by Diana Tyler
“That’ll warm you up,” Philip exclaimed as he sprinted back, his face glistening in what little moonlight shone above them. “I can’t say what the issue is with you and your brother, Chloe, but whatever it is, it isn’t true for all Ashers.”
Chloe was speechless. Over the last few hours, confusion, anger, sadness, and frustration had all coalesced inside her. But now she felt numb to almost all of it—all of it except anger. It boiled and churned in her chest, rising inside her until it forced its way onto her tongue.
“I can’t believe you two.” She looked at both Philip and Ethan. “Hector is alone. He’s scared. He needs his father. He needs a friend, someone like me who knows what he’s going through and can be there for him. Even if it’s just sitting and listening to him vent or cry or whatever.” Hot tears stood in her eyes, and then slid down her cheeks.
Philip put his jacket back on and looked up the hill as Charissa flashed the brights on and off. “You have a good heart, Chloe. You always have had . But, and I mean no offense in saying this, sometimes you have to use it to give a little tough love. You know what I mean?” He clapped her shoulder. “Come on. It’s getting late.”
Chloe dug in her heels. “You can go. I’m going to stay here for a while.”
Philip raised a disapproving eyebrow. “Your parents wouldn’t be very happy with me if I left you out here.”
“I’m eighteen, Uncle Philip,” said Chloe. “According to you and Ethan, that makes me adult enough to run and hide here if I want to.”
“Chloe, this is different than the situation with Hector,” said Philip, in his best avuncular tone.
“Maybe. But that doesn’t change the fact that Hector is acting out because he needs help. And that’s assuming he ran away on his own.”
Philip waited a moment for her to elaborate. “What are you getting at? You think there’s foul play involved here?”
Chloe glanced around the lake, swearing she could see the monstrous forms of Deimos and Phobos darting through the darkness. “I can almost guarantee you there is.”
She paused, forcing memories of her time in Hades to fade. This was no time to act paranoid. “I apologize if this in any way sounds disrespectful, but you don’t know what I’ve been through.” She looked at Ethan. “What we’ve been through. I may not have all my memories of this life back yet, but I have all the memories from my old one, the life that would have happened if the councilman’s mother had succeeded.”
“Mania,” said Philip.
The name itself stirred another breeze in Chloe, one more frigid than the last.
“There’s a possibility,” Ethan said, “that the rebel spirits are up to something.”
Chloe gave a mild laugh. “It’s more than a possibility, Ethan. The eruption, Eione, my doma vanishing…there is definitely something going on, and my gut’s telling me that Hector’s involved. Or will be soon if we don’t find him.”
Charissa honked the horn, and Philip looked up the hill as the headlights flashed again. “This…” He scratched his neck. “This is a lot to take in.” He nodded toward the car. “I’d better get her home. Ethan, you want to come along?”
Ethan wrapped his arm around Chloe’s shoulders. “No, sir. I’m going to stay, too. Thank you, though.”
“That’s it?” Chloe asked as Philip turned toward the hill. “You’re still going to go home, after everything I just said?”
Philip sighed and slid his hands in his pockets. “You and your brother are the Vessel, Chloe. I’m just a regular run-of-the-mill Asher. Besides, Hector will most likely take advice from you a whole lot better than from me.” With that, Philip took off with his doma’s speed. He called down to them from the top of the hill: “At least let your parents know you’re here.”
“Let me know if Hector makes it home,” she shouted back, though she knew in her heart he wouldn’t.
Ethan reached for Chloe’s hand, but she tucked it inside her jacket pocket before he could take it. “What is it with my family?” she said. “Are they just as cowardly in this timeline as they were in the old one?”
“Are you not holding my hand because you think I’m a coward, too?” Ethan asked.
Chloe shined the flashlight around the lake, half expecting to see Deimos claw his way across the water, just as he had in the River Lethe before forcing her to drink from it. She imagined, as she often did, how different people would be if they knew what hell was like; if they only knew the utter emptiness of Asphodel.
“No,” said Chloe. “My hands are cold.”
