Hera has been married to Zeus for a thousand years, and she has spent most of them looking away. When he brings a mortal princess into the divine realm and dresses her in borrowed glory, Hera does not scream or scheme. She surrenders her divinity, drinks from the River Lethe, and is reborn as Helia, a mortal woman with no memory of heaven and a new husband's name on her lips.
Zeus only understands what he lost once she is gone. He abandons his throne, tracks her to the mortal world, and installs himself in her household as her husband's younger brother, close enough to watch her every day. But Semele's reincarnation has followed them down, and her jealousy puts Helia in a hospital bed. To save her, Zeus burns his immortality — and the act cracks her memory open. She remembers the thousand years. What she does with that memory is the whole second half of the story.
