My belly grew round as time passed. I made no effort to hide it, and though Demeter reported whisperings and gossip from the other gods, I didn’t care. Whether they knew it or not, this was a legitimate child. What they thought didn’t matter.
At last, on the morning I gave birth to my second son, Zeus confronted me. I rested with the baby in my bedroom, and he stormed in, startling my peacock into flight.
“What did you do that for?” I said, sighing as the bird took off from my balcony. “We were having a nice chat.”
“I’m sure you were.” He slammed his fist on the wall so hard that they must’ve heard it on the other side of Olympus. “Who is he?”
“Who is who?” I said innocently, turning my attention back to the baby sleeping soundly in my arms. “You mean him? This is my son.”
“I do not mean the baby,” he said through clenched teeth. “Tell me who your consort is.”
“My consort?” I tilted my head in what must have been an infuriating show of ignorance. “You’re my consort, dear husband. Or have you forgotten? It certainly would explain quite a lot, wouldn’t it?”
“Enough,” he thundered, and before I could blink, he snatched my son from my arms and stormed to the balcony. The baby started to sob. “I will not be treated this way. I will not be disrespected by my own wife. I will not be played a fool in front of my subjects and my council—”
“Your council?” I scrambled to follow, but my empty body was too exhausted and sore to move as quickly as my son’s cries demanded. “It is our council, or have you forgotten that, too?”
“Do not toy with me,” he snarled, and he stood on the edge of the balcony, balancing my crying son precariously in one arm.
“Give him back.” I reached for him, but Zeus sidestepped me. “Zeus, he’s a baby, he needs me, give him back—”
“Artemis and Apollo were babies, too, when you sent a serpent to kill them.” Zeus shifted until the baby was over the edge with nothing but sky below him. “Shall we discover if you whored yourself out to a mortal?”
Icy terror filled me, extinguishing the blaze of my burning anger. “Zeus, no—you can’t—”
“You are my wife. You swore fidelity to me. You are the goddess of marriage, and yet you stain the institution with—with this abomination.”
“He’s not an abomination—”
“I will not have him in Olympus as a constant reminder of your infidelity.”
My face grew hot. “What about your infidelity? Your lies, your cheating, your whores—why should you be spared the anguish of having to see my son when I must look into the eyes of your bastards for the rest of eternity?”
The breeze that blew in from the balcony shifted into a chilling wind, and lightning crackled. “Is that what you think of our family?”
“Your family,” I spat. “Not mine. They will never be mine.”
“And this—thing is?” He glanced at the baby, who was now crying so hard that his face was turning purple.
I rose to my full height. My son was not a thing. He was a person who deserved Zeus’s respect and love, though I’d long since discovered he wasn’t capable of giving, either. “He’s more of a family to me than you will ever be.”
I didn’t think he would really do it. Zeus may have been a cheater, he may have been a liar, but he’d never physically harmed someone who hadn’t wronged him first. But as I watched, helpless to stop it, the baby slipped from his arms and plummeted to the earth.
The edges of my vision turned red, and any lingering affection I had for Zeus vanished. “You will pay,” I whispered in a murderous voice. “I cannot kill you, but I will find a way to destroy you. You have my word.”
Zeus scoffed, though for the briefest of moments, I thought I saw a flicker of doubt hidden underneath his arrogance and pride. “You brought it on yourself, bearing a bastard in my palace.”
“He isn’t a bastard.” Stepping back, I shed my normal appearance and turned into the girl he’d found on that moonlit beach. “His name is Hephaestus, and he would have been your son.”
In the space of a single heartbeat, recognition flickered in Zeus’s eyes, and far too late, he reached into the empty sky. “But—”
“Now he will have no father. Not when the one he has tries to murder him. When I return, the entire council will know what you did, I promise you that. And unlike you, Zeus, I keep my word.”
Before he could respond, I disappeared. I had to find my son before he did.
Landing on the side of a mountain, so high up that I could see the sea in the distance, I listened. The wail of the wind nearly covered his cries, but nothing in the world, not even Zeus himself, could keep me from my son.
I found him among a bed of sharp rocks, sobbing and squirming against the bitter cold. Though he was immortal, his legs stuck out at an odd angle, and he sobbed as if he were in real pain.
“Oh, baby,” I murmured, and I gently gathered him up, healing his legs as best I could. It wasn’t my specialty, but Zeus must have cursed him—that was the only explanation. More reason to hate my dear husband. My hate wouldn’t do any good unless I channeled it properly, though.
I would find a way to destroy him, to usurp his power and make sure he couldn’t hurt anyone again. Not me, not our children, and certainly not everything the council had worked for. In his thirst for power and control, Zeus had created a rift unlike anything we’d seen since the Titan War. And at this rate, it would only be a matter of time before another one began.
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.