“Mine are warm.” Ethan held out his hand, but she just stared at it. “What’s going on? You’ve been acting off the last two days.”
Chloe turned off the flashlight. She didn’t want him to see her cry. She didn’t have a reason to, not one that made sense, anyway. “I’m just working through some things.” She almost believed he would accept that as an answer.
“Like?”
“Like…” Chloe’s eyes scanned the sky, searching for a star amid the miasma of ash and low-hanging clouds. “Like wondering if you really love me.”
Ethan answered with silence, turning his face to the lake as a barn owl hooted in the distance.
“Did you hear me?” Chloe asked.
“That’s ridiculous, Chloe. You know I love you. What’s making you question that?”
Chloe flicked on the flashlight and shined it on the place where they’d parked his truck the night of the storm, the night she’d received her doma. “Do you remember the night I got my powers?”
Ethan started to speak, then hesitated and turned his gaze toward the hill. “The night we broke up. I told you I loved you then, but you didn’t say it back.” He looked at her, his eyes sad, penitent, in the darkness. “I was so stupid to break up with you. I guess my ego got the better of me.”
I did say it back. You just didn’t hear me because the noise from the wormhole drowned me out. Chloe wanted to say the words aloud, but her heart was too stunned to let her speak. He had broken up with her right after saying that he loved her. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t have broken up with me.”
She made her way toward the hill, just as she had in her flashback. The only difference between this night and that was the lack of a storm. Tonight, there was little wind, and the sky was cold and quiet. There was an eerie feel to the air that floated like dead leaves on a breeze, refusing to fall to the ground.
“Chloe, I told you,” Ethan called after her, “it was stupid, and I’m sorry. This isn’t fair. I’m a different person in this world than I was in the old one.”
Chloe spun around, pointing the flashlight straight at him. “If you loved me, you would’ve said something to your father. In case you don’t remember, he almost got my brother and me killed.”
Ethan exhaled a white puff of air as he joined his hands on top of his head, then he dropped them to his sides as he walked closer. “He was a different person, too, Chloe. What good does it do to be angry at someone for doing something they’re not even aware of, something that happened in a different universe?”
“Different places, same people, Ethan.” Chloe lowered the flashlight as fresh tears surfaced. “Do you remember how we got back together?”
Ethan paused to think, then shook his head.
“Me neither,” said Chloe, drawing her hood over her head. “I guess we never did. I’m going to look for Hector now.”
“Chloe.”
She waited, hoping he would reassure her or try to tell her she was wrong, expecting that he would at least try to turn this around. But he just stood there, ready to accept that she would leave him there in exactly the same way as before.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ZEUS
Hector hadn’t spoken a word all night. He hadn’t even touched his food, which had been served on a silver plate by one of the ravishing Horae. Only his eyes had moved, sweeping back and forth across the Xirolakos Valley, bouncing from table to table as the rebel spirits enjoyed their
banquet. If he remembered his history correctly, there were twenty-one immortals in all: nine Olympians, and twelve Titans. Strangely, they all seemed to be getting along, laughing and joking and dancing as if there was much to celebrate. And perhaps there was.
They were the best-looking people Hector had ever seen. He wasn’t one to stare, especially not at men, but he couldn’t help himself. Each one was exquisite, like a marble statue come to life, chiseled and polished to unblemished perfection. He felt like a child in their presence.
Although the immortals weren’t much bigger than he was, there was an aura about them that made them seem so. The men’s voices were louder, deeper, the women’s voices more resonant, and the sound seemed to carry all the way up the slopes. Their feet resounded like claps of thunder as they danced. Their skin, whether olive, bronze, or ivory, glowed even brighter than the rows of cressets around them. And their eyes, when they glanced at him, seemed to see straight through his soul.
Most of the men wore armor like Ares’, although two wore dark purple cloaks and laurel wreaths on their heads. These two sat at either end of the largest table, smiling and laughing, clapping along to the music’s beat. Before one of them—Zeus, the god of sky and thunder—a dove descended again and again, carrying the bread-like ambrosia in its beak. Zeus received the food in a golden bowl before passing it around for the others to have their fill.
