“We did this!” Ares caught my hand and pulled me into a spin.
Around and around and around we went, laughing and whooping and hollering and making fools of ourselves. But we didn’t care. If the demigods saw us right now, they’d think we’d lost our minds. But I wasn’t worried. They’d hide in their houses, never thinking to come all the way out here. The demigods didn’t know Persephone would never risk that lightning touching down and hurting Ares or myself.
For this glorious moment, we were alone. No risk of being watched or overheard. Just me, him, and the rain.
Ares fell down in a heap, pulling me with him. “I did this,” he said softly. “For once I did something that I—” He broke off to shout at the thunder and grinned at me, his cheek pressed against the sand.
“. . . can be proud of,” I whispered, able to finish his thought because it so closely echoed mine. I shifted to lay on my side, my arm propping up my head. “We did this.”
The last night we’d spent together like this, he’d closed the distance between us with a kiss and we’d spent the rest of the night celebrating in an entirely different sort of way. Looking at him looking at me, I could tell he was remembering the same thing.
Raindrops clung to his skin and eyelashes, setting his golden skin aglow in the moonlight. “To hell with it,” he declared, moving in for a kiss.
“No,” I said, surprising myself.
He drew back. “I—I’m sorry, that was—”
“We already did ‘to hell with it’, and it ended badly.” My eyes searched his face for some sign he understood. “I want more than ‘to hell with it’. I want you. All of you. I want us.”
“And I want you.” His voice sounded hoarse from shouting. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything.” He reached out, brushing sand from my face. “Even though I know you’re working through stuff—”
I leaned into his touch. “And you’re working through stuff.”
“And we’re here.” Ares moved his hand to indicate the island around us, flinging raindrops from his outstretched fingers.
Glancing around, I felt the weight of the island settle on us. “This is the worst possible timing.”
“Even if it wasn’t.” He met my eyes. “I hurt you. Gods, Aphrodite, I almost killed you.”
“I almost charmed you into suicide once,” I reminded him, my mind flashing back to when Zeus still controlled me. Zeus had been hunting down all of his children, forcing them to swear over their powers to him and then killing them. And he’d used my charm as a tool to do it. “You were a word away from turning yourself into dust with a smile on your face.” I looked down at the damp sand, darkened by my shadow. “The way you looked at me like I was everything. . . . It haunts me.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t almost stab you, Aphrodite. Gods, the way you screamed. I can still see your blood on that metal floor. Sometimes, I still hear you begging me to stop. Scrambling away from me with terror in your eyes. And I can’t—”
“That wasn’t you.” As I said the words, something unclenched within me. He’d been controlled when he threw that spear. He couldn’t help it, any more than I could have when Zeus controlled me. I’d known that intellectually, had been told that repeatedly. But something inside of me had refused to believe it up to now. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Maybe not. But you’re not the first person who has looked at me in terror.” He moved away from me, holding his hands in front of his eyes and staring at the raindrops glistening on his skin. “I have so much blood on my hands, I could drown in it.”
“I’ve hurt people, too.” I swallowed hard. “But that has nothing to do with this. It can’t. We can’t earn each other, Ares. And if you look at me and see only guilt, something you’ve done, something you need to fix, something you might break, I won’t be able to handle it. I’ve got too much on my plate to be your symbol.”
He considered that for a moment, then nodded. “And I can’t be the thing that holds you together. If I screw up and you—I mean, there are promises I can make you. Things I’ll never do. But if for some reason we don’t work? I can’t worry you won’t recover. That’s too much pressure.”
“I would never put that on you.”
Thunder cracked and startled, I turned to face the sea. Lightning flickered over the horizon. I heard Ares shift position, moving behind me, felt his arm drape over me as we both shouted back at the sky. The rain died down to a drizzle.
“Then I want us.” His hand trailed down the length of my arm, burning away the cold left by the rain. “You.” His lips brushed against the place where my neck and shoulder met, sending shivers up my spine. “All of you.”
Chapter XXVIII
Medea
“YOU’RE IN A good mood,” I said darkly. Elise and I stood underneath the awning of the dining hall, watching for a break in rain that had not let up in nearly a week.
“Am I?” A smile played on perfectly glossed lips. For the first time since I’d seen her on the island, she looked like she’d taken time to get ready this morning. Her golden hair was swept up into a complex braid, she wore a cute dress beneath her poncho, and her face glowed with contentment.
“You’ve been humming.” We’d spent the morning using a shop vac to suck up water that leaked into the lower level of the dining hall. My back hurt and it was getting harder and harder to find clothes that fit. I still hadn’t worked up the nerve to get the actual procedure done, but without the pills I’d ordered that was looking like my only option. I’d spent hours at Glauce’s house trying to convince her to lower the shield after the last few parties. She hadn’t budged, insisting she had no place left to go in the world outside the island. I was running on little sleep, and less patience, so I was having a hard time not taking her good mood as a challenge.
