Warning: Even the book description of Never Say Hero contains Oh. My. Gods., Goddess Boot Camp, and Goddess in Time spoilers.
Griffin Blake sat in the reception room outside Hera’s office and tried not to fidget. There were no magazines to read, no wall-mounted TV displaying the news, no other would-be supplicants waiting their turn. Nothing to focus on but his own thoughts, and they weren’t very good company at the moment.
After waiting two hours for an audience with the queen of the gods—after waiting two days to even get an appointment to wait—he was going half out of his mind.
He didn’t blame Hera for keeping him waiting. He wouldn’t be surprised if she kept him waiting for weeks. Time meant next-to-nothing to an Olympian. In her mind, a life of never-ending purgatory was no more than he deserved.
In his mind, too.
When he first learned that the gods might finally be willing to hear his plea to have his parents’ smoting reversed, he autoported to Olympus immediately. He jumped at the chance to make his every single birthday, dandelion, and shooting star wish since he was seven finally come true.
He hadn’t felt hope like this since the day his parents vanished from the face of the earth more than ten years ago. If there was even the remotest possibility that he could bring them back—that he might once again feel his mother’s arms around him and see his father’s smiling face—he didn’t want to wait one millisecond longer than necessary.
Hera, apparently, was in no rush.
Griffin didn’t care. He could wait. He would sit there until eternity and beyond if he had to. Whatever it took.
Hera’s assistant—a middle-aged descendant of the queen herself, with wild red hair and a kind smile—cleared her throat.
“The goddess will see you now,” she told him.
His heart raced as he leapt to his feet.
“Thank you, Agnes.”
She looked over her glasses at him, her brows drawn together with worry. Or maybe judgment. Okay, sure. Maybe wearing jeans and a rugby shirt wasn’t the most formal way he could greet the goddess. But his impulsive autoporting from the ice cream parlor on Serfopoula hadn’t included a pit stop to change clothes.
His legs wobbled slightly as he crossed to the door. It felt like he’d just finished a race and his muscles had turned to pudding.
And he had the sweaty palms to match. What if they were too slippery to turn the handle? He wiped them on his jeans. But before he could even reach out to try, the door swung open.
Heart pounding even faster, he took a calming breath and stepped inside.
The door slammed shut behind him.
Hera sat behind a massive white marble desk dotted with turquoise and gold accessories. The room glowed with light from the wall of windows beside the desk, softened on its way in by breezy curtains.
The goddess looked just as he remembered—not surprising since the gods didn’t age. Dark hair coiled into a loose bun. Wearing a traditional-style gown—this one in a rich peacock blue—with a golden brooch securing each shoulder. Face molded into a severe expression.
She didn’t look up from the parchment she was studying.
Griffin shifted uncomfortably. Should he stand there and wait to be invited over? Should he sit? Should he hold his breath?
Thinking it would be awkward to keep standing just inside the door, he decided to sit. He crossed to the pair of gilded chairs that faced Hera’s desk. The chair nearest the windows was occupied by a giant, glorious peacock.
He chose the unoccupied chair. As he sat, the peacock studied him.
Griffin tried to ignore the bird and focused his attention on Hera. He wanted to be ready the moment she decided to speak. Whenever that would be.
Which might be another eternity.
The queen kept working as if he weren’t there. Without looking up, she reached for a peacock feather quill that sat in a marble stand and dipped it carefully in a turquoise inkpot.
Waiting was killing him. With every skritch-scratch of the quill, he grew more impatient. More anxious.
Maybe she hadn’t noticed him enter. Sure, she had been the one to open and close the door telekinetically—no way would Agnes dare to do that herself—but that didn’t mean Hera had actually seen him come in.
He cleared his throat.
Her focus did not waver.
Skritch-scratch, skritch-scratch, skritch-scratch.
Finally, when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he decided to risk speaking. But as he opened his mouth to make his presence known, the peacock screamed. A sharp, ear-piercing screech.
When Griffin looked at it, the bird knowingly shook its head.
