Love & War

by Kaitlin Bevis

  “We have to destroy this place,” I’d declared. “Everything in it. I don’t want to leave one scrap of evidence that I’ve ever existed.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, I tagged along with Otrera on her way to the gym. Any excuse to watch who came and went from the hospital, right?

  “Elise,” Otrera called when she saw Elise walking toward the cabins. If her clutched towel and dripping hair were any indication, she’d just finished her morning swim.

  “Hi,” Elise said when Otrera and I caught up to her. “What’s up?”

  “Just heading to the gym.” I squinted against the bright sunlight. “Wanna come?”

  Elise hesitated. “I don’t know that I’m up to . . .”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Otrera laughed. “Glauce and Medea never do.”

  “I ride one of the bike-thingies!” I objected.

  “You have to actually pedal for it to count as exercise. Not just sit in it and read your book.”

  “Is Glauce going?” Elise asked, falling into step beside us.

  I shook my head. “She’s on shield duty.”

  Elise frowned at that. “Um, yeah. Okay.” She glanced down as if just noticing her towel. “Just let me swing by the house first to change.”

  “Thank you both for coming with me,” Otrera said as we made our way back up the dirt path toward Elise’s cabin. “Glauce would say I’m paranoid, and she’s probably right, but . . . there are some places I don’t feel comfortable going alone.”

  Not for the first time, I wondered if anything had ever happened to Otrera to make her worry so much or if her caution was just a side effect of growing up in a world I’d only seen in shows or read about in books. If I ever left this island and tried to be a part of the actual world, would I need to be as careful as she was?

  “I didn’t have any plans for the rest of the day,” Elise said with a shrug as we reached her cabin. “Adonis?” she called as she opened the door.

  “He’s on restock.” I followed her back to her room, noticing that Elise and Adonis hadn’t done a thing to decorate. Most of us at least rearranged the furniture and added our own touches with items from the orders. Looking around, I felt sad for the two of them. How could this ever feel like home if they didn’t at least try to make it their own?

  “Again?” Otrera asked.

  I almost pitied Adonis. He kept getting the worst job assignments, but he took it all in stride with a grin on his face. His easygoing nature and willingness to do anything served him well. The guys still gave him a hard time, but Jason was no longer worried there was going to be an outright lynching.

  “Oh.” Elise dug through her drawers until she found a pair of yoga pants and a sleeveless tank top. “One sec.” She ducked into the bathroom to change. “So what’s shield duty?” she called through the door.

  I glanced at Otrera, sharing a smile that showed, in no uncertain terms, how happy we were to be over this particular learning curve.

  Otrera sat on Elise’s bed. “There’s a shield around the island that keeps us from being found. Problem is, not all demigods can maintain a shield, much less one that large, so there’s always a few on shift. Glauce is better at it than most, so when she’s on duty, that frees up the other shield workers to help out elsewhere. That’s how she earns her keep. She’s lucky to have such an obvious use. It keeps her off septic duty.”

  “Am I supposed to be doing something?” Elise walked out of the bathroom, pausing in front of her dresser to pull her damp golden hair into a ponytail. “I mean, I help out here and there, but I haven’t been assigned an actual job.”

  I shook my head. “You’re still on medical leave. Since we don’t know how using your powers will affect your health, we’re not going to ask you to do too much until we’re sure you’re up to par.”

  Elise pulled on her sneakers. “I appreciate that. I haven’t tried to use my powers since I got hurt.”

  “What can you do?” Otrera asked as we walked out of Elise’s cabin and headed toward the gym.

  The word charm was on the tip of my tongue, but I resisted the urge to answer the question for Elise since she was right here. I’d probably spent way too much time going over her file.

  “Charm, mostly,” Elise said with a modest shrug, as if she wasn’t the strongest demigoddess with charm alive. “I’m also apparently a universal translator.”

  “You’ll probably be put in the rotation to keep the staff charmed.” Otrera glanced at me. “Right?”

