New to the story or need a refresher? Begin with the prologue:
When Triple A gathered in the living room, Apollo was met with an obstacle course. Toy soldiers from famous battles that Athena had influenced were strewn across the floor in dense battalions. The battle of Waterloo clashed with Marathon. A pocket of World War II was scattered under the coffee table. And everywhere—everywhere—boxes. Crates of war paraphernalia were stacked in corners and wedged with casual violence against Apollo’s instruments.
“Athena,” Apollo began as he hopscotched over history, dodging miniatures, “there’s an entire civilization collapsing on our floor.” He winced as he stepped on one of the Napoleonic infantrymen. Smoke curled up from the melting figurine, and the blue-coated soldier softened into a plastic sludge.
Apollo’s wicked grin was short-lived.
“And what the fuck is that?” he asked, pointing at the couch. “How long has that been here?”
A gray-green bloom spread across the upholstery.
“Is that…ambrosia?”
Apollo and I share the sentiment of enjoying the more beautiful things in life. He, music and light, me, wine and revelry. The both of us, our surroundings. We like for things to have a certain aesthetic. Perhaps we are a tinge vain and even a bit ridiculous, wanting everything around us to be exquisite. At the very least decent. We both saw the poetry in perfection. Only, it was easier for me to continue maximizing that experience, residing on Mt. Olympus. While leaving the luxuries of this heaven-side retreat did have the benefit of getting away from all the drama, it did seem to equate to a life more…provincial.
Athena did not look up from whatever map she was studying. “Sometimes I feel like you’re more of an eighteenth-century dandy than a god. You are constantly nagging about things in this house.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t live like a raccoon.”
“We’re immortal. We outlast decay.”
“Not without ambrosia, we don’t.” Apollo tapped a finger toward the couch. “And this is embarrassing, showing Iris into this filth. Also wasteful. Do you have so much ambrosia you can afford to let it spoil?”
Athena finally glanced at him, unimpressed. “Calm your tits. It’s counterfeit. A dealer tried to pass it off, and I’m not so desperate to just shove anything down the gullet.”
Apollo blinked. “You have an ambrosia dealer?”
“You say that like you’ve never heard of a black market.”
“I’m saying it,” Apollo replied, voice silky with injury, “because some of us left Olympus with what we could carry and have been meticulously rationing ever since.”
“And when that runs out?”
Apollo did not answer.
Artemis, who had been quietly scooping up toy soldiers here and there and putting them into a neat pile—making cleanup look like a ritual—brushed past Apollo and murmured, “I’ll talk to her.” Then gave him that look that meant don’t make this worse right now.
“We’re assembled, Iris,” Athena called, voice carrying like a spear thrown for distance.
Apollo winced. Hers was a carrying voice, and life wasn’t one long battlefield. There wasn’t a need to shout every sentence.
In comparison, Iris floated noiselessly through the house like some sort of gentle breeze and the soft suggestion of wings and color.
“Look at you,” Apollo said after she shimmered into the room like refracted light. “You look like you’re ready for the pride parade they have here in the canals.”
Her wings twitched sharply. “I’ve been walking and wearing rainbows long before mortals discovered flags.”
“Didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers,” Apollo said.
“Annoying everyone, I see,” Athena added, delighted to poke.
The meeting at hand made Apollo overlook her jab.
I will mention that Iris isn’t usually one to take offense to anyone’s playful jokes. She is often lighthearted and equipped with the air of someone above it all. Always an absolute ball of laughs, even when she had dire news to deliver. But she’s tired nowadays. Ever since Hermes not only went on burnout but also lost the Talaria—his winged sandals, which he claimed he loved like a pair of brothers but thought it wise enough to gamble away in a bet—he could no longer bear some of the responsibility as a messenger of the gods. Which meant more work for her, and that was on top of Iris’s other job as Hera’s personal assistant. The extra stress on her no longer inspired a countenance that one used to describe as a basket full of bountiful rainbows.
“I bring a summons from Hera,” Iris said.
“But we’re on sabbatical from Dodecatheon affairs,” Athena said.
“It’s probably that much more important, then, if the queen is choosing to send the message anyway,” Iris replied.
“A meeting,” Artemis said. “About what?”
“All I was told,” Iris said, weary professionalism in every syllable, “is that it concerns Zeus. And that it’s urgent.”
Apollo rolled his eyes. “Is this another hunt for father’s latest indiscretion?”
Iris’s expression didn’t change, but her colors did feel a shade colder. “I’m only the messenger.”
“You were the last to see Dad and Hera,” Artemis said, turning to Athena, voice quieter. “Did you notice anything off?”
Iris did not wait for their decision. She lifted on a thin column of colorful light. Message delivered, consequences implied.
