Love & War

by Kaitlin Bevis

  I nodded, coughing again. “I was floating. I didn’t mean to go under.”

  Jason stood and offered me a hand. “You probably overdid it. Let’s get you home.”

  Ignoring his hand, I stood and set off in the direction of my towel. I should be acting grateful, but I was too angry.

  “I can take you home,” he offered.

  “I’ll get there,” I called back, not bothering to look over my shoulder. My knees trembled as I walked up and down the mounds of sand. The towel seemed to be so far away. “Sorry about your phone.” Gods, I felt like someone had doused my sinus cavities in kerosene and struck a match. Why did water burn so much?

  He followed right on my heels. “You don’t like me much,” he observed.

  “I barely know you,” I countered.

  “But you already know you don’t like me.”

  I couldn’t deny it. When I reached my towel, I dabbed at my face, wrapped the towel around myself and put on my flip-flops, then set off for my cabin.

  Jason followed. “Why?” he asked.

  “Do you want me to start with the part where you trapped me on a boat with a psychopath?” I asked, dust from the dirt path that led to the cabins rising to join the grains of sand sticking to my wet calves. “Or, oh, I know! How about the bit where you gave Adonis the choice to either poison someone or stand by and do nothing while they got murdered?”

  “That was Tantalus’s—”

  “So you want me to start with the part where you trapped me on a boat with a psychopath?” I was skating dangerously close to the whole truth with that sentence, but fortunately, it rang true for Elise as well. DAMNED recruited off those ships and Jason led DAMNED. Tantalus was supposed to spend that cruise convincing Elsie and Adonis to join the movement. The poison and Steele had come into play after they’d realized I was on the boat.

  Jason’s footsteps stopped. A minute later, I heard them again, moving faster so he could catch up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think Tantalus—”

  “You’re sorry?” I whirled on him, squinting at his profile in the bright sunlight. “I almost died. So excuse me if I’m not all that interested in your apology.”

  “I saved you today.”

  “I shouldn’t have needed saving. Swimming isn’t supposed to be hard. I was in great shape before—” Breaking off, I took a steadying breath. Yelling at Jason was a bad idea. I was supposed to be trying to gain his trust, pry for information. And now would be the perfect time. He’d just saved me, for Chaos’s sake. But adrenaline only fueled my rage, so the best thing I could do would be to get out of here before I said something I really regretted.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, still following on my heels. “I didn’t think any of that would happen when I recruited you.”

  “That would require thinking.” I fumbled for my keys when I reached the shiny, white door to my cabin. These idiot demigods were children, playing at war against forces they couldn’t possibly understand.

  “What can I do to make it right?”

  I paused, the door half-open. “Next time you send a group recruiting,” I said, thinking fast, “I want to go with them.” Presumably I’d have a direct line to Jason should we need to draw him out.

  “Absolutely not.”

  I threw the door closed, but he caught it and walked right into my cabin as if he belonged here.

  Well, fine, if he wanted to play that way. I walked into the bedroom, stripping out of my swimsuit, and then ducked into the shower. My. My. My. I kept thinking in those terms, but none of this stuff was mine. Everything I had here belonged to Elise.

  “Uh . . .” Jason said, when I emerged from the bathroom, sundress clinging to my wet skin.

  “What?” I snapped, toweling my hair dry.

  “I don’t remember you being this . . . abrasive.”

  That gave me pause. Had Elise met Jason? No. He must be talking about emails or something. “Yeah, well.” I flashed a cold smile at him and dropped the towel, kicking it to the wall. “A lot changes when you get stabbed.”

  Jason sighed. “I’m sorry Tantalus attacked you. I’m sorry for the aftermath. I’m sorry for all of it. But sending you off the island is not as simple as you think. The gods are dangerous and you can’t cast a glamour if you need to disappear.”

  “What’s wrong, Jason? Afraid that if you let me go, and the boogeyman doesn’t get me, you’ll have no way to explain it to the terrified masses?” I arched an eyebrow at him. “You have so thoroughly convinced them that the gods are this ultimate evil, it’s ridiculous. I’ve heard the stories you’ve told. Is that your strategy, Jason? To sow enough fear that these people will follow you blindly into battle? You’re going to get every single one of them killed, and for what?”

  “I’ve heard the stories you’ve been spreading on the island.” He grinned, leaning against my doorframe but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. “About the nice gods.”

  “I’ve actually met them. Can you say the same?”

  His expression darkened. “Yes.”

  “All of them?” I studied my reflection in the mirror over my dresser, half focusing on fixing my hair, half keeping my eyes on the demigod in the reflection. “Or did you encounter one jerk and decide they all must be like that?”

  “One was enough.”

  I didn’t even have to guess which one. “You guys know Zeus is dead, right?”

  Jason nodded. “Adonis told us last year.”

  “Have you bothered to meet their new leader? Negotiate? Seems to me like that should be step one. Not charming random passengers to their death in the hopes that you’ll catch one of the realm rulers off guard.”

  Jason stepped into the hallway. “Let me show you something.”

  Curiosity snuffed my anger. Intrigued, I followed him out of the cabin, wet hair and all.

