Love & War

by Kaitlin Bevis

  Ares cleared his throat, spurring me to action. I slammed my foot into his heel, not at full force because while he’d regained some ability to heal, people would notice if he showed up at breakfast bruised and battered every morning.

  “Good,” he said with a pained grunt, moving backward until he met the back of the couch we’d shoved out of the way. Ares took a minute, shaking his foot, then crossed the room back to me. “Next.”

  When he moved in front of me, blocking the brilliant sunlight streaming in from the sliding glass door, he grabbed my wrist. I brought my elbow down, stepped in, and threw my arm up. He let go, then grabbed my wrist again. My fingers darted toward his eyes, stopping just before I got there, then I drew back, and bopped my palm against his nose.

  “Straighten your arm.” He touched my elbow. “And throw your weight into it.”

  I corrected, tried again, and then went for his neck and his knee.

  Ares’s hands closed around my neck and I found myself staring into golden eyes, so similar to Tantalus’s that I was transported back to that terrible moment when the demigod had charmed me. His fist slamming into my face while he’d screamed at me to look at him. I couldn’t look away. And I hadn’t wanted to. He’d hit me again and again and again, turning me to pulp, and still, all I’d wanted was to please him. That was the power of charm.

  Don’t cry, Zeus’s voice echoed through my mind, dragging me further back to the first time I’d felt truly helpless. My will made meaningless by someone else’s power. Never cry.

  “Breathe,” Ares reminded me, dropping his hands from my neck, and propping them on the matte wall on either side of my head. His gold eyes stared into mine with a startling intensity.

  I gasped as the room spun around me. My body folded over. You can breathe, my mind tried to rationalize. But I felt as if all the air in the room hovered just at the tip of my tongue, unwilling to be inhaled. My heart slammed against my chest in panic.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Ares soothed, dropping to his knees beside me. “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re safe. You’re safe.” His arms closed around me. He held me, murmuring words of comfort until I gained some semblance of control.

  “Thanks,” I gasped at last, drawing away from him.

  “Anytime,” he said with a grin. “You ready to move on to stretches, or do you need a minute?”

  Damn, he was really married to this routine. “Just a minute.” I slouched against the wall, my shoulders slumped with exhaustion.

  Ares sat beside me and flashed me a grin. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but that went well. I think you’re getting stronger. You’re not getting tired as fast, and you’re hitting harder. I haven’t noticed any shaking or wavering.”

  “You’ll make me into a warrior goddess yet,” I teased.

  The smile fell from his face and he looked away from me, his gaze distant as he studied the view of ocean from the sliding glass door. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  I glanced at him. “I know you hate it, but I wouldn’t mind people being afraid of me.”

  “You think being feared makes you harder to hurt?” Ares pushed off the floor to a standing position. “Fear has a funny way of inspiring people to rise to the challenge.”

  I’d heard Persephone and Hades express similar sentiments, but sometimes I’d wondered if their perspectives were skewed. They’d been targeted because of who they were, sure. But did they really have it that much worse? Zeus went after Persephone for her power, but he’d hurt me, to get to her. He’d hurt a lot of people to get to her.

  “It’s better than being treated like something disposable.” I stood, brushing off my yoga pants and tightening my ponytail, then followed Ares through a series of stretches and breathing exercises.

  There was something calming about the routine.

  Chapter XXVI

  Medea

  I GOT CONFIRMATION on our order today, I wrote from my bed, my pen scratching angrily at the page. Guess what wasn’t in it? I checked that order every step of the way until I submitted it. There’s only one person on this island who could edit an order at that point and that’s Jason.

  He did it on purpose. He’s been acting all supportive of my decision, though not thrilled with it. I mean, he still wants me to change my mind. But there’s a difference between talking over a choice and sabotaging it.

  What else has he been hiding from me? I’m no closer to figuring out what’s in the hidden room today than I was weeks ago, but I am a lot more pregnant. And now, all my old paranoia is sparking back to life.

