I couldn’t let that happen.
* * *
I waited. And I watched. And I listened.
Time passed, though I hardly noticed. We grew no older, and Zeus certainly grew no wiser, but I drank in every detail that could be helpful to successfully overthrowing him. He didn’t speak to me after the balcony incident, but to my relief, he ignored Hephaestus, as well. Not out of anger or pride—the few times I caught him watching our son toddle around on his lame legs or challenge Ares to an arm-wrestling match, I saw guilt and regret in his eyes.
Good. But no matter how much he longed to be a part of our son’s life, I wouldn’t let him. And I’d long since poisoned Hephaestus against him, making sure he knew exactly what his father was capable of.
But despite the truth of the matter, in the time I’d been gone to fetch Hephaestus from the earth, Zeus had told the council that I was the one who had dropped him. Out of panic, out of a need to keep his iron grip on the council, out of desire to see me bleed for something I didn’t do—whatever his intentions were, Poseidon and his children believed him. And from then on, none of them tried to call me Mother or came to me with their problems. Just as I’d banished Zeus from my life, he’d successfully banished me from his.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t need him. I was still Queen of the Skies, and that was something he would never take from me.
I spent most of my time with Demeter. Despite our differences, I trusted her, and she knew as well as I did how dire it was that we put an end to his reign of terror as soon as possible. Though at first we plotted together, she grew more and more distant as the seasons passed, until one morning I couldn’t take it anymore. It was one thing if she was growing tired of waiting, but she was my only ally. I couldn’t lose her support.
“Demeter.” I burst into her bedroom. “Sister, I must speak—”
I stopped dead in my tracks. Demeter sat on the edge of her bed, tears flowing freely down her cheeks, and Zeus kneeled in front of her. He clasped her hands in his, and I’d never seen such pain on his face before.
Silence. Demeter looked at me as if she were staring into the eyes of the Fates, but Zeus was the one I focused on. Whatever he was saying to hurt her, I would have his head for it. “Get out,” I growled, sounding as feral as any of the wild creatures that roamed the earth.
I didn’t need to tell him twice. He stood and hurried past me, and as soon as he was gone, I sank down at my sister’s side. “What happened? What did he say? Are you all right?”
That only made her cry harder. She hid her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with each sob. I rubbed her back, but nothing I said calmed her. Zeus would burn for whatever he’d done to her.
“I’m s-sorry,” she managed to choke out several minutes later. “I’m s-so sorry.”
“For what?” I said, stunned. What did she have to be sorry for?
But she shook her head again. “I did something terrible. It was thoughtless and horrible and—I don’t know what came over me. Just seeing you with your sons, seeing how happy you were—”
“Demeter.” I was anything but happy, and she of all people should’ve known it. “What are you trying to say?”
She pulled her hands away from her face long enough for me to see her expression crumble. “I wanted a baby,” she whispered. “I wanted a family the way you had a family. I wanted to be happy—I want someone to share my life with.”
The way Zeus had spoken to her. The way he’d held her hands. My insides twisted with dread. “What did you do, Demeter?” I whispered.
She reached for me, but I pulled away, and she broke down once more. “I’m so sorry, Hera. I wasn’t thinking. He offered, and—”
“And you thought that instead of refusing him like you should have, instead of finding someone else, you’d rather betray me by having his child.”
Her whole body shook, and she once again buried her face in her palms. For a long time, neither of us said anything. She didn’t refute it, and I didn’t ask her to. The cold truth settled over my shoulders, icing over what was left of my love for my siblings.
I was alone. I was completely and utterly alone. Even my sister had abandoned me for that fool. Even my sons still called him Father.
I had nothing that was mine and mine alone to love. Zeus tainted everything in my life that had once been good, stealing it away from me like a common thief. Did he hate me so much for challenging him on the island long ago that he was determined to tear me apart, piece by piece? Was this his plan? Marry me, pretend to love me, pretend to respect me, pretend to give me everything I’d ever wanted and then rip it all away?
I couldn’t know for sure, but it didn’t matter. Whether he’d planned it or not, that was exactly what Zeus had done to me. Though the Titan War had ended long ago, in its place, a new one had been born without my knowing. Maybe without any of us knowing. But it’d been there from the beginning, and now there was no denying it.
Zeus against me. King against Queen. And Zeus thought he’d won, with his control over the council, with his seduction of my sister, the one person I had still trusted.
But he was forgetting one thing: I was more powerful than he was. I’d been the one to win the Titan War. And I was the one who was going to destroy him.
I stood shakily, fighting to keep any signs of my distress from Demeter. “You are never to speak to me again,” I said quietly. “You will not look at me. You will not come to me. You will not call me sister. From this moment on, we are through.”