“The last time I saw them they were fine,” Athena said. “I mean, they were arguing—”
“But they’re always arguing,” Artemis and Athena said and unison. Then shared a brief smile.
Apollo arched an eyebrow at them.
Athena recovered first. “They’ve been living apart for decades,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
“He’s definitely having an affair then,” Apollo said.
Athena shrugged. “Well, probably. He’s been living in New York for the past century, so who knows what he gets up to over there. But it’s not my job to keep track of him.”
“He’s not living on Olympus anymore?” Apollo asked.
“Only for the past several decades, he hasn’t. It didn’t seem permanent.”
And isn’t that delicious? Zeus—who tightens the ambrosia spigot for gods who stray too far from his mountain—has been playing mortal in Manhattan for decades, with his own allotment untouched because who, exactly, is going to audit the thunderbolt?
“The simplest solution,” Athena said, “is to hear her out.”
“No,” Apollo said.
Athena looked at him evenly “No?”
“This is Hera baiting people for information.” Apollo’s voice went polished, precise. “She’ll want names. Witnesses. A trail to follow to whomever is Father’s latest side piece. I’m not walking back into that. We’ve all seen this tired story play out before.”
“There is a lot of negative energy there when she’s after one of dad’s conquests,” Artemis said. “Look, we left the Dodecatheon for a reason. Once you go back, then you’re sucked into all the schemes again.”
“I’m not going alone. I’m not explaining to Hera why you two didn’t show up.”
Apollo lifted a shoulder. “Then don’t. Stay here.”
“It’s not that simple.” Athena folded her arms. “When the queen of the gods calls you, you can’t ignore the summons.”
“Or what?” Apollo asked. “Tell me, strategist.”
“You tell me, oracle,” Athena’s eyes flashed gray. “You know very well that she would be willing to bring this to your doorstep one way or another.”
Artemis exhaled. “She might be right about that. When Hera is on the warpath, everyone’s wrapped up in it too.”
Apollo pushed up from the couch as if the moldy ambrosia had finally offended him into motion. “Their marriage is irrelevant to our lives.”
He moved toward the hall, expecting the familiar echo of Artemis’s boots behind him.
It did not come.
He paused—only a fraction—then continued without looking back.
When Apollo had told me about this exchange at the party, I, too, had agreed that this was just another affair.
It was not. It was positioning.
And positioning amongst gods rarely remains bloodless.
The woman lost her balance. As she fell, she reached out toward Jaden. Her clothes, blacker than coal, looked clean enough. But little signs told Jaden something was wrong. The infected and flaking skin that was dotted with sores. The clumps of wiry hair that fell to the ground as she went down. The ragged nails that slipped into his hand as he steadied her.
“Are you okay?” Jaden asked her.
She nodded and grabbed at her waist as if she were missing something.
“Did you drop something?”
She could only shake her head.
“Can you talk?”
Another shake. Jaden searched her ocean-colored eyes for answers, but they were trapped in some sort of internal maze.
He looked around, but people filtered passed them, going about their day in the thriving park. Nobody else seemed to notice them.
Jaden ushered her to the nearest bench.
“I lost my voice once,” he said as they sat down. “Took LSD with some new friends at a music festival. And I couldn’t remember how to talk for damn near twelve hours. Just completely forgot how words worked. It was wild. Made me realize how strange language is. Like…we’re all just making noises at each other and somehow everyone agrees what they mean.”
She rested her chin in her palms and blinked her eyes. Maybe losing her voice wasn’t like that at all.
“Are you hungry?” Jaden asked her.
She lulled her head to the side. Something about the angle of it said it depends.
He opened his backpack full of snacks for his day out and about the city. Water. Chips. Fruit.
She ignored everything until he lifted the peach which made her blue-green eyes light up.
The two of them sat there, enjoying their treats, watching people lap through the network of pavement and grass in front of their park bench. Some were on bikes, others on foot. But something about the people made the woman laugh. And Jaden almost choked on his food at her outburst, her random jolly equally disturbing yet amusing.
She laughed again when a couple passed, hands laced together, shoulders brushing.
Another laugh when two people stopped to kiss.
“Love’s funny,” he muttered.
He supposed love was something to laugh at. Sometimes, at least. Because love was crazy. It was an act of faith to fall in love—a gamble.
His chest tightened before he could stop it.
Apollo.
He hadn’t meant to think about him. That was the point of leaving and his day out and about. To override those memories with new ones.
As the woman continued to laugh, Jaden thought about all the men that had drifted into his life, and how they had all been brief encounters. Some were nice enough that love could have seeded. Eventually. But each came tethered to something else: dependence, addiction, need. More often than not, they passed through because they demanded more of him than he could give. His time was already spoken for with working and traveling. Surviving.
