by Sotia Lazu
“She wasn’t the one who betrayed you. He was.” Sei points to a disturbance in the space behind Aetna’s head. It’s a face, made of thin air.
I squint and make out more of the transparent form. A man, as tall as Sei and bearing a striking resemblance to him, from what I can make out of his features.
Ancient Hephaestus clasps Aetna’s hand and tugs, but her feet are rooted to the ground. “I can see you, father.” He spits out the last word. “Stop hiding.”
Aetna whimpers and reaches for Hephaestus with her other hand, but her unseen captor pulls her backward.
“I was hoping to spare you this sight, but you can’t leave well enough alone, can you?” The invisible man with his arm around her waist solidifies so seamlessly, it’s like I could always see him. He is the spitting image of Sei, except for the sneer on his lips. Zeus, king of gods.
And a horny asshole, according to both mythology and my resurfacing memories.
His voice deepens, grows louder and more threatening, as he goes on. “If you weren’t this headstrong, if you accepted the mate I so generously assigned you, instead of contributing to my brothers’ efforts to overthrow me, then your little nymph wouldn’t be in her current predicament.”
“I love her.” Agony is plain to see on Ancient Hephaestus’ face. He knows he’s about to lose her, and so do I.
“Then you should have stayed away.” That’s all the warning Zeus gives any of us, before he pulls Aetna to him for a kiss.
The moment their lips meet, Aetna’s body starts twisting and turning in ways human bodies shouldn’t be able to contort.
“No!”
I echo both Hephaestuses, as her pain echoes in my bones. Future-Hephaestus lunges at Zeus, just as his original self throws his arms around his dying lover.
Only she’s no longer his lover; she’s a tree.
Fucking Zeus turned me into a tree?
I fall again.
And now I’m beside a woman with eyes made of the starry night sky. Hephaestus isn’t here. Neither is Sei. Just me, and the woman, hovering in a void. It’s not pitch black, but I can’t make out a floor, walls, or ceiling. The woman is dressed in clothing from this century, so we’re at least closer to my time, and uses one hand to draw symbols in the air above a wooden box she holds in her other palm.
It’s the wooden box. She’s the one who bespelled it.
She holds the cube above her head with both hands and mutters something I can’t hear. The carvings on its surface glow eerily. When she lowers her hands again, she swivels to meet my gaze. “Forgive me, nymph. I didn’t know.”
I have to look behind me, to make sure she’s talking to me. Yup, still just the two of us here. “Didn’t know what?” I ask.
She looks from me to the box and back again, and the truth sinks in like a boulder wrapped in fishing hooks that tear me up inside.
I don’t know how I can be so sure, but the box is made of the tree Aetna became. The tree I once was. I clutch my side, but I don’t have the time to break down.
A woman in jeans and a sweater runs toward us. “Cassandra, she’s here. She found us.” Her voice is high pitched, and her eyes wide with panic. “You need to take him.” She holds out the bundle in her arms. Hephaestus?
Cassandra keeps staring at me. “I’m in San Francisco.” She rattles off an address. “Tell him to find me.”
Everything goes dark.
Chapter Eighteen - Hephaestus
MY FIST FLIES THROUGH empty air, as Zeus disappears, and the grass beneath my feet gives way to the cement floor of my office. My hands are still planted on Sei’s shoulders, pressing hard enough to snap a mortal man’s bones. Sei won’t even bruise, but I mumble a sorry, as I compose myself.
He glances at me over his shoulder and opens his mouth to speak, but the thud to our left snaps both our heads that way.
Laura is crumpled in a heap on the floor.
I drop to my knees by her side and roll her over. Pull her head on my lap. No signs of trauma. Normal breathing. I cup her cheeks and seek our link. It’s there, but muted. I can’t enter her mind. I probe, pushing my power against her mental barriers. No—no barriers. She’s not thinking, because she’s not here. Is she stuck in the past? Is Zeus still punishing me through the ages? He definitely could hold a grudge. Ask Prometheus, if you don’t believe me.
