Theta

by Lizzy Ford

  Opening my eyes, I didn’t have a chance to register my surroundings. I could actually feel Cleon in my head, as if the chip in my brain was alive and wriggling. Disgusted, I froze. His initial disorientation about what happened and where he was gave way to anger.

  Some things are about to change, he promised me. Starting with the independence I’ve allowed you so far. I’ve waited for you to come to a point where you might see things my way, but I can wait no longer.

  I shook my head without freeing my mind of the wriggling. I’d been granted too much freedom, and it was affecting his ability to lead and meet with people who could further …

  It wasn’t my thought. Another image was in my head, this one of Cleon. Too fuzzy for a vision, too crisp to be a dream, I determined it was a memory.

  I rested my hands on the railing in front of the Oracle’s display case.

  ‘Four twenty five,’ said the Oracle. ‘You will understand what true power is.’

  I shook my head, and the memory faded.

  “I can’t handle you in my head,” I said to Cleon and squeezed my temples. “You’re confusing me.”

  The sound of someone banging on the front door jarred me from my attempt to distinguish whose thoughts were whose. My hands fell to my sides, and I sucked in a deep breath. I read in Cleon’s mind why he had sent the guards to fetch me.

  Four armed soldiers entered, each carrying a tranq gun that was drawn and ready. As if I had every put up a fight. Cleon knew well enough I would never purposely hurt anyone. Except Niko. I might smack him, if I could do it without him retaliating.

  I lifted my hands like a good criminal. I left the villa in their company and walked quietly to my fate. The back of my head pulsed with warm pain, and I purposely kept my thoughts and mind trained on my surroundings and nothing else that had occurred this day.

  How horrible was it that I wasn’t safe in my own mind? No one else was either, if I failed to prune my thoughts and allowed my mind to drift to those I cared about.

  I looked up at the sky, as I did every time I was outside at night. I kept hoping I’d see Mismatch, framed against the moon or coasting among the clouds. Whenever he failed to appear, my heart sank. Maybe Niko wasn’t the person I wanted to punch most in the world. Maybe the shadow titan was. Not a warrior, Lantos would probably dissipate into shadows if I tried to hit him.

  My escorts led me to the House. This time, we didn’t go to the public rooms on the first floor or the offices on the second. We went all the way up to the third – and uppermost – floor, which appeared to consist of living spaces. According to the images of Cleon’s playing through my mind, the hall was trifurcated into three apartments. More guards stood outside the first door and lined the corridor inside, before we reached the second door. The second hallway was much shorter, and at the opposite end, several more soldiers stood before another metal door leading to a third space.

  This is your new home, Cleon said into my mind. I am on one side, Lantos on the other.

  “Gods. The only way to make it worse is if you put Niko in my closet,” I muttered.

  That can be arranged, if you run wild again.

  One of my escorts flung open a door, and I entered. He closed and locked the door behind me.

  My new apartment was fully furnished and decorated in bland, neutral colors. It was nowhere near the size of the villa. I explored my new home quickly. The apartment consisted of two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a tiny office where racks of clothing had been placed, kitchen and living-dining room combo. It was hard to be disappointed with it, when I had only ever known a room I shared with another girl before arriving to the villa, but I did miss having my own balcony.

  Cerberus was there, watching me. Even Cleon couldn’t get rid of the mirror leading to the underworld or my new pet. I had to assume my view into Hades realm would be permanent.

  I crossed to the picture window in the living area and touched the window to open it. A light shock swept through me, and I cursed.

  “Did you electrify my windows?” I asked Cleon.

  Since my welfare depends upon you not doing anything foolish? I absolutely sealed your apartment. It’s not electricity, but one of Lantos’ abilities.

  “Gods-damn Lantos,” I muttered. I touched the window again, only for a second shock to knock me back a step, stronger this time than the first. Whatever Lantos had done, it wasn’t electricity. His power, derived from his Titan father Lelantos, had always had the ability to cage mine. It was how Herakles and the priests at the orphanage originally hid me from the gods and repressed my power, and Niko and Cleon used it at will to control me.

  You are confined to your apartment. Cleon seemed content.

  “No shit. For how long?”

  Until I determine you may leave.

  I hated my life. The impetuous side of me wanted to drop into the other world and seek out the first Oracle for advice, while the rational voice in my head reminded me of the danger.

  I’m planning another demonstration in two days.

  “You should already know I won’t cooperate, and you can’t make me, since hurting me hurts you.”

  I may not need your assistance at all.

  I chewed on my lower lip. I didn’t want to imagine Cleon could siphon off my power and use it, but I wasn’t seeing any other explanation that would make him this confident.

  I drew near the window and peered out. I had been out-maneuvered, manipulated, and trapped the minute I set foot outside my forest. The sense of helplessness inside me was growing, as the walls seemed to close in around me.

  What was I supposed to do, when anything I tried was instantly transmitted by my own mind to my enemy?

  If you agree to listen to the voices of the gods, I’ll free you for an hour tomorrow, Cleon offered.

  “How could I possibly refuse?” I replied sarcastically.

  I’ll leave that option on the table.

