Love & War

by Kaitlin Bevis

  “Bring ’em down here!” someone yelled, thuds sounding on the steps. The light flickered on and the footsteps receded back upstairs and moved above us down the hall.

  “Get down,” Ares whispered, yanking me down beside him.

  My knees scraped against the shelf when I sat down. Ares reached forward to yank the boxes on the shelf back far enough to touch the wall. In a matter of seconds, he’d completely hemmed us in. The wall stood behind us, the shelf in front, and boxes occupied the space between, beside and above us. I swallowed hard, struggling to keep my breathing even.

  Footsteps slapped against the stairs. Peering through the space between boxes, I saw two members of the kitchen staff carrying packages.

  “Just stack them over there,” the one closest to the stairwell said.

  Crap. They were bringing down more things from the delivery now that it was getting late enough to close up. Who knew how long it would take? More footsteps echoed through the small space as other people filed into the room, stacking more packages against the far wall, mere feet from where we sat huddled behind the shelf.

  Tightness gripped my chest in an inescapable vise. Not now, I begged. But knowing this was the worst possible time to have a panic attack didn’t help me not panic.

  I went rigid, squeezing my eyes shut as I fought to breathe, slowly, quietly. Ares’s arm snaked behind me, pulling me to him until I was practically in his armpit. He took an exaggerated breath that I felt through his shirt.

  I tried to follow his lead, clinging to him so I could feel the pace he set, but all I could think about was that I couldn’t do this. Not right now! If I breathed too loudly, if they heard me, if they caught us, they’d report it to Jason. And then they’d ask us questions, questions we couldn’t answer. And then the non-answers to those questions would make them look back on all the gaps and half-truths. Then they’d know. They’d know we were gods and they had Steele, and they’d kill us. Once we were dead, Persephone would never be able to broker a truce, and she’d never get Hades back, and Poseidon would sink the island and everyone would die. All because I couldn’t catch my breath!

  Drawing in a sharp breath, I sealed my lips. My cheeks puffed out with unspent air, my lungs ached and my heart pounded as everything in my body begged me to breathe.

  It’s only been seconds, I reminded myself, pressing my back against the cool cinderblock wall. I can hold my breath for a few seconds. Facts clicked into my mind, unasked. The average healthy human could hold their breath for two minutes. In a pool, relaxed. In panic situations, however, the average was thirty seconds.

  Thirty seconds wasn’t long enough! If I tried to take a breath, I wouldn’t be able to control it. I’d gasp and wheeze and give us away.

  Ares must have felt me go still, because he shifted. His finger tapped against my palm one-two-three times, then he squeezed my hand.

  Letting out my breath, I drew in another, then held it. Ares resumed tapping my palm. When he squeezed my hand this time, I was ready. I exhaled, then inhaled, and held my breath. I lost track of how many times we repeated the drill before Ares squeezed my hand, moved it to his chest, and took a measured breath. This time, I was able to follow suit.

  The men in the room continued stacking boxes, talking and complaining amongst themselves as they worked, long into the night. As my panic eased, exhaustion took its place. Ares’s warmth seeped through my clothes and I found myself relaxing against him. Before long, my eyelids flagged, and, despite myself, I fell asleep.

  I blinked, finding myself in Athena’s library.

  “No.” A dreamscape? I glanced around until I found Athena sitting at a wooden table drenched in sunlight. “I can’t—shouldn’t be asleep.”

  Athena glanced up from her book and raised an eyebrow. “Is there a problem?”

  I filled her in as best I could. “Is there any way to wake me up from here?”

  Athena shook her head. “It takes either power or terror to will yourself awake.” She closed her book. “You lack power and while terror may be easy to come by, I’d simply need to push you out of this dreamscape and allow your nightmares to take over. Should you wake up startled, you could compromise the both of you.”

  “I can’t just sleep,” I snapped. Dead weight didn’t even begin to describe how useless I felt.

  Athena patted her bun of brunette hair, as if anything could dislodge a style so severe. “Awake, you pose a greater risk.”

