1 APHRODITE

EVEN AS A CHILD, I KNEW I WOULDN’T MARRY FOR LOVE.

Love is a fairy tale, a fantasy built on lies as fine as gossamer wings. Normal people marry for love. They settle down, do the white-picket-fence thing, have two-point-five children and a dog named Spot. Maybe they’re happy in the end. Maybe they’re not. That isn’t my path.

I’m marrying for power. For duty. For Olympus.

I tighten the tie of my silk robe and fight the urge to pace around the bridal suite. Just fifteen minutes before, it was filled to the brim with bridesmaids and hair and makeup people, but I sent them away to give myself time to breathe. Two weeks is nowhere near long enough to pull together a wedding worthy of my title, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

My new husband is an enemy to the city that I love. A murderer, who killed the last Hephaestus to gain his title. He and his family are a danger unlike this city has ever known, and with the barrier around Olympus failing, the stakes have never been higher.

Even if I have no doubts about taking this course of action, that doesn’t mean it’s without cost.

I press my hand to the spot on my hip where a small tattoo is hidden, the skin still tender from the fresh inking yesterday. An anemone flower. I’m not normally so sentimental, but the physical pain alleviates the ache in my chest a little. Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I turn to the window overlooking the courtyard where I’ll walk down the aisle and sign my life away to Olympus’s new Hephaestus.

The rows of seats are half-filled with all the important people in this city. My family is nowhere in evidence; likely they’re having some kind of hushed meeting right about now to ensure my groom doesn’t attempt to leave me at the altar.

He didn’t choose this marriage, after all.

I smile. I don’t know what Theseus Vitalis thought he’d accomplish by taking the Hephaestus title by force, but he’s a small fish in a big pond here, even if he is now one of the Thirteen. He tried to argue against the marriage, but with the rest of the Thirteen in agreement on this course of action, he was essentially out-voted.

I chose this. I will continue to choose this. Growing up as the daughter of one Zeus—and now the sister to another—there was never any question that my marriage would be one of politics.

It also means I’m no stranger to violence and death. And if Minos’s people decide they’re better off trying to take my title by making him a widower…

I ignore the frisson of something almost like fear slithering down my spine. Ruling Olympus means we’re all swimming in blood up to our necks, even if some of my peers pretend otherwise.

I’ve never had the luxury of a soft fantasy, and I’m not about to start now.

I’ll do anything to keep this city safe. Even this. Especially this. I was made for this.

A knock on my door has me turning from the window. I tighten my belt again, pause to ensure my makeup is pristine, and walk to the door. “I said I need some time. Why are you—” I stop short when I see who’s on the other side. I thought the ache in my chest was inconvenient earlier. It’s nothing compared to the pure agony that flares as I look up into Adonis’s dark eyes.

He looks good. Of course he looks good. He always does, even when he’s obviously been missing sleep. His dark-brown skin is warm in the early afternoon light, but there are exhaustion lines around his eyes. He doesn’t smile. It’s fine. I don’t deserve his smiles any longer, but I still mourn the loss. “Adonis,” I say softly. “What are you doing here?”

“I was invited.” I belatedly register that he’s wearing a perfectly tailored pale-gray suit. He always dresses well, but this is clearly event clothing.

I didn’t invite him. I have plenty of capacity for cruelty, but I don’t level it at those I care about. At those I…love. I swallow past the awful sensation in my throat. “You shouldn’t have come.”

He doesn’t deny it. Instead, he seems to drink in the sight of me. “It should have been me, Eris.”

He’s the only person outside my family who uses the name I was born with instead of my title. It used to feel like a secret just between us, but now he might as well have pulled out a knife and stabbed me. Gods, why does this hurt so much? “It was never going to be you.” Pain makes my voice harsh. “My brother never would have allowed it.” Except that’s a cop-out. Zeus didn’t force me to marry Hephaestus. I decided on this course of action. I square my shoulders. “I never would have allowed it.”

If I could marry for love, I would have married Adonis without a second thought. Our relationship has never been particularly smooth, but it has been consistent in its inconsistency. He makes me laugh more than any other person in this city, and he makes me feel seen, even if he doesn’t always like my more chaotic impulses. But I am Aphrodite, formerly Eris Kasios, daughter of one Zeus and sister to another. My fate was written the moment I was born.

Adonis’s jaw goes tight. “Come with me.”

“What?”

“Come with me,” Adonis repeats. He holds out a broad hand. “I’ve already bribed Triton. We just have to get to the boundary and he’ll see us through. You don’t have to do this, Eris. We can leave. We can start a life somewhere outside this fucking city and be happy.”

The space behind my eyes burns, but I am a Kasios and I learned from a very young age to control my tears. I will not cry now, even if it feels like the broken shards of my heart are grinding to dust against each other. “No.”

He doesn’t drop his hand. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

How can I love him even more now, knowing that he would sacrifice everything for me, even though I would never have asked it of him?

I shake my head slowly. “No,” I repeat. “We had something special, Adonis. Don’t ruin it with theatrics.” The words are cruel, intentionally so. I swallow hard and push through. If I have to hurt him to keep him safe, then I will.