  Another image flashed through my mind. He was seated in his office, across from two men in suits.

  “No,” I breathed. “The last thing I want to do is see what you do. It’s enough to have your thoughts polluting my mind.”

  You need to hear this.

  I couldn’t push him out of my mind. I started to panic, when I understood what was happening and peered at the two visitors through Cleon’s eyes.

  The discussion with the political representatives from northern Maryland was not going well. Before this, he had never had any reason to suspect Zeus’ power was starting to fail. According to the two men, the safe zone was retreating several meters every day.

  “Several meters?” My words were spoken through Cleon’s lips.

  “Yes, sir,” one of them answered. “We have reports from our contemporaries south of DC of the same thing.”

  I shook my head and exited Cleon’s mind, stunned by the claim. Was it true, or was he trying to manipulate me somehow with this information?

  It’s true. This is why I need your power, to create pockets of safety for those willing to pay me for it, he said.

  Cecelia’s magic was fading, if she couldn’t safeguard the protected zone any longer.

  You refuse to listen. Cleon was angry. She’s not protecting us – Zeus is!

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I turned on the television and cranked up the volume, until I could no longer hear my thoughts or Cleon’s.

  When I was stressed, I tended to eat. I summoned a bowl of popcorn drenched in caramel. The bowl appeared on my coffee table. At its center was another of my Mismatch statues.

  “Where are you?” I whispered and plucked up the figurine. “Why were you in Hades?” The visions were fresh in my head. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Adonis on the wrong side of the curtain separating our world from that of Hades.

  I went to the side of the apartment, where Cerberus sat on his side of the curtain. He lowered his head, as if expecting me to attempt to cross over.

  “Relax,” I said. “I’m looking for someone,
not trespassing.”

  Darkness filled the space behind him. It was impossible for me to know if Adonis was there or not. Thinking about my friend being dead filled me with raw, cold fear at a primal level.

  Was Lantos right to facilitate Adonis leaving? Would I kill him, if he hadn’t gone?

  Chapter Thirteen: Silent Queen

  Alessandra vanished before my eyes without completing her sentence.

  I remained where I was, in case she reappeared. Five minutes passed. The sounds of night filled my ears, and I gravitated back towards the tree. I felt much safer in the branches, out of reach of any predators and likewise hidden from people. I had no idea what they would do, if they saw me. As a child, I had reacted to Mismatch with delight and fascination. As an adult, I had terrified myself peering into a pond last night. My reflection was unrecognizable.

  My stomach growled, and I scowled. Leaping upward, I returned to the branch on which I’d been perched when Alessandra suddenly appeared. I’d been hungry since I first transformed the night before, panicked, and flew away from Kyros. I didn’t expect to return to a human form with dawn, or to be turned back into a monster when dusk fell.

  Alessandra’s seconding of Paeon’s explanation – that this was the true nature of the curse of the Bloodline – resonated within me, as if part of me already understood this to be the case. I had believed we turned into stone grotesques, and this was the curse. Mismatch, when we met twelve years before, had said as much. I never thought twice about why he was an animated monster, but I did now.

  I found myself astonished for the second time in the past several months. First, Lantos betrayed me. Now, I discovered Adonis was a member of the Bloodline. A man I was leery of, because of the butcher he was rumored to be, I couldn’t have been any more shocked than when Alessandra revealed the truth. Theodocia had never spoken well of him. He was universally feared, and his methods of torture were renowned within the elite political circle to which we belonged.

  I settled onto the branch, unable to reconcile the butcher of DC with the kind creature that sought to warn me against the curse so long ago. That we had spent the past five years in DC, and he never spoke to me again, struck me as odd. How had he attended security meetings and never addressed me directly? As the security chief of SISA, he was entitled to pass through my royal guard at will, and he had never made any attempt to visit, either. Nor had he settled on my balcony, as he did twelve years ago, in his beast form.

  What had prevented him from returning as he promised to do so when I was a child? I packed my bags minutes after he left and waited for days for him to return to take me away, as he swore he would.

  Alessandra’s hasty explanation only inflamed my curiosity – and managed to pierce through the callous I was normally adept at maintaining around my emotions.

  Adonis … Mismatch … whoever he was … he abandoned me when I was six. I still recalled that pain – of having a friend and hope briefly and then losing both without explanation.

  My stomach felt like it was eating itself. The scent of a rabbit reached me, and my mouth watered. I clenched my jaw closed, horrified by the idea of killing an animal with my bare hands and eating it raw, as if I were … well, a beast. I was afraid to test my nighttime body. No matter what Alessandra claimed about this being natural, I couldn’t fathom how I had been a normal human for the entirety of my life and suddenly I wasn’t.

  What of my children? Did they transform when I did?

  Were they safe from whatever was happening to me?

  Questions left me frustrated, and fatigue wore me down. As a human, I was completely naked, and I’d sat down at the base of this tree yesterday and sobbed most of the day away, alone, and scared. The confidence I felt leading an army disappeared when I considered no one would ever follow a monster.

  A new smell hit me, and my nose wrinkled. I hunched back against the trunk of the tree and held my breath. Able to see at night almost as clearly as I could during day, I searched my surroundings, until I spotted movement.