“She’s unharmed.” Sei’s observation has the blood thrumming in my temples. How can she be unharmed, when she’s not conscious?
I growl at him to back off, and focus on the slim thread binding me to my soulmate. “Laura? Can you hear me?” I tug, careful not to snap the tentative connection. The bond isn’t fully developed yet, but it’s obviously here. I sense her at the other end of the line. She’s not in distress, just emanating the same curiosity with which she’s approached everything since I first met her.
The same curiosity Aetna approached me with, when Aphrodite and I visited Sicily, centuries ago. Her inquiring mind drew me to her even more than her breathtaking beauty did. Aphrodite mocked me relentlessly over my crush, but she was the one who brought Aetna home with us when we returned to Olympus.
“One of us deserves to be happy,” she said.
And I was happy, every stolen moment I got to share with Aetna. She was the best conversationalist, knowledgeable and witty, and I was ecstatic to merely be in her presence—wouldn’t dare hope for more, when she could do so much better than a lame god bound to another woman.
And then one day, when Aphrodite had her bring my breakfast as she did most mornings, Aetna slammed the cup of nectar to my chest and said, “Why won’t you kiss me, Hephaestus? You obviously want to, and your wife has no objection to our being together. What’s holding you back?”
Apparently nothing, because once I tasted her lips—sweeter than the nectar she’d spilled down my bare skin—nothing could stop me from making her mine. Then, and every chance I got after that.
I look at Laura’s expressionless face. Slowly, carefully, I gather her close and press my lips to hers. Her breath hitching loosens a knot in my chest. She’s fine. Sleeping, most likely. Her body is still completely human, and time travel took a lot out of her.
Holding her to me, I climb to my feet.
Sei watches but makes no move to help, as I carry her to the sofa. He knows I don’t need assistance, but I can tell he also knows I don’t want him or any other male touching her. He knows how it feels to be bonded.
And now that I do too, I can’t fathom how I ever doubted Laura was the one for me.
I arrange her on the sofa so she’s half-lying in my lap, and gently caress her shoulder. The contact is more for my sake than hers. If this is exhaustion from the time travel, caresses won’t do much to wake her up.
I’d be panicking that she might not wake up at all, if her presence at the other end of the bond wasn’t growing stronger with every passing second. I’m not losing her this time, and I have a ton of groveling to do for trying to push her a way because I didn’t remember the truth about our past.
How could I believe Aetna betrayed me? My nymph, my first love, didn’t break my heart and give me trust issues that spanned millennia; my own father did.
Fucking Zeus, messing with me centuries after he faded away. And for what? Because I dared defy his will to bind me to Aphrodite?
My gift rears in my gut. The part of me that recognizes damage points out the problem in my assumption. Zeus didn’t take Aetna away from me because I disobeyed him.
“Zeus turned Aetna into a tree, to destroy our bonding.” I say. “Not as punishment.”
Sei rolls the desk chair closer and sits in it as regally as if it were a throne. “Yours wasn’t the only bond he messed with. Ares told me Zeus convinced Odin not to let Ares and Freya meet, back in the day.”
I run my fingers through Laura’s short hair. The curls tickle my fingertips. “So that’s two out of six, so far.”
“Athena turned Medusa into a monster, to protect her from unwante
d advances. Why do I suddenly think that wasn’t her idea?”
Sounds plausible. And would mean Zeus stopped three of us from bonding. “And let’s not forget that Perseus”—the demigod who killed Medusa—“was Zeus’ son.”
Sei’s expression darkens, as do his irises. “Theseus was one of his bastards too.” His chuckle at my started double-take sounds forced. “Yeah, I know. He was supposedly mine. But I never slept with Aethra. Zeus did, pretending to be me.”
Theseus hexed Ariadne, Dionysos’ soulmate, so that may be four. At least Denny got his happy ending, both now and back then.
This couldn’t all be a coincidence. Pieces keep sliding into place. “What if Zeus always knew about the soulmates and was afraid bonding would make us stronger?”
