Page 1 of Crown of Olympus
CHAPTER 1
Nyssa
Fuck.
Zeus was dead.
And he was staring right at me.
I stoodat the edge of the River Styx, my well-worn boots mere inches from the glossy black water. Despite the shock of seeing the King of Olympus glide closer with every passing second, I was as still as death — ironically.
The air was thicker here along the riverside. Misty and cold; heavier than anywhere else in the Underworld. It was breezeless and stifling, as if it carried the weight of despair from every soul who’d passed through over the millennia — by boat or beneath its murky depths.
I gave a solemn nod to the Ferryman across the water. He stood eerily still at the prow of his skiff, shrouded in a ragged cloak of darkness. His pole barely moved, yet somehow the god steered his cargo-laden boat effortlessly towards where I waited upon the obsidian landing platform on the Isle of Judgement.
The river flowed silently, moving so slowly it perfectly mirrored the stars overhead. As if they, too, had died and were forever trapped beneath its waters. The boat drifted nearer. With icy mist dancing around its serpentine figurehead, the vessel carried Zeus’ spectral form closer to his eternal sentence.
In life, the King of Gods had been a beast of a man — eight feet tall, solidly built, with a golden glow surrounding him like a fucking halo. He was every bit the legend mortal stories made him out to be. Unfortunately, those stories catapulted his ego into the heavens, convincing him he was infallible and above consequence.
Apparently, he was not.
In death, Zeus looked vastly different. His form bore the wounds of his sudden demise, and a golden stain now marred his once-white linen tunic.
I briefly wondered how the Fates had allowed him to become this flickering, etherealthing,and which Olympian god had the gall to take out the only ruler Olympus had ever known.
Whoever they were, they hadn’t acted on impulse. They’d actively sought the destabilisation of the upper realm — of all realms. They had found a way to do the impossible. And in doing so, they’d unwittingly served Zeus up on a silver platter tome.
The daughter of Hades — King of the Underworld, and Lord of Death.
If I had been born a different woman, one with a less haunted past, perhaps I would have felt a shred of sorrow at the scene playing out before me. Perhaps I would have looked upon the fallen king and seen a tragedy unfolding.
But I was not that woman. The threads of fate had woven me into something else entirely. Something inherently more dangerous.
Zeus’ ghostly figure flickered, and I realised my eyes were still locked on his. My breath caught at the intensity of his stare. His eyes, pure silver and stubbornly vibrant even in death, had not wandered from mine.
But I would not cower. He did not scare me.
It was he who should be fearful.
My only outward reaction was to roll my shoulders back and raise a single ebony brow, daring him to lash out.
The mighty Zeus had been reduced to nothing more than a shade — a dull, smoky spectre of his soul. The only form left to him in death. The irony wasalmostenough to crack my cold facade.
My lip twitched, a barely restrained smirk threatening to break free from the mask I carefully tucked it behind. But the laugh building in my throat died precisely the moment I remembered exactly who Zeus was — and all he had taken from me — when he murdered my mother.
On the day of my birth, just a little over thirty years ago, the Queen of the Underworld died. Persephone, the goddess of spring and rebirth, forfeited her life at the hands of the haughty bastard before me. She had been the love of my father’s immortal life. She was the light he and I had so desperately needed to navigate this realm of everlasting darkness, death, and decay.
But Zeus had stolen her from us both.
The Ferryman’s boat finally nudged the platform, and he raised a hand in greeting. The lone shade disembarked, floating slowly towards his fate — one of the three imposing arches positioned at my back. I turned my attention to the cloaked Ferryman, a wicked smirk tugging at the corners of my crimson-painted lips — unbidden, but not unwelcome.
“Interesting cargo you’ve got today, Char,” I quipped.
Charon threw back his hood, revealing a surprisingly boyish face and mop of unruly light-blonde hair. He tilted hishead and grinned, a solitary dimple denting his left cheek. For someone perpetually surrounded by death, Charon was always annoyingly upbeat — my own ray of sunshine in the otherwise eternal darkness of my life.
We were two of the youngest gods in any realm. Only three had been born in the last century, and we were the only ones raised in the Underworld — ever. Charon was three when I came along, his mother a dear friend to mine. As a result, we were inseparable as babes, joined at the hip in mischief, and became family as we matured. He’d even moved into his own rooms at the palace.
“Not exactly my usual kind of passenger,” he said, glancing at Zeus with amused grey-blue eyes. “But I’ll admit, it does add a certain… flair to an otherwise mundane shift.”
