At the far edge of Olympus's great throne room, three figures stood in deliberate silence, watching the cosmic theater unfold with expressions that ranged from knowing amusement to careful neutrality.
Artemis maintained her usual stance—silver bow across her shoulder, hunter's leathers pristine despite the cosmic chaos, moon-pale hair caught in an eternal breeze that seemed to follow her everywhere. Her silver eyes tracked the Speaker's performance with the intensity of a predator evaluating prey, but there was something else there.
Relief? Satisfaction? It was hard to tell with the goddess of the hunt.
Aphrodite stood beside her, and even in the midst of cosmic crisis, she was impossible to ignore. Her hair fell in waves of rose-gold pink that seemed to shift between sunset and dawn, each strand catching light that had no source but somehow made everything around her more beautiful by comparison.
