Pouring over dusty tomes of esoteric knowledge was Pritkin’s thing, not mine. It still seemed strange to be dating a guy who had guns and books in about equal numbers cluttering up his rooms. But Pritkin had learned a long time ago that knowledge was also a weapon, and right now, it was the best one we had.

Yet it still wasn’t enough.

I’d been told—I’d been promised—that I didn’t have to worry about facing Zeus himself. I’d been assured that his surrogate, Aeslinn, a king of the light fey and the guy whose castle we’d probably just burgled, was our real target. He was a Zeus-loving son of a gun, exactly the sort of patsy the All-Father used to do his dirty work.

And Aeslinn was working hard. He was trying to bring back the gods, AKA ancient creatures from another universe, because they’d once ruled Faerie and had favored his family above all others. And Zeus seemed happy to leave him to it.

Aeslinn, I’d been told, was like Paris, the prince of Troy whom Zeus had once saddled with the task of choosing which of three powerful goddesses was the most beautiful. The story went that Eris, goddess of discord, had thrown a golden apple into a wedding party that she’d failed to be invited to, and which was inscribed “to the fairest.” Three goddesses had immediately reached for it: Aphrodite, the goddess of love; Hera, the powerful and vengeful queen of the gods; and Athena, the goddess of war and strategy. And, of course, an argument had broken out over who deserved it more.

The three had turned to Zeus to settle the score.

Not being a fool, Zeus had pointed out that he was hardly good looking enough to be an arbiter of beauty, and so chose Paris, a famously handsome prince, to take the hit for him. Each of the goddesses subsequently tried to bribe Paris, with Aphrodite promising him Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, as his bride. Paris accepted her offer and ran off with Helen, who was already married to the king of Sparta, thus causing the Trojan War.

Paris had ended up dead, and by some accounts, so had Helen, who was hanged by a vengeful widow whose husband had died in the conflict. But Zeus? He’d adroitly sidestepped a potential problem and got off scot-free.