  My lips parted in shock. That’s why Ares wasn’t waking me. I was less dangerous snoozing worthlessly at his side.

  I sank into the uncomfortable wooden chair across the table from her. “I need help.” It was one thing for Ares to be there for me when I was upset, but endangering us both with my panic attacks was another thing entirely. I was going to get us both killed. “I’ve needed help for a while. It was bad enough before, when the only person this affected was me. But if I’m going to be playing the role of Pandora’s box on Demigod Island, I need to make sure I’m at least getting the right people hurt. I can’t put Ares at risk.”

  Athena lips twitched as though she were fighting a smile. “Your nightmares are severe enough to enlist the aid of the entire Pantheon to prevent you from compromising your identity. I would say you’ve made a fair assessment in regard to requiring help.”

  It would be easy, too easy, to snap her head off for being condescending, and maybe that would be fair in any other context, but right now, I was too frustrated with the situation. Ares and I were in danger of being discovered. And rather than doing anything remotely helpful, I’d almost exposed us with my panic attack, then fallen asleep on the job.

  Athena seemed amused by my silent struggle. She laid her book on the table, folding her hands over it. “Anxiety attacks can be quite draining. It’s not uncommon to succumb to exhaustion once one feels safe.” Her expression turned speculative. “Though safe is hardly the adjective I would use to describe your current condition.”

  “Ares says . . .” I swallowed hard. “Since I’m powerless now, I’m not healing from, like, past stuff.”

  “That should change once your powers return.” Athena’s grey eyes watched me with a startling intensity.

  “I’m not sure it should. The nightmares, they aren’t new. I’ve been having them since Zeus—” I broke off, glancing down at the table. “And I mean, I’ve seen the ways some of the other gods cope.” My thoughts flashed to Poseidon and I swallowed hard, staring at the wood grain of the glossy tabletop. “The stuff that we’ve all been through doesn’t go away. I think maybe the way we heal allows us to ignore it until—until—”

  “We can’t.” Athena pursed her lips. “An interesting theory that would explain our propensity toward insanity.”

  I drew in a deep breath. “I don’t want to go insane. And I don’t want this to linger forever. More importantly, I can’t afford to be a liability right now. If I don’t get this under control, I could get us both killed.”

  “So what are you proposing?” she asked, leaning back in her chair.

  “Maybe therapy, or something.” I laughed, and the bitter sound echoed off the bookshelves.

  Athena didn’t laugh. Her grey eyes turned thoughtful. “I think that may be wise. Let’s start with what you just said a moment ago, about Pandora’s box?”

  “What about it?”

  “I just think it’s interesting you identify more with the tool than the woman herself. Pandora and the box were one and the same. You know this, yet in one sentence, you’ve reduced her agency, her inner power, the impact she had on the world, to an exterior tool.”

  I blinked. I’d made one offhand comment and she’d monologued an entire speech’s worth of psychobabble at me. What had I gotten myself into?

  EVENTUALLY, AFTER THE primordials only know how much psychoanalysis, I woke up to Ares shaking my shoulde
r. “They’re gone.”

  Groaning, I stood, my limbs all pins and needles. When I tried to take a step, my foot didn’t get the memo, and I stumbled out from behind the shelf.

  Ares steadied me. “Give yourself a minute,” he cautioned.

  I curled and uncurled my toes, stomping my feet to restore feeling while Ares adjusted our surroundings, making sure the area we’d inhabited looked undisturbed.

  “You good?” He glanced over at me.

  I didn’t dignify that with a response.

  Ares rubbed the back of his neck. “We should go ahead and search the rest of the building. This is too good an opportunity to pass up. Are you up to it, or would you like to stay here?”

  “I’ll help.”

  We split up, searching the dining hall and the rooms above it and finding absolutely nothing. Defeated, we made our way to the exit.

  The door was locked, but fortunately it still opened from the inside. My face burned with shame as we made our way back to the cabin with scarcely a word between us.