  I paused, trying to banish the traitorous thoughts forming in my mind. Above my head, the ceiling fan thumped rhythmically, matching pace with the angry thud of my heart.

  Did I just trade one prison for another?

  Drawing in a deep, calming breath, I tried to reassure myself that I hadn’t. This wasn’t a prison. Except that I couldn’t leave. But other than that, this island was leagues more preferable than Mom’s old hospital.

  I keep forgetting how good I have it, I wrote, struggling to go back, to remember the surgeries, the pain, the anger.

  But rather than making me feel better about my life now, thinking back to those days only made me grow angrier.

  No! I wrote with such force my pen tore at the page. When I teleported everyone off that island, taking every single bit of blood and other matter they’d taken from me and destroyed their records and burned their building, I made a choice.

  Never again.

  And when they’d tried to follow, I took their golden child—the one I’d been punished for saving in the first place—and dropped him in the sea. That was me telling them that I wasn’t a helpless child anymore. The blood of the gods runs through my veins and I will never be made to suffer again. And I won’t be forced into motherhood, either.

  If the pills can’t be delivered to me, I’ll go to them. I just need to get Glauce to lower the shield.

  Somehow.

  GLAUCE’S DRUNKEN giggle pierced the crowd at happy hour that night.

  “She gonna be okay?” Adonis asked, glancing over Elise’s head toward where Glauce was being chatted up by Idas. Otrera would typically be looming nearby like a shadow, but she’d been held over for kitchen duty.

  “Probably, but I should check on her.” Elise handed him her drink.

  “I’ve got it,” I said, fighting back a smile. This was the perfect opportunity to ask Glauce about lowering the shield.

  “You sure?” Adonis asked. “I can—”

  “No.” I cut him off before he could even finish the offer. The last thing Adonis needed was to be seen escorting the only available demigoddess back to her cabin. Especially when she was falling-down drunk. “I’ve got it.”

  Elise flashed me a grateful smile and looped an arm around her demigod. “Dance with me?”

  The way he looked at her, as if she was the force that kept his world spinning, stirred feelings of envy in my chest. I was being silly, of course. I had Jason. Surely he’d looked at me like that before.

  She tugged on his hand, pulling him onto the dance floor. Shaking my head at my own jealousy, I made my way through the crowd until I reached Glauce. The slim demigoddess stood out like a beacon in her fluorescent yellow dress. “Can I borrow her for just a second?” I asked Idas.

  “Yeah.” The short demigod shot me a relieved smile. “I think you’d probably better get her home.”

  I winced on her behalf. She was going to be humiliated in the morning. The last few weeks had been oddly transformative for Glauce. She didn’t snap off the heads of demigods who flirted with her, then giggle about it later. Instead, she’d gotten a hell of a lot more receptive.

  But she’d also started drinking herself into a stupor every night. Guilt maybe? Elise said a lot of girls couldn’t handle
the fact that they actually liked sex after being raised to think they should be ashamed of it.

  “Whatcha need?” Glauce asked, her slurred words almost inaudible over the loud music.

  I pulled her away from the crowd, keeping her on her feet when she stumbled over her spikes. “Just checking on you. If you want to go back to the party, you can. But if you want to go home . . .”

  Glauce burst into tears. “I do. I really miss it.”

  I’d meant her cabin, but okay. If she was this far gone, maybe I could convince her to lower the shield. I led her away from the crowd, giving Elise and Adonis a wave.

  “I miss my mom,” she blubbered, stumbling when we stepped off the concrete slab the dining hall had been built on. “And my cat. It’s not even a little the same, and it sounds stupid to even mention him, but Fluffy was the best. And I’ll never see him again.” Glauce continued bemoaning her homesickness the entire walk up the dirt path. By the time we made it up the steep hill that led to the cabins, she’d worked herself up into a full sob fest. “I had a really good life, you know? And I didn’t appreciate it.”

