Athena's PoV:
With the domains announced, the meeting could begin—only the throne remained.
"So, where will his seat be?" Aphrodite's voice dripped with amusement, her lips curving as she leaned forward, fingers lazily tracing the rim of her goblet. "With Hades and Hestia joining us, everything has changed."
She wasn't wrong. The chamber no longer bore the symmetry it once had. Once, five gods sat on each side, neatly divided by gender, with Hera and Zeus anchoring the center of the great U-shaped table. That structure was gone now, scattered like sand in a storm. The three brothers sat as a united front—Poseidon to Zeus's left, Hades to his right. A consequence of her reckless gambit—Hera's grand experiment, stealing both Percy and Jason, nearly igniting a war that would have razed Olympus to the ground.
The old ways had crumbled in its wake. Now, the gods sat as they pleased, tradition discarded in favor of quiet alliances, lingering tensions, and whispered grievances.
I sat near my father, close enough to feel the charge of his presence, the quiet hum of power in the air. Beside me, Hades sat in his usual stillness, his fingers laced together as if contemplating some distant thought. Hera perched one seat away—her posture regal, but the weight of her waning favor clung to her like a frayed cloak. Once, her voice could silence a room with a single word. Now? Now, her glares carried less weight, her whispers stirred fewer ears.
The table had been reshaped by choice, by unspoken bonds rather than rigid laws.
To my father's left: Poseidon, his sea-green gaze unreadable; Hestia, her warmth a steady contrast to the storm; Demeter, her golden eyes sharp beneath furrowed brows; Artemis, shifting in her seat, fingers idly threading through strands of auburn; Apollo, lazy smirk in place, but his eyes glinting with quiet interest; and Hermes, fingers tapping against the polished surface, ever restless.
To his right: Hades, still as the grave; myself, waiting, watching; Hera, her lips pressed in a thin line; Aphrodite, all soft curves and knowing smiles; Ares, arms crossed, jaw clenched; Dionysus, swirling his goblet with the absentminded air of someone already bored; and Hephaestus, watching, waiting, his expression unreadable beneath the flickering forge-light.
And yet—one seat remained.
Unmade. Waiting.
I wondered where he would sit.
As the thought crossed my mind, my gaze fell on him.
He stood apart—not just physically, but in presence, in being. The gods adorned themselves in celestial finery, draped in silks spun from the fabric of the cosmos, armored in steel hammered from the bones of dying stars. He wore neither.
Instead, he was clad in simple mortal attire—a black V-neck, its fabric stretching taut across the broad expanse of his shoulders, the solid ridges of his chest, the raw power beneath. Dark denim sat low on his hips, fitted yet worn, the kind of effortless confidence that belonged only to those who had never needed embellishment to command a room. He dressed like a mortal, yet there was nothing mortal about him.
His sea-green eyes, deep as the ocean, gleamed beneath the golden light of Olympus. They were vast, shifting, alive—sunlight dancing over rolling waves, a storm lurking beneath their surface, unpredictable, untamed. His raven-black hair, thick and unruly, curled slightly at the ends, defying any attempt at order. A shadow of stubble dusted his jaw, softening the sharp angles of his face, yet somehow making them sharper still.
And gods, he was handsome.
I had noticed something in Athens—the way time had marked him differently. The boy I remembered had been lean, almost scrawny, the edges of his youth still clinging to him. But this man—this god—was something else entirely. His once-boyish softness had been burned away, forged into something stronger, something harder. His face was older now, yet not by the passage of time, but by the fires of battle, by loss, by the weight of things no mortal should have carried.
He should have been eighteen, maybe nineteen, yet there was something in his bearing—the quiet gravity in his stare, the unshaken steel in his stance—that made him seem older. Thirty. Thirty-five. As if he had lived lifetimes already.
And handsome. Fates, did I mention he was handsome?
But not in the golden, sculpted perfection of Adonis, nor in the effortless, honeyed allure of Apollo. No—his beauty was something else entirely, something rough-hewn, unpolished, a blade chipped and reforged, hardened by war, by survival, by the kind of suffering that left no room for vanity.
There was an untamed, almost predatory allure to him—the kind that made ones breath hitch, that made the pulse quicken. A beauty that was not gentle, but raw. Rough. Dangerous. This predatory allure, the kind that made hearts race with need and a desire to be taken and, carried off somewhere, quiet and alone.
The kind of beauty that made men envious and women weak.
The kind of beauty that made goddesses blush.
He carried himself like a warrior-king, a man who had conquered battlefields and ruled victory as his queen. Someone who had slaughtered monsters, defied tyrants, walked through hell and emerged, not unscathed, but unbowed. There was something primal about him, something that made even the gods shift in their thrones.
