The Iron Queen (Daughters of Zeus) by Kaitlin Bevis

girl you just met?” She held her chin up, using every inch of her five feet to try to make me feel small, but I wasn’t having it.
    “You could have teleported!” I threw my hands in the air. “You could have escaped before he so much as touched you. What the hell were you still doing here?” Her gaze flickered to the hunter then back to me, the movement almost imperceptible and probably unintentional. I let out a dark laugh. “Protecting your latest human pet? I kept him out of the line of fire for you, but since you were so determined to swear away your sanity, I sure as hell wasn’t going to put my wife on the line to stop you. Here—” I stepped forward, grabbing her shoulder and shoving her powers back into her before breaking the bond of fealty with a snap.
    She stumbled and suddenly a hand yanked on my shoulder. “Don’t touch her!” The hunter shouted, fist flying toward my face.
    I caught it in a bone-crunching grip.
    “Stop!” Artemis darted between us. “Oh, Ryan—” She took his hand, and I felt a pinprick of power flow between them as she healed him. He stared at her, wide-eyed.
    “What the hell is going on?”
    “It’s a long story.” Her shoulders slumped, and she returned her attention to me.
    “He comes with us.”
    “Like hell!”
    “I’m not stupid, Hades. Zeus has your wife, and you want him dead. I’m one of the few people who can make that happen.” She tilted her chin up, eyes glittering with defiance. “If you want my help. He comes too.”

Chapter XXII
     
    Persephone
     
    “I’m impressed.” Zeus still looked like Hades as he stroked my cheek. “I didn’t expect you to hold out this long.”
    Thinking of the pearl Aphrodite offered me, I realized she’d been right all along.
    Death could be a mercy. The torture blended together in such a painful haze that I’d lost the ability to distinguish between the waking world and dreamscapes. Propped up against that familiar wall of mist, my hand clutched my necklace. I was crushing the poor plant, but I couldn’t seem to loosen my grip.
    I’d been prepared for pain when Zeus stormed into the room, but he seemed even more agitated than usual. And he’d taken it out on me.
    Gods, I was in so much pain. It was probably a dream. If he wasn’t electrocuting me anymore, I was most likely dreaming.
    “The question is how are you still refusing me? You’re not this strong.”
    Sometimes he looked like Hades when I was awake though. It was hard to tell. Was I awake, or was I sleeping?
    Did it matter?
    He was still talking. As he launched into his insulting tirade, I smiled to myself. Zeus was losing ground. The list of insults grew shorter by the day. He could no longer call me weak because of what I’d survived, he couldn’t call me common because he couldn’t figure me out, and he’d even lost stupid because he knew I would have broken by now if I hadn’t found some way around swearing fealty.
    Sure, he could still say hurtful things. Terrible things if I allowed myself to focus on them. But the shock of hearing insults from Hades’ voice had long since worn off. Besides, I was in high school. I’d heard way worse.
    I couldn’t allow myself to look too comfortable. When Zeus saw something wasn’t working, he found some new hell to put me through. Each of his ideas was worse than the last.
    Was I dreaming? I’d figured out how to tell once, but I’d forgotten when I came to. It was something important. Something I might be able to do next time I was under.
    Zeus’ face rippled, twisting back to his own features. “They’re building an army down on the surface. Just to find you. Every remaining god under one roof, driven together for a common purpose.” He grinned, like that made him happy for some reason. “What makes you so special?” He looked at me like he wanted to slice me open and see what made me tick. “What does he see in you?”
    There was a way to tell. The memory slid around my brain like water,