  Once we got inside, his hand paused on the lock. “I didn’t realize . . .” His voice trailed off as he leaned against the door, eyes closed. “I mean, I’ve seen you fresh from your nightmares. I knew—I should have known—” He swore. “You mentioned you were getting claustrophobic on the boat. I should have—”

  I blinked back tears. “I’m sorry.”

  He twisted to face me. “Don’t apologize. It’s not something you can control, Aphr—” He drew in a steady breath. “Elise. But . . . it would be helpful for me to know any triggers you’re aware of. We can try to plan around them.”

  The impossibility of that statement hung between us.

  “Hey.” He crossed the foyer in two steps and grabbed my shoulders. “You held it together back there. That’s not a small feat.”

  “Yeah.” I forced a smile to my face. “Sure.”

  Chapter XX

  Medea

  GLANCING AROUND, I spotted a lone figure making its way up the hill toward the cabins. Jason? Remembering his vanishing act this morning, I pushed my way through the crowd until I reached the edge of the courtyard and ducked into the woods. If I took a shortcut up the incline, I’d get ahead of him.

  Darkness enveloped me as I pushed deeper into the trees. Thorns and brambles scratched at my legs, but I paid them no heed. Navigating was tricky in the dark, but not impossible beneath the light of the full moon.

  When I reached the hospital, I circled it until I reached the last place I’d seen Jason this morning. You’re being paranoid, I told myself. He’s not keeping something from you. Why did I always assume the worst with him?

  Crouching between the metal dumpster and the concrete wall, I waited.

  What was taking him so long? I ventured a step away from the dumpster, ready to head down the path in the opposite direction and intercept him that way. But footsteps on the concrete pad had me ducking back into the shadows. Holding my breath, I peeked out and saw Jason walk right up to the exterior wall of the hospital, then vanish.

  Gasping, I rushed to the exterior wall, pressing my hand against it. Solid. I moved my hands up and down, fingers crawling over the stucco, looking for inexplicable gaps, and there! The texture changed, turning smooth and faintly pulsing with power.

  A shield. I backed up, staring at the wall in consideration. I’d always found it odd that there wasn’t an exit that led to the dumpsters. We always had to walk all the way around the building to take out the trash. A shield could mimic the wall area around the door well enough to fool people passing by. But why?

  Frowning, I walked back to our cabin, and unlocked the door. I could have summoned him right by the dumpster, but I wanted to know if he’d lie to me.

  “Jason,” I murmured, latching onto the familiar impression of him in my mind and giving it a sharp tug.

  The tall, muscular demigod must have been mid-step, because when he materialized in front of me, he stumbled.

  “What the—” he sputtered, glancing around the living room in confusion. His gaze locked on me and the aggravated expression quickly morphed into worry when he met my eyes. “What happened? Are you okay? Did something happen at the party?”

  I opened my mouth to demand that he tell me where he’d disappeared to, then realized how incredibly insane that would sound. Like he wasn’t allowed to wander off? What was wrong with me?

  “Medea?” His voice raised in alarm. “What happened?”

  Tears burned at my eyes as I realized how irrational I was being. It was bad enough I still thought, somewhere in the back of my mind, that he’d got me pregnant on purpose, but now I was following him?

  “I—” My voice broke. There was no explaining this. “I—I—” I gasped, breaking into tears. Oh gods. He was going to leave me for this and find someone less crazy. Less paranoid. Less needy. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used my powers on you like that. I’m just—I’m just—” I broke down.

  “Medea . . . hey.” He wrapped his arms around me, stumbling back against the couch when I flung myself into his embrace with sickening desperation. “What is this?”

  “I’m pregnant,” I sobbed, breaking down.

  “You’re—” He pulled away from me, sidestepping so he didn’t fall onto the couch. “I knew it! I knew—” He broke off when he saw the expression on my face. “And you don’t want to be.”