  I tried to open her door, but it was locked. Dumbfounded, I stared at the door for a minute. No one locked doors here. “Do you have your key?”

  She sniffled and passed me the tiny clutch she carried. “I miss having friends. I don’t think anyone likes me here. Sure, Otrera and Elise tolerate me, but I get the feeling that I just really annoy them. And you . . .” She snorted. “I can’t even understand you half the time.”

  I rolled my eyes, and dug through her purse.

  “The guys are nice enough,” she continued, heedless of my annoyance. “But their eyes glaze over when I try to actually talk to them. No one listens to me.”

  Her words were punctuated by such a maelstrom of snot and tears that I had a hard time understanding what she was saying. “Then why don’t you leave?” I asked, sliding her key into the lock.

  “How?”

  “I can teleport,” I reminded her, opening the door. “Let’s take a break for a while. Surely you had friends before you came here.” I led her into the house. “No one’s going to notice if the shield is down for a couple of hours. Wouldn’t it be nice to take a break for a bit?”

  “I’ve got nowhere left to go.”

  Chapter XXVII

  Aphrodite

  HEPHAESTUS WAS ready for me this time. The second he pulled me into his dreamscape, he held up a wooden box. “Mancala?”

  The rules to the game clicked into place in my head. “Sounds fun.”

  “How goes life on the island?” Hephaestus pulled the game out of the box.

  “Uneventful.” Scowling, I crossed my arms on the cool, metal table. “I keep thinking all these dark and ominous thoughts about the whole operation here on the island, but I haven’t actually seen anything but friendly, happy people.”

  “You’ve seen weapons,” Hephaestus reminded me, the overhead light flickering across his twisted face. “And their willingness to kill not only you, but random mortals for their cause.”

  “On the cruise. But that doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen here.” My voice rose in frustration. “I keep feeling like there’s got to be something below the surface. But there’s nothing but surface. We’ve been here for weeks and all we’ve got are feelings.”

  “And their location.” Hephaestus dropped his stones onto his side of the game board. “That’s not nothing. It’s crazy how much farther away the island is than we expected. How you didn’t bleed to death on the boat ride there is beyond me.”

  “It really didn’t seem that long.” But then, I’d been in and out of consciousness for most of the ride. “Now if I could just find something, we’d be in business.”

  “Maybe they’re only letting you see what they want you to see.”

  “Then what good are we?” I swept my hair off my shoulders, my neck prickling with the heat that permeated Hephaestus’s dreamscape.

  Hephaestus shrugged. “Not every mission yields all the desired results. It could be that you guys are at the wrong place at the wrong time to learn anything else useful. That does happen from time to time.”

  “But I don’t want to have done all this for nothing.” I felt bad enough about spying as it was.

  “Your wants don’t guarantee results.”

  I bit back an urge to argue. He wasn’t wrong and there was no reason to fight with him other than to make myself feel better. Instead, I focused on the game.

  Hephaestus’s dreamscape was the smallest I’d visited. Everyone else’s dreamscapes, like Poseidon’s beach or Persephone’s meadow, gave off the sense they stretched on for all eternity. Even Athena’s library and Ares’s den sort of faded away at the edges. But Hephaestus’s dreamscape had four definitive walls, complete with posters from video games I didn’t recognize. The furniture was all metal, but not cold, sterile metal. He blended metals in a way I’d never seen before, entwining silver, golden, and bronze tones into beautiful designs that almost seemed alive.

  “How’s Ares holding up?” Hephaestus asked, motioning for me to go.

  “Surprisingly well.” I scooped up a handful of rocks. “I can tell the whole being-charmed thing still bugs him, but if he’s having any trouble adjusting to life with restricted powers, I haven’t seen it.” Though it probably helped that his, at least, were slowly returning more and more as each day passed. “He doesn’t even really seem to mind that everyone hates him here.”

