Demeter gave a slight smile. “Good. Not all of us like to throw our cards on the table for the entire world to see. I certainly don’t. Neither do you, as far as I can tell.”
“You chose to sit on Hera’s end of the table,” I pointed out.
“Ah.” Demeter tapped her goblet with a sharp fingernail. “I arrived before she did. Zeus and Poseidon were having a serious conversation they clearly didn’t want me to overhear, so I took a spot down here, giving them space until they were done. It’s not my fault all his antagonists decided to join me.”
Nodding, I leaned back in the chair. “You could have moved.”
Demeter chuckled. “I do notmovefor anyone, little bird.”
I started to ask Demeter about her daughter Persephone, then thought better of it. Instead, I took another sip of blood to give myself some time to think. Demeter had chosen the middle ground, it seemed.
“I must ask,” Demeter said quietly, “what did Ares say to you when he met you outside?”
I searched her steady gaze and decided I saw no reason to hold back the truth. “In basic terms? He threatened to kill me.”
She shook her head, no expression of surprise on her face. “He has a short temper, that one.”
“I don’t think it has anything to do with his temper. He seems to have it out for me specifically, because I’m the ruler of Troy instead of one of you.”
“HowisTroy?” Demeter suddenly asked.
Instinctively, my hand tightened on the goblet. “Troy is as it’s always been.”
Demeter chuckled again, then lowered her voice to a soft whisper. “That is a non-answer if I’ve ever heard one. You’ll need to do better than that.”
Frowning, I cast a quick glance toward the opposite end of the table. The other Olympians were too engrossed in an argument about which one of them had bested Prometheus. Zeus, of course, insisted it was him, while Hermes argued he’d had something to do with it. None of them were paying attention to me.
I turned back to Demeter but kept my voice to a whisper. “It is a non-answer because I didn’t think it was a serious inquiry. As far as I’m aware, none of you care much about Troy.”
Demeter cocked her head. “Do you know why you’re here?”
For a moment, I didn’t know how to respond. “Well, yes. I received a letter from Zeus. He invited me to participate in the—”
“No.” Demeter gave a quick shake of her head. “I don’t mean literally here and now. I mean…why are you alive? Why wasn’t Theia banished to Tartarus along with the rest of the Titans? And why didn’t Zeus kill you when he found out Theia was keeping the truth of your existence hidden from him?”
I pressed my lips together, hating the traitorous pounding of my heart. The truth was, I’d asked myself these very questions. I’d asked my mother, too. And in my mind, I could hear my mother’s whispered words as clearly as if she were speaking them now.
I will tell you when the time is right. For now, I need you to trust me, Selene.
So I had trusted my mother, and only a month later, High Queen Theia had been nothing but a pile of ash.
Demeter gave me a knowing smile. “It’s because the gods insisted. Your survival is part of the pact.”
My brow furrowed. “What?”
“The gods who created you and the mortals—Gaia, Eros, and Aether—were angry about what some of the Olympians did to the Titans. Gaia wanted to wage a war to get the Titans back from Tartarus, but the god of love stepped in. Eros has always had such a soft heart, and he saw that Gaia’s war would end in the death of mortals, including his beloved Psyche.”
I’d heard some of this, of course—I was all too aware of the love Eros had for Psyche, and the lengths he would go to in order to protect her. But I’d never heard anything about Gaia’s rage. I never knew she’d tried to get the Titans back.
Demeter continued her story. “And so Eros went to Erebus and offered a deal. He agreed to convince Gaia to refrain from war if we Olympians made peace with the Titan that Zeus had yet to trap. And that she’d be given her own kingdom to rule. That was your mother.”
A ringing filled my ears. I saw where this was going now.
“Erebus had his own requirements, of course. He already required a yearly blood sacrifice from us, so he demanded fealty from the Titan, too. And so the treaty was born. A royal Titan must always sit on the throne in Troy. If any of us kills you, the punishment is death. There must always be the Thirteen Crowns.”
The pounding of my heart felt like a war drum. I carefully took one last sip of blood and savored the heat of it, the way the sweetness coated my tongue. I couldn’t focus on what Demeter had just said. I couldn’t, not if I wanted to keep my mask in place.
It was all justtoo much. And the implications were…