  Humans smell unappealing, I thought. A split second later, I realized it was likely a survival mechanism so I didn’t try to eat someone.

  “Your Majesty?” The summons was accompanied by the too loud movement of someone without discipline walking through the forest.

  Kyros wasn’t close enough to hear my thoughts. I didn’t know if I wanted him to be, either.

  A second human’s smell reached me, and I twisted. This man navigated the forest with stealth. Not even my acute hearing picked up on his movement until he was within three meters of me, but I could see him. Herakles was alive, though he wore bandages across one cheek. The mouthwatering scent of fresh blood wafted to me, as if he were hurt during the escape from our meeting with Theodocia.

  “Is she here?” Herakles called to Kyros.

  “I sense her but can’t see her.”

  Herakles stopped almost directly beneath my perch. I didn’t move.

  He looked up, and his features softened into a lopsided smile. “Hey, there,” he said.

  It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. If I saw someone who looked like me in the tree above my head, I’d run away as fast as I could.

  “Come on down, Phoibe,” Herakles said. He removed his backpack and crouched.

  I don’t want you to see me like this, I told him.

  Kyros reached the massive ginger and spoke my words aloud.

  Herakles snorted in response. “I brought you dinner.” He pulled a fat, juicy, raw steak from a bag and held it up.

  Gods, I had never smelled anything so delicious!

  “Come on,” he said again. He threw the steak into the air.

  I snatched it on instinct and tore into it with my fangs. Before my human side had a chance to be appalled, I’d ripped the steak apart and swallowed without chewing.

  Herakles tossed another up to me, then a third. After inhaling the large chunks of meat, I immediately felt stronger. My stomach no longer complained, and my head cleared. I crept forward on my branch then dropped to the ground near them, bracing for their reactions.

  “Still prettier than I’ll ever be,” Herakles said and indicated his face. He tossed the last of the steaks into the air.

  I leapt two meters off the ground with little effort and snatched the food with my mouth, gobbling it up.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I released a sigh.

  “Kyros told me what happened. I’ve seen your kind before,” Herakles continued. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling, but we’re here to take you home.”

  I can’t go back like this.

  Kyros verbalized my words.

  “Of course you can. Do you have any idea how uplifting this will be for morale?”

  I made a strange sound of objection that needed no translation.

  “But it will,” Herakles said. “Who would you rather follow into battle? A little girl half your size, or a monster?”

  Offended, I hopped up, caught myself with my wings, and returned to my branch.

  “I mean that nicely,” Herakles said. “The armies will follow you either way, but seeing their commander-in-chief strike fear into the enemies with one look … it’s priceless.”

  “We agree,” Kyros said. “This might not work in the political arena, but it will with the military.”

  What they said made sense – to an extent. Was I ready to be a monster, though? To accept this as my fate and show others what I was? Did this mean the curse was upon me, despite the measures I’d taken to prevent it from befalling me? Were my unborn heiresses the reasons why I had changed?

  “She’s thinking,” Kyros said to an expectant Herakles.

  Herakles dug out a canteen of water from his backpack and tossed it up to me. I accepted it and drank my fill with some awkwardness, not accustomed to the fangs that were in my way.

  I reviewed what Alessandra had told me, both of this curse and the day the world was going to end – in four months, when I was due.


  “What?” Kyros asked, picking up the thoughts.

  Say nothing of Alessandra to Herakles, I warned him. Or I will eat you one night.

  He didn’t even blink, accustomed to my thoughts of murdering him. “That other part though. That sounds important,” he said.

  I know when we must attack, and what will happen if we don’t.

  “Whatever you’re talking about, let’s do this at the encampment,” Herakles said, glancing between Kyros and me. “The forest is infested with SISA and military patrols.”

  Some part of me balked, and I backed up closer to the trunk of the tree. Was it instinctive for the beast side of me to want to remain hidden, or was this my fear?

  “We might want to make ourselves comfortable,” Kyros said and pulled off his backpack. “She’s not ready.”

  Herakles studied me, and I studied him. I didn’t understand how accepting he was of my appearance, or how he could look at me with warm compassion when I was still on the verge of panicking.

  “Okay,” he said. “When you’re ready. I brought you clothes just in case.” He perched on the trunk of a fallen tree.

  Kyros settled onto the ground.

  Why did you not heal Herakles? I demanded, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the man-god to reveal his true intentions.

  “He didn’t want us to,” Kyros said. “He despises gods almost as much as you.”

  Herakles uttered a few of his more creative curses. I didn’t blame him. All things considered, his adopted daughter was basically a goddess. What did he think of her power? Was he as confused as I was sometimes when confronted with the human face of Kyros, knowing he was also possessed by a god?

  When they were comfortable, I ventured out of the tree once more and crouched nearby. Twisting to Kyros, I motioned for him to tell Herakles what I needed my second in command to know.

  Kyros explained what I had learned about the last day before the apocalypse. To my dismay, Herakles was already made aware of my pregnancy. Nothing caused the former Olympian so much as a flinch, for which I was grateful. He listened carefully, shifting forward in interest.