For the past month or so, she’d been helping track down the remaining descendants of Cyncus across the Upperworld. It had gone surprisingly well, better than anyone predicted, considering how many family trees had been scrambled, hidden, or magically erased over the centuries. And now the whole project had an official office in Alindale, the capital of Vale Crossing.
New realm, new job, new responsibility.
And, unfortunately, her siblings.
Being triplets came with benefits, shared history, shared abilities, shared secrets. But it also came with constant commentary from Thing 1 and Thing 2, as she affectionately, and accurately, labeled them.
Her phone buzzed.
Thing 1:Where are you? I’m hungry.
Zara rolled her eyes. She loved them, really, she did, but sometimes the best part about moving realms was the theoretical possibility of ditching them on the border.
She typed back:Sucks to be you. Figure it out.
Another buzz. Of course.
Thing 2:Wow, what’s with the attitude?
Zara sighed through her nose. No good ever came from engaging the gremlins this early in the morning.
She replied with the bare minimum:See you later at the office.
When the immediate flood of follow-up texts started, she simply flipped her phone facedown on the table and lifted her cup, tuning back into the monsters gossiping beside her.
“Yeah, I read it on Lifting the Vale,” the antlered one said. “You know that Lord Eros is Cyncus’s son? They did a whole post about how Cyncus got Aphrodite to fall in love with him.”
“I didn’t know that!” his companion gasped. “Well, you never mess with the gods, right? I’m gonna have to find that story.”
“Don’t worry,” the antlered monster said, already pulling out his phone. He tapped a few times and then grinned. “There. Just sent you the link.”
Zara sipped her latte, pretending she wasn’t listening while listening with laser precision.
Because if casual café gossip was already circulating about her ancient ancestor seducing a goddess…then the rest of this world was far more prepared for the return of geryon wings than she was.
Perfect. Just what she needed before her first day on the job.
Lifting the Vale.
Curiosity won out.
Zara flipped her phone back over and typed the name into the search bar. Thankfully, Vale Crossing had its own version of the internet; inter-realm networks were tricky, but Alindale was advanced enough to keep everyone here connected.
A site popped up instantly.
It was…a gossip page. A full-blown, neon-headered, tabloid-style gossip site complete with monster paparazzi shots, blurry photos of deities in questionable situations, flashy memes, and headlines that made her eyebrows climb high enough to be in danger of achieving flight before her wings did.
“Oh, interesting,” she murmured.
She scrolled, taking in a post about a minotaur influencer’s breakup, a blurry night-sky video labeled “KRONOS SPOTTED? OR JUST A REALLY BIG BIRD?,” and a long thread debating whether nymphs counted as “nature girls” or “elementals with benefits.”
Well…that tracked.
Most monsters here descended from the Greek world, after all, so she supposed it made sense the drama would be on par with Olympus itself: messy, ancient, and way too public.
Zara snorted into her latte.
Great. She hadn’t even started her first day of work, and she was already reading inter-realm tabloid gossip about her own bloodline.