He took that as a sign and closed his mouth.
After what felt like an actual infinity, Hera finally set her quill back into the stand. She rolled up the parchment and handed it to the peacock. The bird turned and took off, flying out the open window into the bright blue Olympian sky.
When Griffin looked back at the desk, he found the queen’s dark eyes intently focused on him. It took all his willpower not to react to her scrutiny.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Didn’t do anything but stare.
He shifted uncomfortably again. He had to say something.
“Great goddess, my name is Griff—”
She cut him off with a humorless laugh.
“I know who you are, Griffin Blake.” Her eyes narrowed. “How could I ever forget the one who stole my son’s immortality?”
Her words hit him like a slap. He knew he deserved the goddess queen’s anger—had been expecting it, even. But he hadn’t been prepared for her to say it so bluntly.
His mind flashed back to that afternoon so many years ago, when he and Nicole had snuck into the baby’s room and fed it ambrosia. They thought they were doing a good thing. The gods and goddesses loved ambrosia, but the poor baby never got a taste. It seemed only fair.
At seven years old, they hadn’t realized there might be a reason.
“We didn’t know,” he whispered. “It’s no excuse, but we didn’t know.”
Punishment had been swift and severe. Not for Griffin or Nicole. For their parents. Hers had been banished from Olympus and the hematheos world, forced to live in the nothos world among ordinary humans. His had been smoted from existence.
For more than a decade, Griffin believed their fates were irreversible. Carved in stone, never to be lifted or altered.
But then everything changed. Thanks to a quick trip through time and some other mythological hijinks, the exile order on Nicole’s parents was reversed. And Griffin learned that the gods—Zeus in particular—might be willing to grant him the same favor. He was the only living descendant of Hercules, after all, and it was widely known that great Herc was Zeus’s favorite son.
So he had sought an audience with the god king, who swiftly told him—three days later, when Griffin finally got to see him—that none but Hera could grant that request. The other Olympians wouldn’t dare overrule her on this.
Now Griffin sat across a vast marble desk from the only being who could make more than ten years of wishes come true. Holding his breath.
“You are correct,” she said slowly. “Ignorance is no excuse. Nor does it annul your mistake.”
“I wish I could.” Griffin leaned forward. “I would give anything—do anything—to fix the past.”
Her expression snapped into a glare, fierce eyes spearing into him for daring to interrupt her. When he sat back in his chair, she continued.
“Yet, I must acknowledge that you were but children.” She leaned back in her own chair, decorated with ornately carved lilies and dotted with ruby pomegranate seeds. “But a few years older than my boy was at the time.”
Griffin could still picture him, the little toddler with golden curls, sleeping like an angel in his gilded crib. Could still hear the chimes twinkling in the soft breeze. Could still smell the honey-sweet nectar as he delivered the drops to the baby.
So many lives had changed in that instant.
“Yes, I was a child,” he told the queen, “but I was responsible. I am responsible.” He leaned forward again. “My parents should not have been punished in my place.”
Hera pursed her lips. “Ah, finally, we arrive at the purpose of your visit.”
Griffin drew in a sharp breath. He wanted to ask for the reversal outright, but he didn’t know how the queen would respond. Would she be angry? Irritated? Amused? He didn’t want to say the wrong thing in the wrong way. But he didn’t even know if there was a right thing or a right way.
In the end, impatience won out. Griffin had waited too long already to play any more games. He decided to try straightforward honesty.
“Your highness, I would like to request a—”
“Reversal,” the queen finished. “Yes, I know.”
His breath whooshed out of him. Of course she knew. She was the master of psychospection, after all. His own ability with that power was nonexistent in comparison. She’d probably been reading his mind since long before he walked through her door.
He’d put himself through all that dread for nothing. Now all he felt was relief. Everything was out in the open. Now he just had to cross his fingers and hope.
Instead of commenting on his request, Hera pulled open a desk drawer and reached inside. A moment later, she popped a small amber-colored candy into her mouth.