  He led me to the dining hall, then into a back room where dozens of photos lined the walls. It must have been one of the rooms Ares searched when we split up the other night, because I’d never seen it before. Some of the pictures showed demigods, some just regular humans. There were notes written on the walls beneath the pictures in dozens of different hands.

  “We used to have candles,” Jason murmured, his fingers brushing against a photo that showed two smiling demigods—Jason, and a young demigod who couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. “But it just didn’t seem safe without a fire department. Besides, I mean, we can order anything we need, but everything takes a while to get. Candles are one of those handy supplies to keep on hand if—”

  “What is this?” I asked, cutting off his babbling.

  “A memorial.”

  “Memorial?” There had to be hundreds of demigods dead. Scanning the room, I avoided allowing my eyes to settle on the bits and pieces of stories that were attached to each picture. I didn’t want to know. People died. It was sad, but I was barely keeping my head above water dealing with my own tragedies. If I took on anyone else’s, I’d drown.

  “For those killed by the gods.” His voice had gone low. “We acknowledge them when no one else remembers to.”

  “Gods, plural?” I demanded. “Or singular?” I desperately wanted to lay all of this at Zeus’s feet, though as my eyes scanned photo after photo. I knew. There were too many stories, too many faces. These weren’t all Zeus’s victims.

  “Gods destroy things, people. I don’t know if they even realize they’re doing it. She”—he pointed to a dark haired woman—“committed suicide when she realized her husband hadn’t actually come back from out of town early.”

  Glamours. More than one demigod had been born because of that particular deception.

  “No one believed her, and she couldn’t rationalize what had happened to her.”

  “How do you know?” My gaze snagged on another photograp
h. Glauce? I stepped forward, confused. The picture was partially obscured by Post-it Notes. Moving them aside, I uncovered the picture, which revealed yet another family portrait. Stepping back, I took in the notes surrounding the photos.

  Dear Mom, they all read. The wall was thick with the fluttering, yellow sheets.

  Behind me, Jason cleared his throat. “We saw her blog before things got bad.”

  I frowned, then realized he was still talking about the dark-haired woman. “Which god—”

  “She didn’t know, and really, does it matter? We tried to reach out to her, explain what happened. But she didn’t believe us. Or maybe she did. Maybe she just didn’t want to live in a world where stuff like that is possible. She was pregnant. They”—Jason moved beside me, tapping on Glauce’s family photo—“were killed by Zeus.” His hand trailed down until it reached his own family photo, but he didn’t seem to notice the motion. “A lot of us were.”

  Damn him. He’d sworn he hadn’t touched the demigods. But Zeus had never needed to touch someone to do them major harm.

  Jason continued. “Something changed within the last few years. They never used to come after us outright, you know? I mean, they screwed with our lives, but never attacked us. But then, all of a sudden, Zeus went all serial killer on his descendants. That’s when we got organized.”

  “Just in the last few years?” I’d bought the lie that they got organized after Zeus started hunting them back in the prison cell, but now that I’d seen their base? This compound, the location, the shield, removing the island from the map? Those preparations were decades in the making. Even among the recruits, there wasn’t an air of newness here. They were used to the island, used to the rules. That kind of efficiency only came when there was already something here to set the tone.

  Jason shrugged, carefully smoothing down the corner of one of Glauce’s notes. “We had a network set up before that. The island was a refuge. Somewhere to get away from Zeus’s breeding program. But we didn’t go on the offensive until we started getting killed off.”

  I still didn’t trust that answer, but saw no safe way to pry further. “You know that Zeus is dead now, right?”

  “That doesn’t fix any of the lives he ruined.”

  Don’t I know it? “But maybe the other gods aren’t as—”

  “They let it happen, didn’t they?” Jason stepped back, his arms outstretched to encompass the room. “I’ve heard the stories you’re telling people. About Persephone and the others who aren’t all that bad. But you don’t know what they’re really like.”

  “I’ve met them,” I reminded him, tearing my gaze from the photos. “It seems to me that some of them were every bit the victims we—”

  “They’re good at pretending.”

  “So was Tantalus. Do you want me to judge all demigods by him? ’Cause if so—”

  “Do you think Zeus was the only bad god? Do you think all the victims on this wall are his? The others are just as bad.”

  “They aren’t a collective. They aren’t all any one thing. There are scary gods and nice ones and everything in-between.” I thought of something Elise had told me once. “Judging someone by what they are is a slippery slope.”

  Jason’s jaw twitched, the dim light casting his shadow against the wall just enough to loom over us. “That’s—they aren’t people.”

  “You cannot start a war without at least trying to negotiate with the other side. It’s irresponsible. And . . . and—” I broke off, at a loss for words. Glancing around the room and seeing the pictures and posters lining the wall did not help. “Stupid,” I managed to say lamely.

  “If we meet with them, they’ll crush us.”

  I gave him a flat look. “If it’s as hopeless as all that, then why the hell do you keep recruiting people?”

  “With enough time—”

  “You ran out of time the second you attacked the gods with Steele. If you think they aren’t looking for you right now, you’re an idiot. You’ve got their attention. Use it. They can’t lie. Ask for some reassurances, whatever it is that will make you feel safe. If they say yes, you’ve gained everything. If they say no, what have you lost?”