Ares leaned over and whispered to Hector, “Zeus and his birds. I’ve never seen anyone so happy to be reunited with anything in all my years.”
Ares had told Hector that if he did his duty, he and his family could also eat of the ambrosia and become immortal.
Hector thought the women were almost too beautiful to be real, each one in a different way. Some were short and full-figured, some were tall and lean, and others were somewhere in the middle. The one thing they all had in common was glossy hair that fell well below their waists: straight hair like shimmering sheets of precious metal; wavy hair the color of amber wheatfields.
One goddess wore her jet-black hair in a long braid down her back. Hector noted that, like him, she kept to herself, seemingly disinterested in the revelry around her, and the golden goblet and bowl of ambrosia before her.
Hector’s head grew heavy in his hands as the hours passed. His eyes stung with fatigue, and the honeyed wine he drank only made him long for sleep even more. How long did meals on Olympus last?
One of the men—an effeminate man who wore only a simple tunic—was playing a pipe and prancing up and down the tables, stopping only to sing verses of strange songs, the lyrics of which were in Próta.
“What’s he singing about?” Hector asked Ares, whose eyes also appeared glassy, but whether it was due to tiredness or drunkenness was unclear to Hector.
Ares turned his goblet absently before taking a swig. “You. He’s saying that you will soon be the flame of Aphrodite, and the envy of myself and Hephaestus.” He nodded across the table at the couple seated opposite them.
Aphrodite was dressed in a sheer, cream-colored robe, just a touch darker than her porcelain skin. Her green eyes shone like emeralds between tightly curled tendrils of strawberry blond. Her long slender neck was layered with necklaces, each one inlaid with gemstones that flashed in the torchlight. Beside her sat her husband, Hephaestus, a man as ugly as Aphrodite was gorgeous. With bulging, uneven eyes, a potbelly and a pug nose, he stood out in the throng of immaculate immortals.
Aphrodite winked at Hector, sending a rush of heat through his limbs. He’d never been flirted with before, at least not by anyone he liked, and certainly not by the most beautiful woman in the history of the world.
“Watch out,” Ares whispered. “Hephaestus might not look like much, but he deals out justice with more wrath than the furies.”
Hector’s blood cooled as he caught Hephaestus glaring at him, daring him to check out his wife again. “Noted.”
“Dionysus!” Zeus called out.
The dove that had attended him flitted off into the dark. The musician stopped prancing and put away his pipe as every head turned to the speaker.
“It is rude to sing in our ancient tongue before our guest,” Zeus said, gesturing down the table toward Hector. “Now that we’ve had our fill of food and drink, let us welcome him with the hospitality for which we are known.”
A rumble of laughter circulated through the valley, though it did not appear that Zeus meant this as a joke. He pounded his fist on the table. “Man-slaying Ares! Stand and introduce our mortal prince to his hosts.”
Ares stood and saluted Zeus with his right fist pressed to his heart. “Father Zeus of the thunderbolt. As all here well know, I am ever the most bellicose of both Olympus’ and Othrys’ peaks.”
The gods nodded and muttered amongst themselves.
“The morn of our liberation,” Ares continued, “I beseeched you, Father”—he nodded to the full-bearded god at the other end of the table—“and your father, Cronus, to tell me what I could do to win back your good favor.” He laid his strong hand on Hector’s shoulder. “You two conferred, and in your mercy dispatched me, lover of quarrels and bloodshed, to fetch the Asher who Eione claimed might be agreeable.”
Hector felt himself shrink beneath Ares’ hand. What had Eione seen in him? Self-pity? Probably. Desperation? Likely. Frustration? Definitely. Of all the Ashers on Petros, he was perhaps the most easily influenced. Already, he’d been persuaded to drop everything—not that he had much going for him—and run away with an immortal warmonger who’d won him over with promises of glory and immortality. It was too late now to question whether any of those promises were sincere. Hector was unreachable, untraceable, and, despite his doma, nonthreatening. Even if he could snatch Zeus’ eagle and steal its flight, he’d no doubt be shot down by one of Artemis’s arrows.