“Weird.” Elise glanced at me. “You’re being all glum and moody and I’m being all bright and chipper. It’s almost like we’ve swapped places or something. What’s up?”
I scowled and motioned at the sheets of rain awaiting us the moment we stepped out from the shelter. “Need I say more?”
Elise cocked her head, gold eyes flickering over me in that way that seemed to pierce right through me, pulling out all my secrets and peering into my very soul. “Yeah.”
For the thousandth time, I considered telling her. Asking for help. But what could she do? She was as trapped here as I was; she just didn’t realize it yet. “I’m not feeling well,” I said instead.
Elise raised an eyebrow. “I thought you had super healing.”
“Yup.” I gave an exasperated sigh. “Screw it. This is never going to let up.” I darted out into the rain.
Elise jogged after me. “Is this really the first time you guys have had bad weather?”
“Hardly. Tropical storms are a thing, you know. But . . .” I glanced around, making sure nobody could overhear us in the deafening downpour. “Let me show you something.”
After leading her to the cabin that Jason and I shared together, we picked our way through the living-area-turned-office. I hated this room. Jason had crammed the once-open space with a giant desk and had every spare inch of wall covered with bookshelves.
I glanced down the long hall that led toward the bedroom, debating popping into the restroom to grab a towel before I decided not to bother. The second I stepped back outside, I’d be soaked again anyway. Instead, I rummaged around in Jason’s desk until I found a stack of printouts showing satellite weather maps.
“Okay.” Rain slammed against the roof and the windows, almost drowning out my voice. “So you can’t see it in the pictures, but our island is here.” I pointed to a patch of blue ocean. “And there’s the rain. Notice anything strange?”
“It’s only over the island?”
“That alone would be weird enough, but take a look at this.” Shuffl
ing the papers, I laid them out on the desk in a line. “These are the aerial images that have been taken over the last week.” I watched Elise expectantly. “Do you see it?”
She frowned, looking from photo to photo. I saw the moment it clicked. “Are those—?”
“Numbers.” I traced over the clouds with my fingers, seeing it so clearly now that I don’t know how I’d missed it before Jason outlined them for me. Sure the clouds were wispy and out of focus, but they definitely formed the shapes of numbers. “Ten.” I moved to the next photo. “Nine.”
“Eight,” Elise pointed to the next photo, “Seven.”
A shiver ran up my spine as she counted the numbers down to four.
“It’s a countdown,” she realized, sounding a bit awed. “Way to up the creep factor. Wow.”
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “The question is, what’s it counting down to?”
Elise picked up one of the photos, staring intently at the spot where the island should have been. “How many people know about this?”
I twisted a lock of my hair around my fingers. “Just us, and Jason.” If the rest of the demigods found out the gods were counting down to something, they’d panic. Jason would have to do something or at least make it look like he had an amazing plan. I swallowed hard, trying not to show her how worried I was. “We’ve sent out a warning to the other demigods that something is up and tried to summon Tantalus.”
She flinched at the name.
“And it’s like he ceased to exist. I can’t get a read on him. I think . . .” I glanced down. “I think he’s dead.”
“Good riddance,” she muttered.
I couldn’t say I disagreed, but there was something disquieting about his absence. When had the gods found him to reverse the curse of immortality hanging over him? They’d no doubt gotten our location out of him, but what else had he told them?
A thud down the hall drew both our attention.
“Is Jason home?” Elise asked.
He shouldn’t be. As soon as he’d noticed the number pattern in the clouds, he’d grabbed Glauce and gone to test every square inch of the shield. They were gone most mornings until late afternoon. “Must be. Let me give him a heads-up that you’re here.” I held up a finger and headed down the hall. I made it about five feet before I heard murmured voices.
Was he talking to someone?
A low moan froze me in my tracks.
Chapter XXIX
Aphrodite
MEDEA MADE IT about halfway down the hall then froze. She just stopped moving, her back rigid. She stood there for a solid minute, before purposely turning away from the bedroom door and returning to me. “We should go.”
Her voice sounded curiously hollow.
“Are you okay?” I glanced down the hall, searching for whatever made her freeze. “What’s—”
“He’s busy.” Her voice was icy.
“Busy? What do you mean—” I heard another thud, and this time I recognized the sound. A headboard meeting the wall.
Medea walked out of the house without comment. She didn’t seem to have a destination, but just set off walking briskly in a random direction.
“Who?” I asked, following on Medea’s heels, my feet sloshing through puddles.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Medea . . .” I reached for her.
She whirled on me, dark hair whipping at her face, tears glittering in her violet eyes. “I appreciate what you’re doing here. But if I could just have a minute on this island without a shadow, that’d be great.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’ll just . . .” Leaving her standing in the pouring rain with tears in her eyes felt wrong, but I didn’t know what else to do. “If you need me . . .”