  “Eh, Ares always looks at the bright side.” Hephaestus glanced up. “Besides, he’s a bit one-track minded when it comes to missions like this. It’s not the first time he’s posed as someone else to get information.”

  I thought of how confident he seemed chatting to the islanders, despite the daggers in their eyes. “He’s good at this.”

  Hephaestus seemed amused at my surprise. “He only comes off as incompetent. He’s not—”

  “Yeah, I know.” I dropped my last rock. “Despite everything, I’m actually kind of glad I got to see him in action. I’ve learned a lot about the finer art of equivocation.”

  “You seem happier.” He dropped three rocks, winning the game.

  “Oh, I have my moments, but they’re mostly in dreamscapes. It’s the only place I don’t have to pretend, even though I’m still not in my own skin.” I scowled down at Elise’s body. “Out there, I’m okay until I’m not. And then I’m really, really not. Like it all hits and I get . . .” My hand waved as I tried to think of the right word. “Pathetic.”

  “It’s good that you have a place to decompress, though.” Hephaestus reset the board. “I know these dreamscapes probably don’t feel like much, but—”

  “They’re everything.” I frowned down at the wooden Mancala board, considering my next move. “Is that what it’s like for you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Ares said that outside of the road trip last year, you pretty much never leave here.” I’d seen this room in real life once before. It had a lot more tech then, but there was no sense in cluttering up a dreamscape with something that wouldn’t work in it. “But then, when you came on the road trip with us, you were all quiet and uncomfortable the whole—”

  “What is it with you and the deeply personal questions?”

  Why did everyone keep getting so angry when I identified common ground? I flushed, trying to figure out what I’d said wrong. Being created knowing pretty much everything didn’t mean that I understood much. Social codes, in particular, were hard for me to grasp because they so often contradicted each other. But based on what little I did know, I shouldn’t be getting schooled by a god who subsisted on worship from gamers, techies, and internet trolls.

  “Sorry.” Hephaestus’s voice sounded gruff. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t because I was homesick or whatever. I just . . . I got tongue-tied, ok
ay? You’re—” He motioned to me. “I mean, not now, but normally, you’re pretty—it’s hard to form coherent thoughts around you.”

  “Oh.” That made sense. I was designed to be jaw-dropping, after all. But wait, he was talking in the past tense. “Not anymore?”

  Hephaestus shook his head. “Not at all. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Elise isn’t bad-looking. But she’s not so overwhelming that I’m not paying attention to your personality anymore. And now that I am, I don’t like you as much as I thought I did.”

  My mouth dropped open. Did he just say what I think he—The dreamscape shuddered. “Is it morning?”

  Hephaestus shook his head. “Must be something going on. Be careful.”

  ARES SHOOK ME out of the dreamscape, an expression of delight on his face. “It’s raining.”

  I practically leapt out of bed. “Let’s go.”

  When I moved toward the balcony, Ares grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the front door. “The view’s better on the beach.”

  There were fewer people to wake up, too. I paused to slide on a pair of flip-flops, and then we ran, laughing like mad, all the way down to the beach.

  Despite all the bad blood between them, Persephone and Poseidon made one beautiful storm. Rain fell from the sky in sheets. Thunder rumbled in the distance as jagged lightning lanced through the sky. When it struck the shield, the entire barrier shimmered in white light.

  Ares whooped, shouting back at the thunder, his arms spread wide. “It’s hers!” The wind whipped his words away so fast I almost couldn’t catch them. “This is hers!”

  I understood exactly what he meant. Every storm we’d celebrated before were governed by laws of nature, set in place by Zeus and his siblings long before the rest of us were created. We could celebrate that he no longer took power in those storms, that people’s awe and fear of them no longer translated to his worship. But this was the first time since his death that the power of the sky had been intentionally triggered. This was Persephone’s storm. And it wouldn’t be possible if Zeus wasn’t dead.