“Is every young Petrodian male as handsome a specimen as this?” Aphrodite’s pale cheeks flushed rose pink as she spoke. The others laughed. Even Zeus smiled.
“Heavenly daughter,” said Zeus, “the lad has not yet spoken, but already you have marked him for a lover. He may be simple, for all we know.”
“Simple is better than homely.” Dionysus’ clear voice rang out.
Every eye swung to Hephaestus, who sat glowering in his chair. “And homely is better than demigod, Dionysus,” he shouted, his swarthy face red with rage.
Zeus pounded his fist on the table again, and with his other hand pointed at Hector. “Do you wish to prove to Aphrodite that you have your wits about you?”
Hector rose halfway as he cleared his throat. “I, uh, uh…”
Hephaestus chortled and nudged the man next to him, a giant in comparison, with a broad, protruding brow and sapphire hair that curled atop his shoulders. Against the oak tree behind the man leaned a silver, three-pronged spear.
“Poseidon…” Hector muttered under his breath, but the immortals heard perfectly.
The sea god himself smiled proudly and gave a noble nod of his head. “Indeed. I am pleased to discover my memory has not completely faded, despite Apollo’s best attempts.”
“Can you say anything other than my uncle’s name?” Hephaestus asked Hector. “Or do you only stutter?”
Hector rubbed his moist palms on his pants and watched Aphrodite squeeze her husband’s hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t really have anything to say.”
Dionysus tapped the pipe against his thigh and yawned.
“It’s a pleasure to be here,” Hector added quickly, before sitting down and taking an anxious sip of wine.
Zeus stroked his beard, then raised his fist to the sky and flexed his arm, as if trying to pull down the clouds. A white bolt of lightning crashed down into Hephaestus’s bowl, shattering it into tiny pieces and flinging hot sparks into the blacksmith’s face. “Open that misshapen mouth of yours one more time, Hephaestus, and I’ll send another thunderbolt to close it.”
Without a word, Hephaestus pushed back his chair, sprang to his feet and stalked off into the shadows. Aphr
odite excused herself and followed, every eye watching as she went.
“Now,” said Zeus. He stood and gestured to a limestone pedestal on his right, on top of which was a small, nondescript wooden box. “You are very powerful, Hector, but your doma is not without its defects. The All-Powerful reserves perfect power for himself alone.” He glanced at Cronus, who grunted with disgust before plunging his hand into the bowl of ambrosia. “We Olympians, and our Titan forebears, have relinquished the maddening lust for complete preeminence. If we cannot have heaven, we shall compete for Petros, which was our proper inheritance at the start.”
All the gods and goddesses cheered—except for the woman with the black braid that was now draped elegantly over her shoulder. Her expression was blank, but her sea-gray eyes were piercing. She stared unblinkingly at Hector.
Which rebel spirit was she? Hector couldn’t remember all of their names, only those who had seemed most frightening to him as a child: Apollo, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Ares... Perhaps this was Hera, Zeus’ wife, who, according to the stories, was always at odds with her husband.
Zeus lifted the box and displayed it for all to see. “Tonight, all of you here bear witness to this exchange.” He pulled a tiny object from the box and held it between his thumb and forefinger. Squinting at it, he held it to the firelight and smiled. “Fate has taken a fortuitous turn in delivering both the dýnami and this heroic Asher to us.” His purple cape fluttered majestically behind him as he strode the length of the table toward Hector.
“Do not forget the oath!” Poseidon bellowed behind him.
Zeus’ temples bulged as he fought to maintain the amiable look upon his face. “Of course not, brother,” he said quietly. He snapped his fingers, the sharp sound like a hailstone striking a tin roof.
The eagle swooped down from the branches, a silver goblet in its beak. Zeus took the cup and set it in front of Hector. “The commitment you have made must be sworn to, my friend.” Zeus’ gray eyes studied Hector for no more than a second, but it was long enough for a god to form a strong opinion. “I gather you haven’t willingly shed blood before.”