  I nodded, kicking at the red dirt along the road. “I’m sure the translation thing will come in handy as well. But keeping the staff charmed is the larger priority.”

  Elise seemed to consider that as we walked into the gym. “The whole charmed staff thing doesn’t bother you?”

  I waved my hand in a so-so gesture and perched on a treadmill as Otrera moved to the closest weight machine and started fiddling with the settings.

  “I can help you with that,” Zeetes offered, changing direction mid-stride to approach Otrera.

  “I’ve got it, thanks,” the athletic demigoddess snapped. When he walked away, Otrera looked at Elise. “Of course it bothers me, but they get paid. They applied for the job and everything. It’s not like we hold them here against their will. We just make sure they don’t remember anything about us. Tons of people in island areas work for resorts.”

  I ducked my head, thinking of the remnants of my mom’s staff who were here very much against their will.

  “If they live nearby, do they get to go home?” Elise’s gold eyes were wide with curiosity as she settled onto the treadmill beside me.

  “No,” I replied. “But it’s not like we’re holding them prisoner. Having staff stay on site isn’t unusual for any resort. They’re here for the season, and then we rotate them with another seasonal batch. On paper, they work for a resort owned by another demigod. We pay him their paychecks and handle all the tax stuff. When the employees go home, they think they’ve been at that resort the whole time.” There was no need to mention the charmed hospital staff.

  “Elise!” Calais grinned and waved. “I haven’t seen you in here before. You want me to show you the equipment?”

  “I’m giving her the tour,” Otrera said. “Thanks though.”

  The bulky demigod added an extra set of weights to his barbell, making sure we all saw how very strong and awesome he was. “Well if you need anything . . .”

  I rolled my eyes. These guys. They weren’t aggressive or really even doing anything I could take to Jason in a complaint. But they weren’t taking the hint either. Otrera wasn’t interested in their entire gender, much less any of them. And Elise was taken. The demigods mostly left me alone, but that didn’t stop their constant flirting with my friends from getting old.

  It was going to be a long afternoon.

  Chapter XXV

  Aphrodite

  “I DON’T THINK he’s even going to consider it,” I vented to Persephone the next night in the dreamscape.

  “Well, I don’t blame them for being terrified,” she said, plucking a flower from the grass in front of our picnic blanket. “Maybe . . .” The tiny blonde hesitated, spinning the daisy in her hand. “We should apply some pressure.”

  Propping myself up on my arm, I eyed the diminutive goddess. “What kind of pressure?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe start with weather? I’ve got wind, Poseidon’s got rain. We could do some damage. Lower morale?”

  “That could work.” I chewed on my lip as I thought over all the ramifications severe weather brought to tiny island communities. My gaze rested on the golden blades of meadow grass just off the blanket. “Give us just a few more days. It’ll be harder for Ares and I to finish searching the buildings if everyone’s cooped up inside.”

  “Will three days be enough?
” Persephone asked, twirling the stem of her daisy between two fingers.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Great,” she said with so much relish, I wondered how long she’d been waiting for an excuse to try brewing up a storm. Zeus’s realm pretty much regulated itself, weather-wise. “You made some really sound points with Jason today. Make sure to say them where other people can hear.”

  “I do. Probably too much.” If I sung the gods’ praises too much louder, I’d find myself in the same boat as Ares. I stretched, enjoying the sensation of warmth from the pretend sun in the sky.

  Persephone’s green eyes sparkled. “You could also—”

  “Wow, you’ve really been thinking this out.”

  She blushed prettily, clasping her hands in her lap and glancing down at the flower-patterned blanket. “As much as I’d love to claim credit for all these ideas, don’t forget, I do have access to every dead strategist who ever lived. I’ve had nothing but people offering suggestions and ideas. I’d be a fool not to make use of them.”

  People had always been Persephone’s best resource. Staring at the flower she’d resumed twirling between her fingers, an idea struck me. “Maybe I should do the same thing.”

