the earth, his footsteps leaving no trace in the dirt. I watched him disappear until darkness consumed him, and once he was gone, I took a shaky breath and returned to the others. I would never follow Zeus, but as long as Hades was there to introduce reason, perhaps this new life wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

      Sometime in the night, a sharp rap of knuckle against the wall of my Olympus bedroom startled me awake. While normally we did not need to sleep, after exerting our powers as we all had during the final battle, we required rest. Which only made the knock more confusing.

      “Come in,” I called, sitting up in bed and smoothing my hair. I was exhausted, my body heavy with sleep, but it was hard to shake the sensation of being on edge, as I had been during the past ten years. A knock then could’ve meant another battle or a turn we hadn’t seen coming. We’d devoted every moment to strategizing and watching, and none of us had gotten a proper amount of rest.

      The curtains parted, and Zeus stepped through. My stomach turned. Olympus hovered eternally between the blue sky of day above us and the rainbow of dusk below, but even with the golden sunlight that washed across his face, he looked pale. As he should have. If there was any justice in the world, he felt guilty for how he’d treated me and our sisters.

      “Hera?” he said softly. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

      “Since when have you ever been concerned with courtesy?” I curled back up in bed and closed my eyes. “Be quick about it. I was having a nice dream.” One that involved dark hair, silver eyes and a lack of sunlight Olympus would never experience.

      Zeus said nothing for nearly a minute. By the time he finally spoke, I’d drifted back to the edge of sleep. “I love you.”

      My eyes flew open. “Excuse me?”

      “I have for a very long time.” He stepped closer, reaching out for me as if he expected me to take his hand, but I didn’t move. Zeus hesitated. “You are extraordinary, Hera. You are beautiful. You are powerful. And out of all my sisters, I think you would be best suited to stand at my side.”

      I shook my head. “You have enough women to keep you company, Zeus. I won’t be another horse in your stable.”

      “You wouldn’t be. I would devote myself to you and your power. To you and your brilliance. I will forsake the others if you insist I must, but I want to marry you.”

      For a long moment, I was silent. Any lingering exhaustion I’d felt had vanished, leaving me with bewilderment coursing through my veins. He wanted to marry me? He could barely speak to me as an equal, and he wanted me to devote my life to him? “No.”

      Zeus recoiled as if I’d slapped him. “What?”

      “I said no.”

      “But—I’m King of the Skies,” he said, stunned. Clearly he hadn’t expected anything short of a yes. “You could be my queen. You could have absolute power—”

      “I don’t want to be your queen,” I snapped. “And we both know that your definition of ‘absolute power’ is really absolute power second to yours. I won’t be second to anyone, and I will not marry someone who looks down on me for my sex. Now leave.”

      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.