Hope of Realms (Blood of Zeus Book 5) by Angel Payne

Author:Angel Payne [Payne, Angel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642633535
Publisher: Waterhouse Press
Published: 2023-02-13T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

KARA

If it’s possible, Persephone’s more striking in Oread’s muted light than she was in the mall’s flesh-colored floods. But her desperation is distracting from the effect. It takes over her large, intense eyes and rapidly fidgeting fingertips. Clearly the woman’s existence, with spending half the year talking to plants and the other wandering around Hades’s dismal citadel, has taken its toll on her social skills.

I try to ease her discomfort by lifting a friendly smile. “Well, there’s the conversation starter I didn’t expect.”

“Not a conversation,” she flings back at once. “I’m so sorry, but that I don’t have time for. Hecate thinks I’m in the bathroom taking care of female things. And there’s still too much information to get out here.” She grabs the bottom of her crisp business blouse, working the hem like fresh dough. “So very much I have to say. Too much, too much.”

“Persephone?” Maximus is gentler now. He probably sees what I already have: that the goddess, who’s technically one of his many stepsisters, is as stressed about this as we are. “What is it? And who, exactly, do you need to tell?”

“Well…you. And you.” She ticks a nod at Maximus and then one at me. “Isn’t that obvious?”

“You know what they say about assumptions.”

My second attempt at humor harvests me another frown that teeters on dismissive. “After all, you’re the golden ones,” she rattles off instead. “The new it couple. The news on everyone’s lips. I mean everyone, in every realm. I suppose that makes Mother Hecate very right about things. Hmmm. I wonder what Mother Demeter thinks about all that?”

“Wait.” Maximus stretches out a hand as if trying to calm a skittish kitten. “Hecate—Mother Hecate—she was right about what?”

His sharp emphasis brings the goddess’s head up. Her eyes bore into him, just as wide and fierce as before, but those blue and onyx depths seem different now. At their corners, little tremors form. The vibrations take over the edges of her lips as well. It’s as if Maximus’s stress has given her permission to offload some of hers, but now she doesn’t know what to do with the relief.

“About…having to help her keep an eye on you. She said it last night when she came and retrieved me from Olympus. I’m not due in Dis for another ten days, but she said she needed me early. That it was a job she couldn’t even entrust to one of the Iremia diamonds.”

Unlike the rest of her revelations, all of that practically pours out of her as one garbled sentence. Halfway through, she scoots her gaze away. By the time she’s done, Maximus and I are watching her cut a tense path to the light-up leaf and then back. A couple of times, the elevator detects her approach and opens with that cheery but annoying chime.

“Okay. So,” Maximus finally utters. “You…and Hecate…have been basically following us all day?”

A hesitant giggle tumbles off the goddess’s lips. “Not while you were at the big Beverly Hills mansion, of course.

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