  She tilted her head in confusion. “As?”

  “You. Maybe I should take a page from your book.” I pushed up on my arms and scrambled into a sitting position, excited by my idea. “I’ve got the oldest beings in creation as a captive audience, babysitting me every night. I should use that time.” With more than just Athena.

  Oh, crap. Athena.

  “I’ve been talking to Athena,” I admitted, suddenly worried Persephone would be angry with me. Was it possible to be friends with two enemies? Persephone came first, without doubt, but would a better friend shun Athena?

  “I know.” Persephone brushed back a lock of blond hair that glowed faintly in the sunlight. “She asked permission.” I could hear the eye roll in her voice.

  Of course Athena would ask permission. I was sworn to Persephone. To me, swearing my loyalty and obedience over to Persephone had been a way to differentiate my choices from Zeus’s. If I had to obey her, it was going to be my choice, not residual programming. To Persephone, the vow meant nothing. Technically, she could pull from my powers or fill me with hers, but she’d never take advantage of that. She had so much power that mine was almost useless to her. But to Athena, that vow meant that I belonged to Persephone. If it could be perceived that Athena and I were up to something behind Persephone’s back, it would be a political nightmare.

  But Persephone was never one for politics. “I told her it was none of my business who you go to for therapy.” She leaned over, wrinkling the blanket, and met my eyes. “Are you worried she’ll use your secrets against you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I have any left.” Maybe I never did. After all, I’d never trusted Poseidon and he still knew which button to push to send me over the edge.

  “Is it helping?” she asked, her voice wistful.

  “I don’t know yet.” I smoothed the blanket beneath me. “Mostly it’s all coping mechanisms and ‘confronting my memories.’” I put the oft-used phrase in air quotes. “But she also wants me to find a constant. Something that was true before everything happened with Zeus and something that’s still true now.”

  Persephone tilted her head in confusion. “Didn’t ‘everything’ with Zeus kind of start with your creation?”

  My eyes widened in surprise. I’d told Athena the story so many times, it seemed odd that my very best friend didn’t know all the sordid details. “Not . . . exactly.” I cleared my throat and realized I couldn’t bring myself to tell her she’d technically been the one to reintroduce me to Zeus. He would have found me eventually anyway. I plucked a flower from the edge of the blanket and gave it a cautious sniff. Nothing. “Um, she also wants me to take up some kind of physical activity. She says it’s grounding.”

  “Like running?” Persephone brightened, and I wondered if she still found time for her favorite exercise.

  “Not unless something is chasing me.” Besides, I was stuck on a tiny island. If a situation came up that I needed to run away from, I was out of luck. “I’ve started swimming, but that’s not something I can just go do if I feel a panic attack coming on. I have to change and get someplace where I can swim. But I do want whatever I do to be useful. I’m tired of being defenseless.” Frowning, I tossed the flower back into the golden grass and wiped my hands against the blanket. “If Artemis could dreamwalk, she could teach me—”

  “Nothing. You already know how to do everything,” Persephone reminded me, rescuing my discarded flower. “You don’t lack the knowledge; you lack the muscle memory. You can’t develop that in a dream.”

  She was right.

  “If you’re thinking self-defense, I’m sure Ares could teach you.”

  Ah, yes. Getting hot and sweaty with a hands-on work out with Ares. What could possibly go wrong? I flopped down on the blanket, staring up at the perfect sky. “I’ll ask him.”

  “You know he lectured me.” Persephone sounded amused and I knew it wasn’t at being on the receiving end of a lecture. She was Demeter’s daughter. Getting yelled at wasn’t a novelty for her, realm ruler or not.

  I lifted my head off the blanket “About what?”

