Mortal Gods Read Free

and supple and woman-shaped?” Demeter’s eye closed, wearily or sadly or both. “Everyone wishes for answers, Athena. But sometimes the answer is that things just end.”
    “Is that the answer here?”
    “I don’t know. But I know you don’t think so. If you did, you would wander off and let yourself be torn apart by wolves. You’d dye more harlot colors into your hair.”
    Athena snorted. She could be killed. They’d proven the impossible possible. But it wasn’t as easy as Demeter made it sound. Her bones would break those poor wolves’ teeth. A death like that would take months.
    And she wasn’t ready. Who would have thought, after so much time, that she wouldn’t be ready.
    “The point is,” said Demeter, “that you stay. Why?”
    Odysseus flashed behind Athena’s eyes. His voice whispered in her ears. And Hermes, too. Her beautiful brother. Thinner and thinner.
    “There are things, I guess, that I still need to take care of.”
    Demeter drew in a rippling breath. “You are tired. Sit, child. Rest.”
    Athena cleared her throat. “No, thank you.”
    “Why not?”
    “Hermes says…” She hesitated and rolled her eyes. “Hermes said that when he sat on you he could feel your pulse through his butt.”
    Demeter laughed, hard enough to knock Athena off-balance. Her feet skidded apart, and she put her arms out to steady herself. Startled birds flew from wherever they’d been hiding moments before, squawking their worry at the shifting dirt.
    “I wish you’d brought him,” Demeter said, quieting. “I miss his impudence.”
    Athena smiled. Having finally reached her aunt she was no longer all that tired. Wind cooled the sweat on her shoulders and neck. The quest neared its end. Soon she could go home.
    “Aphrodite,” she said. “What do you know?”
    “Nothing.” Demeter recoiled innocently, stretching herself so thin that Athena could feel desert pebbles beneath her toes. “Without Hera to direct her path, Aphrodite will hide. So fast and so well that you’ll never find her.”
    “We will find her.”
    “Why do you ask if you aren’t going to listen?” Demeter snapped. “Why are you talking about a mortal girl’s revenge? Why are you fighting her fight, instead of yours?”
    Athena looked away, across the sand. At first it was grief. The loss of a loved brother. And then it was guilt, too many days spent staring at Cassandra, at the shell of a girl Apollo left behind. She’d made a promise to look after them all. Cassandra, Andie, and Henry. Apollo had made her promise.
    “I don’t know what it is,” she said softly. “I never … understood time before. It didn’t mean anything. I could never make a mistake. I don’t know how mortals do this. How they only live once.”
    “You doubt your instincts.”
    “Why shouldn’t I? Things just end. Isn’t that what you said?”
    Demeter wriggled in the dirt. “I might be wrong. You beat Hera, but it wasn’t Hera who caused this. Whatever really did, you may be able to fight.” The eye bulged, scrutinizing. “Tell me. What you’re thinking.”
    Images flickered in Athena’s mind: she saw Demeter rise up from the earth and shake herself off, no longer a flat expanse of skin but a woman, with brown hair waving to her waist and deep dark eyes. She saw Hermes with muscle returned to his arms, a beautiful curve in his cheek when he smiled. She saw Apollo, Aidan, bright and perfect as ever, with Cassandra by his side.
    She thought and she dreamed. Of wrongs put right. Things restored that would never be. Impossibility hovered like a light in her chest and made her want . To be a hero. To feel alive. As alive as she’d felt that day on the road above Seneca Lake, when she’d charged Hera with iron in her fist.
    “We won,” she said quietly. “Hera and I both sought the oracle, but I found her first. The other side was stronger, and everything went wrong. Our side was scattered and made terrible choices, but we won anyway. We left