The goddesses with desire. The gods with envy.
And then, there were the tattoos.
At first glance, they were just ink, dark and intricate, curling over the ridges of his forearms, wrapping around the sculpted hardness of his biceps, climbing up the column of his throat like the markings of some forgotten warlord of old. But the longer I looked, the less certain I became.
They moved.
Not like illusions. Not like mere tricks of light.
Something deeper. Something alive.
The runes, etched in the ancient, unknowable language of the Primogenai, coiled and twisted, never still, never silent. They writhed, shifting in endless motion, whispering secrets only the fabric of reality itself could comprehend.
Each mark was a prophecy unfurling, a destiny rewriting itself, a moment in time captured, and then undone.
I saw glimpses—flashes of futures yet unwritten, roads diverging, paths converging. No rune remained the same. They twisted, morphed, pulsed—ever-changing, like the tides of fate itself.
Chaos. Fate. Choice.
Even now, I could feel them. A power far greater than mere decoration.
They weren't just tattoos.
They were prophecy, etched into his skin. Fate, carved into his very being.
And yet, despite all of it—the power, the presence, the sheer weight of him—he somehow looked… fatherly.
Not in age, not in the way of an elder weighed down by time.
No—he radiated something steady, something protective. As if the moment he had ascended, he had taken on a duty greater than himself.
A shield, an unyielding force between his people and the abyss.
A warmth curled through my chest, uneasy yet exhilarating.
I swallowed hard.
And for the first time, I truly understood why Annabeth couldn't help but blush every time she laid eyes on him.
Heat crept up my face. I blushed—confused by my own thoughts and reaction, which only made me blush all the harder. An inexplicable urge welled up within me, compelling me to speak.
"Father, he can take his place next to me."
I looked at my father expectantly, the warmth lingering on my cheeks.
Zeus eyed me. So did Poseidon—his sea-green gaze laced with unmistakable mischief and amusement.
"No way!" Aphrodite squeaked, her voice laced with uncharacteristic urgency. "He can sit here next to me."
Ares scowled, his fingers tightening against the arms of his throne. A low growl rumbled in his throat, barely restrained, but before he could speak, a deep, hearty laugh echoed across the chamber.
"Jealous of your sister-in-law?" Hephaestus mused, his molten eyes gleaming with amusement. "The same sister-in-law you cheat with? On your own brother?" He leaned back, shaking his head, laughter bubbling forth like a forge at full bellows. "Oh, the irony. This is too good."
Ares shot to his feet, his rage palpable—but before he could act, the chamber shook. Thunder roared through the throne room, not as mere sound, but as something alive, something greater. The force of it sent vibrations through the marble floor, rattling the great pillars, a warning wrapped in the power of a storm. It wasn't just a noise—it was a declaration.
Father was not pleased.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I noticed Artemis.
My little sister—the eternal huntress, the unshakable warrior goddess—looked decidedly unlike herself.
A hesitance clung to her, subtle yet unmistakable, a restless energy at odds with the Artemis I knew. Her fingers fidgeted in her hair, threading through waves of burnished auburn, a nervous habit she had never displayed before. Her gaze flickered downward, skimming the contours of her own form as though seeing herself for the first time.
Her long, doe-like legs—pale as moonlight, sculpted by a lifetime spent chasing prey through the wilds—shifted, betraying an uncertainty foreign to her usual confidence. Her arms, strong yet slender, remained close to her sides, as if resisting the impulse to fold over herself. Then, her eyes dipped lower, lingering on the soft curve of her modest yet perky bosom, her posture subtly tightening in response. There was something unsure in the way she held herself, something vulnerable. Even her sharp, regal features—so often set in determination—were touched with something hesitant. Smaller.
Her silver eyes flitted across the chamber, moving from goddess to goddess. Assessing.
It wasn't just a glance—it was a huntress's gaze, a predator sizing up competition, a lioness weighing the strength of potential rivals.
She lingered on Aphrodite first, on the effortless sensuality that clung to her like a second skin. Every curve of her body was exaggerated, lush, decadent—lips painted a deep ruby red, full and inviting, her breasts round and heavy, her waist impossibly narrow, yet her hips wide enough to make men weak. Pure, weaponized femininity.
Then Hera—queenly, untouchable. Where Aphrodite's allure was indulgence and temptation, Hera was something commanding, something unyielding. She carried beauty like a scepter, a presence so absolute it demanded submission, yet within her dark, knowing eyes was a yearning, a hunger for something stronger than herself. A goddess who ruled, but longed to be ruled.
