Hera stood at the edge of the golden council mosaic and would not step forward. The other gods waited by the altar on the open hill. She gripped her lotus scepter and stared at the new tablet of law glinting on its stand. She wanted one thing only: to force Zeus to swear fidelity before this whole council, and never touch another lover again. Themis read the law aloud. No god above it. No god outside it. But not one line bound a husband to his wife. Not one word named marriage. Hera's hand tightened on the scepter until the lotus petals trembled. "I will not swear," Hera said. Her voice cut across the hill. "Your law protects thrones. It does not protect beds." Themis lifted her hands. She could not invent what was not written. No older law bound a god to a fidelity oath, so she could not compel Zeus to take one. The council fell silent. Zeus did not look at Hera. He looked at the tablet, relieved. Hera turned and walked off the mosaic. Her cuckoos still waited in the bright golden aviary where she had penned them, useless witnesses with no court to hear them. She passed the cage and did not free them. She would need them again. On the steps, her great peacock landed beside her, gold eyes blazing in his open tail. Hera pressed her palm to his feathers. "The law will not bind him," she said. "Then I will write the law myself, and bring it back to this floor." She lifted her scepter toward the altar, and the lotus glowed.

Hera carried her scepter from the council hill straight to her aviary pavilion. The gold dome caught the sun. Inside, her songbirds waited in rows along the perches, each one fat with what it had seen. She shut the doors behind her. "Speak," she said. "Every name. Every bed. Leave none out, or the law I write will crack the moment I lay it down." One by one the birds came forward. A sparrow named a shepherd girl. A swallow named a river nymph. A thrush named a queen in a far city. Hera wrote each name in her own hand on a long scroll of beaten gold. The list grew past her wrist, past her elbow, past her knee. Argus stood beside her, his tail spread, every gold eye fixed on the scroll so no name slipped past unseen. When the last bird had spoken, Hera rolled the scroll and walked to the great bronze docket where divine matters are pinned for every god to read. She climbed the marble steps. She unrolled the gold cloth down the full length of the banner, name after name after name, and drove the pins home herself. Gods stopped on the path below. They read. They whispered. By dusk the whole hill knew. Hera stepped back from the docket and breathed out. She had the full count now. The law she would write could not be voided by a missing name. The harder work began tomorrow — but the secret was finished.