Free The Iron Queen (Daughters of Zeus) by Kaitlin Bevis

Minthe didn’t seem nearly upset enough. She looked relieved. And not, “yay, my daughter’s alive. I don’t have to file a missing persons report” relieved. Just “ooh, an extra set of hands” relieved.
    “Can you grab the nice plates? You know, the ones in the box downstairs?”
    Melissa tilted her head in confusion. “Don’t you want to know where I’ve been? What I’ve been doing?”
    Now it was Minthe’s turn to look puzzled. “Did you leave?” An oven beeped in the kitchen, pulling the already distracted priestess’ attention off her errant daughter. “Oh! I’ll just—” She moved toward the oven, looking more frazzled than concerned. “Uh, the nice plates, okay? You know the ones?”
    Melissa nodded, looking shell-shocked. “Excuse me,” she murmured, stomping off toward the basement door. She threw it open with so much force it crashed into the horn Pan kept strapped to his back. “Sorry.”
    I heard her foot hit every single step down to the basement.
    “Would you like one?” Laurel, one of Demeter’s priestesses, asked.
    “What?” I looked at the woman and then noticed the platter she carried of assorted vegetables interspersed with pineapples cut into the shape of flowers. The platter was white with delicate paintings of even more fricken flowers. “Sure,” I replied, grabbing a piece of celery and dipping it in ranch sauce.
    “What’s with Melissa?” Adonis asked around a mouthful of a pig in a blanket.
    I leaned against the front door—it was the only patch of unoccupied wall left—and took a bite of my celery, enjoying the crunch almost as much as making Adonis wait for an answer. “We’ve been gone for over twenty-four hours, and her mom didn’t notice.”
    “Oh.” Adonis’ voice went solemn in understanding.
    I wished I understood. Big deal if Melissa’s mom didn’t notice she was gone. Wasn’t not getting into trouble a good thing? But Melissa had sounded happy at the prospect of getting “killed” by her mother. Like doing something as extreme as flying to another city, stealing a car, and vanishing with no word of where she’d gone would force Minthe to notice her.
    Weird, I didn’t think humans needed worship to survive like we did. But maybe teenagers were different.
    “Who are you?” A gray-eyed goddess asked.
    I blinked, jolted from my reverie. “Aphrodite.”
    “You’re new,” she observed. She didn’t introduce herself. “I’ll let you guess.”
    I nodded, taking in her studious look. Charisma radiated off her in waves, subtle, but powerful and well controlled. I ticked off the short mental list of Zeus’ known daughters. “Athena?”
    The name clicked into place, sending an onslaught of images and information through my head. Goddess of wisdom, liked horses, tended toward neutrality but never quite managed it. Thousands of details flickered to life in an instant. Knowing everything kind of hurt sometimes.
    Still, it was better than a cold introduction. By allowing me to guess, she’d given me the chance to pull up most of the information on my own, so recovering from the knowledge dump wasn’t as brutal as it could have been.
    “Good guess.”
    “Nice to meet you,” I said with a grimace.
    Athena gave me an understanding smile. “And you are?” She motioned to Adonis.
    A flare of jealousy flashed through me, but I dismissed it. Adonis’ opinion of me came across crystal clear on the trip home. Rejection didn’t come easy for me, but I wasn’t about to get worked up over some lowly demigod.
    “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Adonis said with a grin.
    Irritation flickered across Athena’s face, and I smiled, happy to know I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like him. Melissa had hung on his every word all afternoon. It was annoying.
    Athena saw my look and gave me a warm smile in return. My grin broadened. I felt a sense of kinship with her because she didn’t seem to wish I’d never been born. That pretty much made her the