Demeter came next, a different kind of beauty—one of warmth, of ripeness, of fullness. She was no soft and pampered thing, no fragile doll-like creature. Her body was earthly, supple in all the right ways, wide hips built to carry life, full breasts that spoke of abundance, her stomach smooth yet soft, untouched by mortal frailty. She was the bloom of womanhood in its most primal, nurturing form.
Artemis drank them in, cataloging, comparing—measuring herself against them. Searching.
And then, shockingly, her gaze found me.
For just a breath too long, her silver eyes lingered—heated, sharp, appraising. A flicker of something unreadable passed through them, as if she were peeling away my robes, stripping me bare, searching for something deeper beneath my skin.
My breath caught.
Then—abruptly—she looked away, her cheeks darkening, the tips of her ears burning golden.
Artemis. Blushing.
The realization struck me like a lightning bolt.
Fates preserve us all.
She blushed.
A horrible realization struck me, and it took everything I had not to groan aloud. I had seen this before. I had witnessed its disastrous consequences. Aphrodite's first arrival on Olympus—when wars nearly broke out over her hand.
The gods had their Aphrodite. And now, we had the male equivalent.
Even worse, judging by the look my father shared with Poseidon and Hades—the silent jest in their eyes—they had come to the same conclusion.
"Not so funny now, is it, daughter?" My father's voice slithered into my mind, thick with amusement. "You mocked us for centuries, and now? Now I'm tempted to let this play out. Let you all humiliate yourselves."
I clenched my fists, forcing my face into neutrality. "Or… you could handle this the way you did with Aphrodite."
Zeus howled with laughter. The sound boomed across the throne room, drawing all eyes to him. He merely waved them off, letting the argument continue unimpeded.
Demeter was demanding the boy sit next to her.
Aphrodite offered her own throne, claiming she'd simply perch on his lap—an offer that made Ares's eyes bulge dangerously.
Then, my father's voice returned, laced with something knowing. "And whom should I wed him to, daughter?"
The weight of his words hit me like a tidal wave.
Had I—had I really just asked my father to annul my oath of chastity? To marry me off to my own daughter's ex-boyfriend? Were they even exes? Or was this just a… a rough patch?
Fates help me, I sounded like Aphrodite.
I had no idea where any of this was going, but before I could fully unravel into self-inflicted embarrassment, a quiet yet commanding voice cut through the chaos.
"He will sit by my right side."
The entire room stilled.
Hestia's words were not a suggestion. They were final. Absolute. The firelight in her eyes flickered with quiet authority as she continued, her gaze sweeping across the gods before locking onto mine.
"Between me and his father. He was my champion. He is Poseidon's son." A pause. Then, in a voice heavy with meaning, she added, "And we will not repeat history's mistakes."
A silence hung over the room, heavy and contemplative. Then Zeus laughed again, but this time, Poseidon joined in. Even Hades chuckled under his breath.
I exhaled slowly, realization dawning upon me.
The boy—Percy—had already begun to change Olympus. For the better.
Then, Zeus lifted a hand, glancing between Hephaestus and Percy. They met his gaze, nodding in unison before lifting their hands.
Power swelled between them.
A throne began to take shape.
At first, it was darkness—an obsidian void that pulsed with something primal, something vast and unknowable. Then, veins of sea-green marble wove through the black stone, forming waves that crashed and curled in an endless tide. Lightning split across its surface in jagged streaks of white marble, frozen in a perpetual storm.
Yet the true nature of the throne was movement. The black obsidian did not remain still—it writhed, shifted, as though it contained the essence of something ancient and chaotic. Shadows stirred and reformed, morphing into shapes—creatures, figures, symbols—constantly changing, never remaining the same.
The back of the throne stretched upward into great, black avian wings, feathers carved from the same pulsing void that made up its core. On each armrest, a wolf's head jutted forward, their eyes gleaming rubies that seemed to smolder from within.
And the runes.
They were alive, scrawling across the throne in the ever-changing language of the Primogenai. Even with my limited knowledge, I could make out fragments—futures, possibilities, things that could be and things that might never come to pass.
The golden aura radiating from it was warm, yet ancient.
At its center, an hourglass was carved into the backrest. The sands within did not fall in one direction—they cascaded down, then reversed, rising as though caught in an endless cycle, trapped in a time loop neither beginning nor ending.
It was not just a throne.
It was a declaration.
Regal. Splendid. Powerful.
A seat worthy of a god unlike any other.
And Percy Jackson—whether he realized it or not—had just claimed his place among us.