This is why we could never be endgame. Adonis insists on seeing the best of me, without acknowledging the depths I will descend to in order to keep my people and my city safe. He will always balk about doing what needs to be done, and I don’t have the luxury of hesitation.

“Eris—”

“Aphrodite.” My grip goes white-knuckled on the door. “I am Aphrodite, and you’d damn well better remember it. I chose this, Adonis. I chose…him.”

“Don’t lie to me. You hate him.”

“I would rather take a knife to his throat than slip his ring on my finger.”

He flinches. “Then why?”

“You know why.” I have to pause and lower my voice. “Your parents didn’t raise a fool, so stop playing the innocent. Minos has a foothold in the Thirteen now; he isn’t going to stop. What happens if we tuck tail and flee, leaving everyone else to pay the price of his ambitions?”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not. Neither is you showing up here and asking something from me that we both know I can’t give.” My chest aches so much, I can barely draw a full breath. I refuse to let it show on my face. “What I do, I do to protect this city and everyone in it. Including you.”

This marriage is the only way. Friends close and enemies closer and all that. I want Hephaestus to pay, and the best way to ensure that happens is if we’re sharing a life, a home, a bed. He and his little fucked-up family won’t be able to slither about unnoticed when we’re in such close quarters. He’ll slip up, and when he does, I’ll be there to gather all the information I need to ensure Minos doesn’t succeed.

In the meantime, I’ll keep my new husband so busy chasing his tail that he won’t have time to worry about plotting his next move.

I lift my chin. “I am marrying him, Adonis. Nothing you say or do will change that.” It’s on the tip of my tongue to apologize, but if I’m sorry this is hurting him, I’m not sorry that I’m taking this necessary action. “I think you should leave.”

His broad shoulders slump. “You’re serious. You’re really going to marry him.”

“Yes.” It hurts to watch him crumple, but it hurts more when he straightens and shakes it off. Anyone with a drop of power in Olympus learns to lie early and often, with word and action and expression.

Adonis has just never bothered to lie to me before.

He does it now with a bright grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Point taken, Aphrodite.”

Gods, but it hurts to hear that name on his lips. “Adonis—”

“See you around. Or not.” He turns without another word and walks away.

I tell myself to close the door, to not watch him and hope against hope that he’ll turn back and look at me. That this thing between us won’t be over, once and for all.

I know better. Despite how he sometimes seems, Adonis is no innocent. We grew up together. He knows exactly what it takes to grab power in Olympus—and what it takes to keep it.

“Eris?”

I jolt at my sister’s voice. I hadn’t even heard her approach. “I’m fine,” I say automatically. I almost sound like I believe it.

“Was that—” She looks past me to where Adonis is disappearing around the corner.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I step back into the room. It takes a full five breaths before I have my emotions under control. The new tattoo on my hip feels like it’s beating in time with my heart, but that’s just my mind playing tricks. “Help me get into this dress.”

Helen—Ares, she’s called now—follows me into the room with worry in her hazel eyes. She’s already ready, dressed in the tasteful red bridesmaid dress I picked out last week. It took a bit of doing to get our dresses tailored and ready in time, but the designer pulled it off. Not the legendary Juliette—she doesn’t like me much—but another recommended by Psyche Dimitriou.

My sister unzips the cover around my dress. “You don’t have to do this.”

We’ve had this same conversation half a dozen times since I announced I would marry our new Hephaestus, making our union a condition of the rest of the Thirteen accepting him and the power-hungry Minos into our inner circle.

But Helen is an idealist. I’m still not sure how she managed that while growing up in the same household I did. Having an abusive megalomaniac as a father has a way of bringing things into perspective. Helen has spent her whole life fighting against the role she was assigned at birth.

I’ve embraced it.

I don’t bother to answer her as she takes down the dress and holds it for me to step into. I’ve planned my image carefully for this event, from the dress that dips low between my breasts and skims the rest of my body, to the lace layered over fabric panels the same color as my skin. It’s meant to tease, to tantalize. This marriage won’t be in name only. I won’t give my new husband a single piece of ammunition to say it’s anything less than legitimate in order to claim an annulment. That includes consummating, no matter how distasteful I find the idea. Hephaestus is attractive in a rough kind of way, but he’s crude and about as subtle as a brick through a window. Mutual hate can lead to intense chemistry in the bedroom, but in this case, with how he keeps looking at me like he’d love to see my blood paint the walls, I’ll be lucky if we both make it to tomorrow alive.

Helen finishes zipping me up and steps back, her expression unreadable. When we stand side by side, it’s achingly clear that we’re closely related. We have our mother’s coloring, though Helen’s hair is lighter than mine with little bits of red catching the late afternoon light. She’s prettier, too, though pretty isn’t the right word. Helen has traffic-stopping beauty. On me, the same features are a little too sharp, a little uncanny.

I prefer it that way. My beauty makes people uncomfortable. Wary.

My new husband won’t know what hit him.