“It’s a small island. I’ll find you.”
I nodded, but couldn’t seem to make myself move. Instead, I stayed rooted to the spot as Medea walked away, shoulders stiff, her hands clenched at her side. She managed a few calm steps before breaking into a run.
Sighing, I glanced back at the cabins, my eyes skipping past Jason’s and continuing down the arc until they reached the cabin I shared with Ares. Then I glanced back toward Medea, her running form almost obscured by the rain. Swearing, I took off after her.
She didn’t head down toward the beach or the dining hall or any other structure on the island. Instead, she ran to the side of the island that had all the pretty waterfalls and walking paths. They were all flooded now. My feet splashed through puddles as I followed her, heedless of the vines slapping at me. Higher and higher she ran until she reached the edge of the highest cliff on the island and screamed.
It was a raw, primal sound, full of fury and sorrow. The sound was drowned away by the wind and rain and the waves crashing against the rocks below, but I heard the pain in it. When she’d screamed her throat raw, she turned to me, not seeming at all surprised to find me behind her.
“How could he?” she demanded.
I opened my mouth, then closed it. I had no advice here. Gods weren’t by nature monogamous. But there was a difference between being in an open relationship where all the parties involved knew where they stood and cheating. Lying. Going behind someone’s back. Breaking their trust. “I don’t know.”
“I gave up everything for him. Everything. The things I did for him, Elise. . . . I—I—” She broke down.
“I’m sorry.” I pulled her toward me, away from the sheer edge, and held her until her tears were spent.
“What are you going to do?” I asked when she pulled away.
She wiped her face. “Do you mind . . . can we keep this between us for now?”
“Medea, you can’t—” I drew back in surprise. “You’re not going to pretend this didn’t happen, right? You can’t just go back and act like—”
“If he finds out that I know. . . . I have to figure out what I’m going to do first. He’s all I have.” Her voice cracked. “If he apologizes, if he makes promises, I might—I can’t talk to him about this. Not until I have a plan.”
“You don’t have to stay here. You could leave.” She’d be safer off the island, but I couldn’t say that.
“How?” she demanded with a bitter laugh, then held up a hand, cutting off my response. “I’m just asking for time.” Medea leveled a stare at me. “Time and silence. Can you do that?”
I nodded. “I can.”
“Good.” She drew in a deep breath, gathering her composure, and swiped beads of rain off her forehead. “We should get back before anyone starts to worry.”
“Medea.” I fell into step beside her. “Who was it?”
“Some girl. I could hear—” She broke off, shaking off the memory. “Which means it’s either Glauce, Otrera, or some poor charmed woman from the staff. So it could be anyone, really. Like I said, it doesn’t matter. He’s the one breaking vows.” She fell silent for a moment. “I don’t think he would . . . do that to someone charmed. But—” Her voice went to that scary fake-bright place. “I guess I don’t really know him that well, after all, So who knows?”
“I DON’T KNOW why I’m so surprised,” I told Athena that night in the dreamscape. We’d already gone through the whole “pack away your feelings in a box” exercise and recapped all things terrible since my creation, so we’d moved on to a chat about today’s events. “Or why it even matters to me.”
Athena folded her perfectly manicured hands on the wooden table. “Because you consider this demigoddess a friend and no one enjoys watching their friends suffer.”
Slouching down in my chair, I considered that. “I guess.”
“I’m more concerned about your relationship with Ares.” Athena gave me a level look.
“Me too,” I admitted, shifting positions in a futile attempt to find comfort in her rigid, wooden chairs. “I’m scared I’ll get lost in
it. In him. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“For the longest time, Zeus defined me,” I explained. “Everything about me, every aspect. Even now that he’s dead, I’m still struggling to figure out what was me and what was him. But as soon as I was free of him, I got involved with Ares the first time. Then he left and that became a part of me.” Trailing off, I stared down at the wooden table, my face burning with shame. “I was willing to do anything, be anything to get his approval. Then Poseidon made me question pretty much every aspect of my existence in a paragraph.”
“I don’t follow.” Athena leaned forward, her gray suit pressing against the edge of the table.
Drawing in a deep breath, I filled her in on all the horrible things Poseidon had said to me on the cruise ship, smiling when Athena said something unkind about the sea god under her breath. “It shouldn’t have affected me like that, but I don’t know enough about myself to have a firm grip on me, you know? I don’t even know if I’d realize if I was changing. I can feel myself doing it for Persephone all the time, but when I look back, I can’t figure out what’s different.”
“One of the drawbacks of being created is that our formative relationships occur as adults. Early relationships have a tremendous impact on our identities. It just feels a bit more . . . dysfunctional when those relationships occur between equals.” Her lips pressed together in a thin smile. “I’d like to go back to what you said about Persephone, because I think she’s one of the earliest, and likely the least destructive, influences on your persona. Can you think of any examples of her influencing you where you did retain some sense of self?”
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