The fucker cost us all lifetimes of happiness, and for what? If we were deliriously happy with our women, why would we care to challenge his reign?
“Idiot,” Laura mumbles. “Him, not you.”
“You’re okay.” I rain kisses all over her face. “I was so worried. I’m so sorry you had to see this.”
She lets out the most delicious little giggle. “Stop.” She props herself up on an elbow. “I need to tell you something before I forget.”
I help her sit up but don’t let her move even a centimeter away from me. “Tell me what?”
“After you disappeared, I saw Cassandra.” Her gaze flicks to the open box on my desk, and she winces. “And she gave me an address.”
Sei slides a gold pen out of his suit jacket’s inner pocket and reaches behind him for my notepad. “Tell me.”
Laura blurts out an address that can’t possibly be in Greece. “San Francisco,” she adds.
“What do you wanna do?” Sei studies my face.
We don’t know what we’ll face where we’re going. It may be a trap. And Nyx is a dangerous foe. I can’t risk taking Laura with, but I don’t want to leave her.
She squeezes my fingers once and drops her hand. “Go,” she says. She knows me. Knows I need to do this. “Find your parents. I’m fine. I’ll wait for you here.” In my head, she adds, forever.
“I’ll get the others,” Sei says, and a heartbeat layer, my office is brimming with Olympians. All except Hades are here.
“Hades?” I think at them.
Sei shakes his head. “Asked him to sit this one out. We don’t know what we’ll need to do, and I don’t want him overwhelmed.”
“Mannaggia a Me,” Laura mutters under her breath. Damn me.
Of course. Now she’s seen all the Olympios brothers, she wants to choose again. Can’t blame her. My brothers are all better looking than—
“I got the hottest one. Yes.” The honest exuberance that radiates through our link as she sneakily pumps her fist by her side makes my spine tingle.
Shame washes over me, for doubting her. She really wants me. Only me.
“It’s more than want,” she thinks at me. “I remember loving you, and it’s more than a memory. My body feels it. My heart... It echoes yours.”
She lets me feel what she felt all those years ago. The love blossoming in her now. It’s brilliant and frightening and amazing.
Unprecedented joy fills me, stretches me, molds me into a new man. One who believes he deserves to be happy. With Laura.
If we didn’t have an audience, I’d bond her right here and now. She is my happy ending—because yeah, I’m fucking getting one. But not before I find my parents. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you sooner, to know what you want. I’m sorry I was afraid to love you. I—”
Hermes clears his throat. “Dude. Introduce us.”
Damn it, I was about to make a grand gesture and tell her how I want to be with her for eternity. I’ll have to do that when these guys are gone. “Laura, these are my brothers. Brothers, this is my soulmate.”
“Welcome to the family, Laura. I’m Ares.” Ares’ smile is so genuine, it’s disconcerting.
I expect him to say he’s the best, strongest, smartest, most attractive of the bunch, but he points at me.
“And you must be a witch, because seeing that fucker happy is magic,” he says.
Laura hops upright to shake his hand with a laugh, and I’m surprised to hear myself echo her. I should be in San Francisco, chasing down this Cassandra. Finding my parents.
I can spare a couple more minutes, to bask in her love.
“Hermes. At your service.” Hermes gives her a deep bow and brushes his lips across her knuckles. He’s everything I’m not—blond, blue-eyed, charming, sociable—and I expect jealousy to claw my insides into ribbons. All I feel is proud to be with this woman. Proud to be her man.
Laura laughs again when Denny butt-bumps Hermes aside to give a deeper bow. “Dionysos. You can call me Denny. When we’re back, I’ll make you the best burger you’ve ever had, and you’ll tell me all about how you convinced this guy to settle down.”
I shake my head and think at him, “When we’re back, I’d better not see any of you for a week.”
He lets out a choked sound and loops his arm through mine. “Ready, bro?”
I lean forward, to slant my mouth over Laura’s in a kiss that earns me hoots and claps. “I am now,” I say when I break away.
