God of Thieves. Aimee Carter

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СКАЧАТЬ the wall, and it bounced off at an angle, heading directly toward the circle of thrones in the center of the room. With a muttered curse, I stood. Couldn’t give Zeus any more of a reason to get pissed off at me. I was already way over the line as it was, at least as far as he saw it. And on the council, that was all that mattered.

      “Looking for this?”

      At the sound of that familiar voice, I grinned and turned around. Apparently not everyone had completely given up on me. Just almost everyone. “Iris. Haven’t seen you for a few decades.”

      “Zeus sent me on a scouting trip.” She examined the rubber ball and gave it a tentative bounce. “It wasn’t pleasant. Besides the fact that it took half a damn century, a lion tried to eat me, and he looked awfully confused when his teeth and claws seemed to stop working.”

      “Shame he didn’t succeed.” I leaned up against the wall, crossing my arms. “I could use a new job.”

      “As if you could do a tenth of what I do.”

      I snorted. “Please. Zeus only lets you be his messenger because no one else wants the job. And you don’t snitch on him to Hera. Or gossip about his affairs. That’s more than just about any other minor god or goddess out there, you know.”

      A dimple appeared on her cheek, one that only showed up when she was annoyed. Usually with me. “I am anything but minor. What’s wrong with the job you have now?”

      “You mean you haven’t heard?” I said, raising my eyebrow. Then again, she was talking to me. Couldn’t have known much. “Persephone gave up her immortality. Rather than everyone blaming someone who actually had something to do with it, they all decided to gang up on me instead.”

      Iris’s eyes widened, and she seemed to forget about the ball in midair. With a dull thump, it hit her on the head, right in the middle of her coppery curls. “Wait—you mean that actually happened?”

      I eyed her. Was she pretending to be clueless to get my side of the story, or did she really not know? “What have you heard? Kick the ball my way, would you?”

      She made a halfhearted attempt, but the ball only rolled three-quarters of the way back to me. Figured. “I heard whispers. Nothing confirmed. Then again, I haven’t exactly been in the center of things lately.”

      No, she hadn’t, which was a damn good thing for me. “Persephone fell in love with a mortal. Unfortunately for her, Aphrodite was already sleeping with him—”

      “Who isn’t Aphrodite sleeping with?” muttered Iris, and I smirked.

      “Ares was his usual violent self and decided to take out the competition. Wild boar,” I added when her mouth opened. She winced and touched her stomach in sympathy. “Apparently the mortal’s afterlife wasn’t so great, so Persephone decided to sacrifice her immortality and die in order to give him an incentive to leave his own personal hell for something better.”

      “Oh.” Iris let out a romantic little sigh, and now it was my turn to make a face. “Did it work?”

      I shrugged and averted my eyes under the guise of fetching the ball. “No idea.”

      “You mean Hades hasn’t mentioned it?”

      “We’re not exactly on speaking terms.”

      “No surprise there. But none of the others brought it up?”

      “We’re not exactly on speaking terms, either.”

      Her eyebrows arched. “They’re taking this whole ganging up thing seriously, aren’t they?”

      “You’re telling me,” I muttered.

      She crossed the space between us and set her hand on my cheek. Against my better judgment, I tilted my head into her touch. First time anyone had bothered in months. For a second, our gazes met, and her weird purple irises seemed to turn an even darker shade of violet.

      “Your eyes are the shade of ripe grapes,” I said. “What does that mean?”

      She dropped her hand and gave me a look, and her eyes reverted to their normal purple. Or at least it was normal around me. They changed color with her mood, I knew that much—sort of like Persephone’s hair with the seasons—but what those colors meant, she refused to tell me. Not that I blamed her, but still. The few clues I had weren’t much to go on. When I wasn’t public enemy number one, Ares had informed me in no uncertain terms that her eyes were blue, and Aphrodite swore up and down they were green.

      Didn’t matter anyway. Eyes were eyes, and Iris didn’t deserve to have her emotions splashed all over the place. We might not have been big on privacy, but even that was crossing the line.

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s terrible of them to put you through that. Not even you deserve the cold shoulder from your whole family, even if you are an ass.”

      “I think that’s about the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

      “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.” She touched my hand this time, barely a brush, but again it was more affection than anyone else had shown me. “I’m afraid I don’t exactly have the best news, either. You might want to stick around—there’s a good chance Zeus is going to call a meeting as soon as I find him.”

      Fantastic. Another opportunity for the rest of the council to pretend I didn’t exist. “What sort of news?”

      “The kind they’ll need Hades for,” she said, and I grimaced. Definitely not good. Hades normally avoided coming up here, only bothering for the big stuff that would affect his realm, too. And the things that affected the Underworld were never warm and fuzzy. Or easy to work out.

      So much for having a halfway decent day, relatively speaking. And with Iris back, it would have been.

      Sure enough, shortly after she ran off to track down Zeus, a booming voice filled my head. The council will convene in five minutes. Everyone is required to attend.

      Apparently Iris hadn’t been overreacting. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been required to attend a council meeting. Generally everyone came because if we didn’t, we’d risk getting kicked off, and going from kings to paupers wasn’t exactly the greatest feeling in the world. But being required to come was definitely something new.

      I reached my throne first, of course, considering I was in the room anyway. Everyone else arrived promptly, and even Hades made it in under the wire, appearing right as Zeus took his seat. I eyed my father’s face. Brow knit, prominent frown. His usual cheery self.

      “I am afraid Iris has brought news of Helios and Selene,” he said quietly. That was odd. No formal announcement that the meeting had started, no showing off and making sure everyone knew he was the one in charge. Just this. Dread settled over me. This wouldn’t be good.

      “What about them?” said Demeter, her frown matching Zeus’s. At least I wasn’t the only one who had no idea what was going on. Why was Zeus worrying about Helios and Selene anyway? They were ancient gods, older than Athena, and while they weren’t part of the original six siblings that formed the council, they were powerful in their own right. God of the Sun and Goddess of the Moon, at least until Apollo and Artemis had more or less hijacked their roles. СКАЧАТЬ