Griffin sat on his hands as he waited for her response. His patience was at the raggedy edge, but he would sit there until he turned to dust if it meant a chance to get his parents back.
Moving the candy to one side of her mouth, the queen finally spoke.
“Most people misunderstand smoting,” she said. “They equate the punishment with death or destruction.”
“It’s not?”
Over the years, Griffin had wondered. He’d been so young when it all happened that he didn’t know enough to ask what smoting actually meant. Aunt Lili certainly hadn’t explained it to him. She was lost in her own grief while struggling with her new responsibility to raise a child.
Then, as he grew older and had questions, Lili wanted to talk less and less about his parents. He knew she still loved his mother, her half-sister, as much as he did. But it was as if she wanted to forget what happened and the pain it caused.
He didn’t blame her. If he could forget his guilt, he would.
“Not at all,” Hera explained. “Smoting is more of a state of… suspended animation.”
“Like how Han was frozen in carbonite?” Griffin asked.
The queen frowned at him. “I do not understand the reference. What is han, and where is carbonite?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He scooted to the edge of his chair again. “Is it possible to reverse? Can someone be—” He swallowed hard. “—unsmoted?”
The queen shrugged, as if he’d asked her how she liked the weather on Mt. Olympus. As if this weren’t the most important question he had ever asked in his life.
“Of course,” she said, before biting down on the candy with a sharp crunch.
With those two words, Griffin’s heart erupted in his chest. Hope exploded in his mind.
He tried to remind himself not to get too excited. Even if it was possible, that didn’t mean it was probable. The Olympians were famous for grudge-holding.
But learning that the thing he had wanted more than anything for most of his life, the thing he’d thought beyond impossible, was actually attainable, was almost more than he could process. He rubbed his hands over his face as he listened to the queen crunch her candy into oblivion.
When she seemed to be done, he looked up.
She was studying him again.
“It seems we are at an intersection,” Hera said, as she slipped another candy into her mouth. “You want something from me. And I want something from you.”
“Anything,” he blurted.
“Even help my son recover his immortality?”
Griffin jerked back. “How would—” He shook his head. “Could it—”
The queen watched him with steady eyes, casually sucking on her ambrosia candy while he considered her question.
“Is that even possible?” he finally managed to ask.
“Only one being has the power to return the gift you stole.” She glanced away from him, out the open window. “The Oracle of Delphi.”
The Oracle of Delphi.
A shiver of… not fear, exactly, but trepidation shot down Griffin’s spine. The Oracle was not one to mess with.
“My son, Calix, is thirteen this year,” Hera said.
Her voice sounded sad, almost wistful. Not a trait often associated with the Olympian queen.
“At last of age,” she explained, “to seek an oracle’s quest.”
Maybe it wasn’t sadness he had heard in the goddess’s voice. Maybe it was fear. The Oracle’s quests were notoriously impossible. Notoriously dangerous. Notoriously notorious. Few had sought them out. Fewer still had successfully completed them.
“Guide Calix through the ordeal,” Hera said, bringing Griffin’s attention back to her. “Accompany him on the quest. Protect him from harm. See him succeed, and you shall see your parents once again.”
Could it really be that simple?
Not that an Oracle’s quest was ever simple. But the goddess queen’s deal seemed straightforward. Help Hera’s son complete an Oracle’s quest to regain his immortality, and Griffin’s parents’ smoting would be reversed.
Simple as that.
So when she asked, “Do you accept?” he didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.” He grinned. “Yes, and thank you.”
The queen smiled almost softly.
“Do not thank me until the deed is done. You may be the descendant of a hero, but mayhaps even Heracles himself could not complete this task.”
“I will,” Griffin insisted as he pushed to his feet. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
He held out his hand and was only a little surprised when the queen took it in hers.
“Good luck, Griffin Blake.” She squeezed his hand. “You shall need it.”
There was that shiver down his spine again. Griffin ignored it. For the first time in more than a decade, he had hope. He had a deal with a goddess to get his parents back.
No matter what it took, he would succeed.
He wouldn’t let his parents down again.
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