  She scooted closer to me, her eyes dancing. “Okay, so after the meeting before the cruise he stayed behind and—”

  I groaned. “Did he really get onto you about the dreamstate thing?” Normally, sleep was optional for me, so in order to avoid my nightmares, I just didn’t bother with it. Whenever we’d had Pantheon meetings in dreamscapes, Persephone would pull me into them so I never had to worry about having nightmares. When Ares found out I was avoiding sleep, he’d launched into this long lecture about how I was avoiding coping.

  “He worries about you.”

  I allowed myself to smile. “It’s kind of nice being worried about.”

  “It’s not as nice on the other side of the equation,” Persephone said darkly, her green eyes narrowing as she stared off in the distance over the endless golden meadow.

  Reaching over, I squeezed her hand. “We’ll find him.”

  “Thanks.” She lay down, settling on the blanket beside me. “Hey, Aphrodite?” she asked after a few moments of silence, sounding sleepy.

  Smiling at the sound of my name instead of Elise’s, I glanced over at her. “Yeah?”

  “I’ve thought of a constant for you. Something you had before that you still have now.”

  “What?”

  “Love.” Persephone let the word hang in the air for a second, then snorted with laughter. “That sounded better in my head. What I mean is—” She sighed and sat up, smoothing the blanket. “When we met, you trusted me almost instantly, but it was more than that. You cared. Even when you were working against me, you were always trying to give me ridiculous advice.”

  I laughed, remembering some of things I’d told her about “behaving like a true goddess.”

  “I’m serious.” She reached over and pushed my shoulder. “You were willing to go to bat for me with Melissa, whether I wanted you to or not.”

  Gods, Melissa had been so annoying. Persephone still didn’t see the fault with her pet human treating her like an equal, but it drove me up the wall. She was a ranking goddess, for Chaos’s sake. Human beings shouldn’t talk down to her.

  “And then,” Persephone continued, “You two became friends and you were willing to tear apart anyone who messed with her, even when that person was you. You were willing to die to protect her and Adonis and Heph and Ares. And you’d only just met them. When you care about people, you don’t do it by halves. You give everything. Even when they don’t deserve it.”

  Squinting up at the bright sky, I thought of Adonis. “Isn’t that kind of
what got me into this mess?”

  “And what almost got you out of it. Adonis stopped drugging you. He stood up against Tantalus and then practically died to save you. Think about that, Aphrodite. In three days, he went from stabbing you in the back to dying for you. That was all you.”

  I flushed. “I’m not—”

  “Aphrodite, you love fiercely. You give everything you’ve got and anyone you care about knows you’d go to the ends of the earth for them. That hasn’t changed. I can hear it in the way you talk about Medea and the other demigods. You care about them even though they ordered your execution. Love is your constant, Aphrodite. And it’s incredible. You’re incredible.”

  Love was in Pandora’s box as well. That always used to surprise me, but now that I’d spent more time with mortals, I understood. There was no force more destructive in the entire world.

  People would do anything for love.

  ARES INSISTED WE bookend the self-defense lessons with stretches and breathing exercises. “You need something routine that doesn’t require another person.”

  I didn’t argue. If anyone knew how to help someone cope with trauma, it was the god of war. Plus, I was still grateful he’d followed my lead on pretending that whole embarrassing coming-on-to-him thing had never happened. So we stretched, we breathed, and Ares drilled me mercilessly.

  We practiced in the living room of our small cabin, even though the gym would have been a better space. I didn’t want an audience. The lessons progressed quickly, because after all, I knew what I was supposed to do. It was just a matter of doing it so often it became rote. But there were two elements to hands-on practice with Ares that made concentration its own special hell.

  The first was proximity. It was really hard to remember that I was supposed to be stomping on his foot, not leaning into his touch. In public, we held hands, hugged, occasionally kissed and acted like a couple. Behind closed doors, all I got was the tension of me wanting him and him wanting me. Knowing that now was not the time to act on that desire, that between what we’d both been through and where we were now, it would be a bad idea, didn’t stop me from feeling drawn to him. Or him to me, judging by the way his hands always lingered a beat too long. We’d been together before. I knew what his hands could do.