  He wasn’t surprised. Delighted, maybe, concerned, but not surprised. Why wasn’t he surprised? I shook my head, my lip trembling with the effort of holding back my sobs. “And it’s making me crazy. I keep—I keep thinking these terrible, horrible things.”

  Amusement glimmered in his gold eyes, a smile playing on his lips. Was this funny to him?

  “Like what?” he asked, voice gentle.

  I couldn’t meet his eyes, so my gaze dropped to the white carpet. “That you . . . made it happen.”

  “Well, I hope it was me that made it—oh.” He studied me. “You think I . . . what? Knocked you up on purpose? Tampered with your birth control?”

  “Poked holes in the condoms,” I admitted, utterly breaking down.

  He barked a surprised sounding laugh. “You’d notice when—you know what, it doesn’t matter. Because I’d never do that.”

  “I know!” The bulb popped in the ceiling fan above us, plunging the room into darkness. Great, another thing I’d managed to screw up. “I’m a terrible, horrible person and I’m crazy, and I know it’s not rational, but that makes it even worse! You don’t deserve crazy,” I sobbed. “You saved me. Why can’t I just trust you? Instead, I’m always trying to convince myself that you’re hiding something from me. As if I’m entitled to know your every secret. You saved me. I’m the one who owes you, not the other way around.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Jason said, glancing up at the ceiling fan. “And you’re not crazy. You’ve been given plenty of reasons to be afraid of the people you should be able to trust. But it’s me.” He leaned back and flashed me a grin. “I’d never hurt you like that.”

  “I know,” I whimpered, wrapping my arms around him.

  Jason held me for just a moment, then pulled back. “Wow. So, we’ve got a lot to talk about, huh? Have a seat. Take a minute.” He nudged me toward the couch. “I’m going to grab another bulb.”

  I sank onto the couch as he retreated into the kitchen. By the time he’d screwed in a new light bulb and turned on the light, I’d more or less regained my composure enough to wonder what the hell was wrong with me. A symptom? I wondered. Pregnancy was supposed to make you all emotional and unstable, so maybe. Charm?

  You’re immune! I reminded myself. Gods, what was wrong with me? Why was I so determined to believe the worst in him?

  “So . . .” Jason sat next to me on the couch and put his arm around me. “Have you
seen a doctor yet?”

  Throughout the rest of the night, we talked, considering possibilities and eventually coming to the same conclusion I’d come to weeks before. He wanted to keep the babies. I didn’t. Unresolved, we turned in for the night, but I couldn’t sleep. When his breathing evened, I gave up, slipping out of bed and grabbing my journal, before making my way to the living room.

  Jason’s so understanding sometimes, it’s ridiculous. He’s not even mad about the horrible things I thought about him. Sometimes I wonder if he charms me. I go back, and look over this journal, see how upset I was, how angry. But it goes away when I’m with him. All my paranoia, all my anger, it’s there below the surface, but it feels like it gets coated, covered up by sappy, happy thoughts.

  But I’m immune to charm. Jason made sure of it before he brought me on the island. Not everyone here can control their powers. But what if immunity doesn’t work the way we think it does? What happens if you want to be charmed? If you want to believe someone. Does that give them control over you? Or would it matter if they had powers or not at that point?

  I leaned back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling fan as I considered my rapid change of feelings earlier. When I summoned him, I was so angry, so suspicious, but the second he showed up, I was just this mess, begging for his forgiveness. I want to say he did something to me to reduce me to that. But I’m afraid it’s just me. I love him so much that sometimes it scares me. It doesn’t feel real. It feels desperate. Like he’s the only steady thing in my life, and if I let go, it’s all over. That sounds romantic, but it’s not. It’s terrifying. He’s terrifying sometimes. And I don’t know why, because he’s never done anything to hurt me.

  I think.

  He wasn’t surprised. I wish that didn’t bug me. I wish I could turn off the endless stream of paranoid thoughts in my mind and act like it doesn’t mean anything.

  I love him. I’m scared of him. I trust him. I don’t. I’m going insane.

  Am I insane?

  Chapter XXI