I kept all of those thoughts to myself and hugged him tightly. “Okay. Figure out where the Fates are and try not to get killed. Sounds like dinner will be exciting tonight.”
“With you, Red, it always is.”
Chapter Sixteen
The feast was everything Hermes promised it would be. Ryder and I had spent the afternoon in our room, devising plans and making a mental list of priorities. We needed to kill Nix, but first we needed the god-killer and in order to get that, we needed to find my mom. So, priority number one was finding someone that would spill about the Fates.
I should have asked Delphi before we left her; but honestly, I hadn’t thought I would need it until now. Which might have been stupid, but meeting Nix face to face again had never been part of my life plan.
If we had it though… if we could find it… then maybe ending Nix wouldn’t be the most impossible thing asked of man, woman or god.
Hermes came to collect us once the sun started to set. He’d made sure we were dressed and ready and then one-touched us into the temple. When I opened my mouth to question him, he’d shrugged one shoulder and said, “You’re going to eat supper with him. What would be the point in skulking around now?”
He had a point.
We’d popped into the temple to find tables covered in the richest foods and finest delicacies. Gods and goddesses lounged around on individual couches. Each place had a three-legged table sitting in front of it heavy with food.
The collected gods and goddesses shouted across the room at each other while gorging on food and drink. Pitchers of wine were passed around, sloshing onto the floor and their consumers, but they never stopped moving around the room. And I never saw them go empty.
It was shocking to see these people behave like this. They had always been so poised when I saw them before, so classy and refined.
Here they acted like animals. Their raucous laughter was nearly deafening and their lips were tinged purple from the wine.
I immediately wanted to run back to Hermes’ palace. This felt depraved and immoral and nothing unseemly had happened yet.
The noise stopped as soon as they noticed Ryder and me standing in the center of the entryway. We shifted awkwardly, not really knowing what our role was here.
Sometimes I was called a goddess and sometimes I was called a child. Ryder had never been called a god and even if his mother was Calliope, she wasn’t a goddess anyway.
These were the pillars of the Greek Pantheon. I could see Aphrodite laughing with Athena. Hades and Ares were there, but they were engaged with Demeter, goddess of agriculture, and Artemis, goddess of the hunt.
There weren’t just gods and goddesses at the feast either. Muses, nymphs and demigods were in attendance. The entire gamut of Greek mythology crowded together in this one place. I had been nervous before, but now I was also sickened. I felt their depravity like a palpable charge on my skin. This was evil incarnate.
This was the bowels of hell thrown up into human form.
Hermes walked forward with clipped steps, nodding at us to hurry. Servants rushed out from some unseen place to set up couches for us to sit on and tables to set our insane amount of food.
“Don’t drink the wine,” I whispered to Ryder. “Or eat any fruit.”
He gave me a sarcastic thumbs up. “No problem.”
After all of the prophesying over the last few days, I thought that both of us might be immune to the effects of ambrosia, but I didn’t want to risk it. Either it would drive us insane with addiction, if our humanity had a stronger pull, or we would end up three sheets to the wind and completely vulnerable to whatever plans Nix had for us.
I felt each of my movements echo through the room. Everyone stared at us, waiting for someone to explain our presence.
Or maybe they were expecting me to start a war.
I felt Nix’s attention on me the second we walked in and it hadn’t wavered once.
“My guests,” Hermes gestured toward us when it was clear nobody was in a hurry to return to their meal. “The supreme goddess of the Nesoi and Orpheus, firstborn son of Calliope.”
A murmur swept through the crowd, carrying the tones of aggression that everyone expected from me.
Nix stood up with the feral grace I had always expected from him. “And my protégé,” he told the crowd. “Isn’t she lovely?”
Most of the men clapped enthusiastically. I felt Hades’ leer more than any other. I wanted to say something snotty to Nix or at least contrary, but I couldn’t think of anything under the full attention of the room.
“Come, Ivy, sit by me,” Nix coaxed. Servants immediately started to rearrange my things.