Her face is imprinted on my mind as I shut my eyes and let my garage in Athens, Greece, fall away.
“Well, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas any more.” Ares’ voice makes me open my eyes and look around.
An alley, like the ones you see in movies. No stars are visible in the sky. Or maybe I can’t see the sky either—it’s that dark. Even the streetlight up ahead barely dispels the shadows around it.
“That’s not how that line goes.” But my reprimand lacks oomph.
A glow to my right makes me spin around. Hermes is holding a tennis ball of light that grows to the size of a melon. It’s like a chunk of sun that turns the night around us into day.
I don’t see any street numbers. “Is this the place?”
“I don’t know where the place is supposed to be,” Ares grumbles.
Sei groans. “Close enough, but I can’t pinpoint it to perfection. It’s like something’s shielding it.”
“We can use a fucking GPS and walk there.” Hermes already has his phone in his hand. “Seriously, it’s like you ascended and forgot all about technology.”
Sei watches him with a raised eyebrow.
“Fuck.” Hermes glowers at the screen. “No reception.”
“We could move the satellite into proper position, or something, but that would make a lot of people unhappy.” Sei smirks. “And now that technology has let us down, should one of us go get a map?”
With an eyeroll that makes him look even more like Hermes, Denny says, “We’re fucking gods. Five of us. If we link our powers, we must be able to overcome whatever’s blocking Sei.”
It’s oddly pleasing to be included.
We don’t link hands this time, but rather let the mental threads linking us all weave into a rope. No, a funnel, directing our collective will into thrusting through the barrier Sei sensed.
I don’t close my eyes this time, so I watch the scenery around us melt into a bedroom, like two pictures exposed over each other. As the off-white walls solidify around us, the gasp of the woman under the sheets pierces my eardrum like a shriek.
Her gaze jumps from one of us to the next, before sliding somewhere to the side.
I follow it to a closed door. Is there a child behind it? A loved one she wants to protect from the gaggle of men who literally popped in her bedroom?
“Don’t be afraid,” Sei says in English. “We’re not here to harm you. We’re looking for information.”
She doesn’t look afraid. Calculating, maybe. Wondering how long it’d take her to get to that door? Is it a way out?
“What information?” she asks in Greek.
She knows who we are. Knew we were coming.
“Cassandra?” I ask.
She nods.
In my head, Sei asks, �
��You got this?”
“I do,” I say aloud.
My brothers hang back, but I feel their tension as I take a step closer to the bed.
This woman is supposed to know something about my parents, but she can’t be older than thirty. Is she a sister they held on to? Was she a newborn when my parents gave me up? I shove away my hurt and resurfacing abandonment issues, as I study her face for any characteristics she might share with me. Her face is thin, her cheekbones sharp, and her eyes a much darker blue than Sei’s.
“We’re not related, are we?” I ask. This place was cloaked. If she was the one who did it, she’s probably not human. Could be much older than she looks.
She meets my gaze. Looks at the door. Turns back to me. “Now’s not a good time.” She lets go of the champagne-colored silken sheets with one hand, to indicate her bare shoulders. “I wasn’t expecting company, and I’m kind of under-dressed. Can we talk in half an hour? There’s a twenty-four hour pizza place a couple blocks from here. I’ll meet you there.”
“Who’s in there?” I point at the closed door. “Is it my parents?”
“What? No. No.” Her voice softens. “I’m sorry. They’re...”
I wait a second for her to finish that sentence. Please, don’t let her say they’re dead. Two seconds. My heart breaks with the certainty of what’s coming next.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I cloaked them from her, but they didn’t believe me when I warned them about the explosion. I’m sorry.”
She’s sorry. And my parents are dead. And I need to know who’s behind that fucking door.
Sei mentally tells me they have my back, as I head toward it. Cassandra jumps out of bed, wrapped in the sheets, but before she can get in my way, the door is thrown open.
“Hey,” she calls out. It sounds like a warning. To me, or to whoever’s on the other side?