And before Apollo, the last person he had truly fallen in love with was his childhood best friend.
Years ago, that realization had hit Jaden in 5th grade, when he was on the cusp of pouring into middle school. He had sensed a change invading his group of friends. Other kids in his class had paired off in more grown-up ways than the casual “I like you” that had permeated his peer group in earlier years. Words like “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” were thrown around, and Jaden heard stories of classmates kissing by the swings. Some even did a little more than that for those who wanted an adventurous head start, where games like hide-and-seek morphed into hide-n’-go-get-it.
Jaden had watched the comings and goings of his fellow eleven-year-olds with a sense of displacement. The standard template of boy gets girl didn’t apply to him. Getting girls didn’t interest him in that way. He couldn’t summon the same intensity of feeling for Sabrina (or any other girl) as he could for, say…Tank.
When Jaden thought about his best friend, he felt abnormal to have butterflies soar through his stomach. He should have felt lucky to be attracted to someone in his immediate world. Someone who shared the urge to collect as many Pokémon cards as possible and shoot just as many Nerf guns.
But Jaden knew that they differed in some fundamental way. When Tank asked Jaden who Jaden liked, Jaden could never be honest with him because Tank followed the path that all the other boys were loping down. One where they were happy to dry hump on girls in their changing playground games.
He’d caged love early. It was easier that way. What else was there to do with all that wanting that never quite found a place to land?
Beside him, the woman’s laughter unfurled again—a bright, almost manic note.
Jaden surprised himself by joining her. Maybe laughter was another way through the wreckage of his love life.
Their laughter met and swelled, almost to the point of hysteria. Momentarily, all his troubles in love and life evaporated. Something within him loosened, and Jaden felt as if he recognized the woman, like coming home after years and years away and finding someone still waiting there.
Briefly, during the peak of their laughter, she didn’t personify some syphilitic virus; her arms were unblemished and smooth, limbs that belonged to a beautiful woman.
Then the illusion fractured, the sores returned.
Jaden studied her. Something about her fluctuated.
“I think I know who can help you.”
There was something at once foolish yet exciting in the sudden realization that he would see Apollo again. Even though Jaden had tried to put the god out of his mind, something about this woman made Jaden swear Apollo still lay around the periphery of his thoughts, the way people say of a lost set of keys they know are in the house: it’s around here somewhere.
Jaden couldn’t recall the address. When he tried, the numbers dissolved. But his body kept turning, moving him in a certain direction. He knew he had something in tow that would bring him back to Apollo’s hall. A goddess.
At first, she walked beside Jaden. Twice she wandered into the bike path without looking. After the second time, he looped her arm through his. It wouldn’t be a good look if she, too, ended up getting hit by a cyclist.
After they passed underneath the archway to a brown brick building, Jaden recognized the area. He had taken a picture of a group of teenagers under those golden letters before: Het Amsterdams Lyceum. Casual friends had staggered against the building in one of those rare moments where the light, background, and subjects naturally did their job to arrange themselves into the perfect frame. He wouldn’t know until he processed the photo, but he had trusted the composition then. In much the same way, he trusted his feet now.
The woman quickly unlinked and hurried off to the canal that cut along the front of the building. Not to look up and admire the stately, almost art-deco vibe of what Jaden figured was a school, but to look down at the swan bobbing next to the water.
She reached out to the elegant creature.
The woman bent over the canal’s edge, and Jaden ran over to her, thinking he would have to pull the wild horse’s tail that was her hair to keep her from falling in. Gracefully, she stepped onto the water and casually hovered as the swan raised its beak to her ear.
They seemed to confer.
When she returned, she took Jaden’s hand with purpose and pointed to a canal-side house across from the weeping willow. The one he once saw from Apollo’s hall. She pushed him toward the front door.
“Didn’t I kill you already?” Athena asked after she answered his knock. The bitterness in her voice could have curdled milk.
“It’s a whole story. Honestly, I’m not sure I—”
Athena, not really a goddess for prattle, slammed the door in his face.
Jaden knocked again. “I need Apollo.”
“Get out of here before I kill you,” Athena threatened through the door. “Again.”
He pounded harder.
“I warned you,” she said, the door flying open as she came out spear first. “I’m going to—”
Before Athena could impale Jaden, a swish of black fabric cut between them. One moment the mute woman was behind him. The next, she was hovering in front of him.
Radiance strained around her, thin as silk pulled too tight.
“Aphrodite?” Athena asked, diverting the spear upward.
P.S. The Art of Killing Gods releases in full on July 14, 2026.
Preorders are open (don’t be shy, you’ve gotten this far already!): The Art of Killing Gods (Amazon)