  “And how exactly would we get those assurances without approaching a god in the first place? You think they won’t kill us on sight? He motioned to the walls. “Don’t be naïve.”

  I titled my head. “Orpheus. He’s in contact with them. The way he talks about them, he has to be. They aren’t going to kill him, or they already would have. Reach out to him. See if he’ll arrange a meeting with whatever precautions you deem necessary. Don’t let the people here end up on that wall.” I motioned to the pictures. “Not when there could be another way.”

  Jason stared at me for a long moment. “I’ll think about it.”

  But I could already read the decision on his face.

  Chapter XXIV

  Medea

  “SO I SHOWED Elise the memorial.” Jason stretched his arm across the couch, brushing it against my shoulders. “And she looked around like it was some kind of a big shocker that the gods had actually killed people. I mean, has she been listening? Or have I been talking to thin air?”

  Giving up, I marked my place in the book I was reading. Jason was in full-on vent mode, which meant this was not just a momentary interruption. But the book was getting really good.

  “I’m sure she’s been listening,” I reassured him for the sixteenth time tonight, rubbing at his neck. My hands brushed against his closely cropped golden hair, and I smiled at the strange sensation. “But the questions she’s asking are the right ones. She deserves an answer to them.”

  “How can you say that, knowing all they’ve done?” Jason withdrew his arm.

  “Because I know what we’ve done. My mom was a demigod and she still did unspeakable things. Tantalus was a womanizing POS even when he was sane. We used those humans on the boat, knowing it might get them killed. Maybe things aren’t as black and white as—”

  “Oh, gods, she’s gotten to you, too!” Jason threw up his hands in exasperation, pushing off the couch to pace.

  I shrank at the anger in his voice. “I’m just saying—”

  “They would kill us in an instant if they had the opportunity.”

  Maybe they should. Sometimes I wondered if either one of us should exist. What if we were what was wrong with the world? “Y-you keep saying I’m what comes next. What if, with every generation, we’re getting crueler, more manipulative, more . . . divine. What if—” My hands reflexively went to my stomach.

  Jason followed the motion, his expression softening. “You’re nothing like them.”

  “People are dead, Jason. Because of me.” I thought back to my brother and Mom’s army as I stared down at the white carpet so I wouldn’t have to see the judgment in his eyes.

  “More people are also alive because of you.”

  That didn’t make me feel better. I hadn’t chosen to heal anyone other than my stepbrother, and look how that turned out? I’d ended up strapped to a hospital bed, forced to give up pieces of myself for years before I finally escaped. “If the gods have no redeeming qualities about them, if they all need to be destroyed, then shouldn’t we be a bit more worried about where we’ll be in another few generations? What if . . . ?”

  “We couldn’t possibly make evil babies, Medea.” Jason knelt between the couch and the coffee table, his hand reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ears. “Is that what you’ve been worried about all this time?”

  “No, I just don’t want—”

  “Because you shouldn’t be. We’re entirely different. We might be getting stronger, but we’re still a different species. I mean, the gods live off worship. That’s gotta warp your perspective after a few centuries. How can they look at us and see anything but a lesser being?” Jason’s ra
nt looped, heading straight back to the beginning as he found a seventeenth way to say the exact same thing he’d been saying all night. “The gods are dangerous and corrupt and . . .”

  I sighed and looked forlornly at the book I’d placed on the coffee table. Jason started pacing again.

  He doesn’t listen to me, I wrote by the light of the nifty book light I’d gotten with the last order, after we turned in for the night. Beside me, Jason slept like a rock. He just wants me to agree with him in all the right places. Most of the time, he’s a better listener, but when it comes to rational conversations about the gods, he gets like Glauce. There’s too much anger there for logic. But what if Elise is right? Don’t we owe it to the people here to put aside our own feelings long enough to find out?

  I considered that for a moment, tapping the top of my book lamp when the light shifted from a bright white to a soft yellow. The pale beam sputtered, then flared back to life, illuminating the page on my journal. I haven’t been hurt by the gods, but I’ve been hurt before. Isn’t it kind of hypocritical for me to judge them for not being able to see past their own pain and anger, when I can’t do it either?

  When I’d told Jason exactly what I was capable of back at Mom’s hospital, negotiating hadn’t even occurred to me. I’d only wanted to destroy and escape. To do whatever it took to make sure no one remembered me well enough to ever try to hunt me down. Was what Jason was attempting so different?

  “Can you teleport us out of here?” he’d asked. “I can tell you exactly where our ship is.”

  “I’m sure my mother’s people have found it by now,” I’d replied. “Why not bypass the boat altogether? I could teleport you and your people home.”

  Jason considered that for a moment. “Could you teleport the ship?”

  I straightened my back, pushing against the wooden headboard in a stretch. I’d never tried teleporting objects before. But, locked in the hospital, I’d had nothing but time. So I’d practiced and practiced and practiced. It was the first time I’d ever been allowed to revel in my abilities, the first time I understood them. I felt strong, and powerful. For once, I was in a position where I could make my own decisions. So I made one.