“Griffin is a traitor.” Aidan said darkly from behind me. I stopped walking and turned around to face him, frowning deeply.
“I’d appreciate it if you gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
“He sold us out.”
“So he could stay in Olympus because he knew I was in the Underworld, because he knew I would be able to come back and help you, help the others. He’s our eyes and ears and he’s risking himself to do that.”
“I think you’re giving him too many benefits.”
“He’s received no such thing if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
“No, I just mean I think you’re painting a very naive portrait of him when he just did it to save his own ass. Griffin - Hades - is selfish through and through and his motivations are only selfish ones.”
“You’re wrong.” I said stubbornly, turning away from him. “You’re biased because you’re Zeus and you two have a millennia worth of rivalry going on.”
“Whatever you say Jailbait.”
My footfalls were harder now, more like stomps as I petulantly pouted and carried on. I couldn’t believe that Aidan would just disregard me like that, sticking to his own - wrong - opinion. I needed to help Griffin, to prove to the others some how that he was better than they all thought because I knew he was.
“Valentina!” Aidan shouted my name like he had been doing it for a while and I stopped short, barely missing the sudden edge of the cliff as Aidan grabbed the back of my jacket and pulled me away.
“You need to be careful.”
“Sorry.” I said sheepishly, “I was mad.”
“I could tell. Look, I’m sorry about Griffin but...” He frowned and sighed, the next thing he said making him look far more pained than his ribs ever had, “you’re right. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m being biased because of what happened with Savannah.”
“That was Hades, not Griffin.” I said pointedly, even if deep down inside I knew now that they were one in the same.
“Right.” He said softly, guiding me away from the edge. Aidan began to speak again when a voice cut him off.
“Well, look who escaped.” I glanced up in horror, seeing the same boy from Atlas’ office arms crossed and smirking at us. “Take him.” He nodded at Aidan and I turned around to see two others had joined him.
“Oliver, thanks so much for taking the time to join our meeting- do you mind?” Aidan turned around to see who had grabbed him, stepping forward into me trying to pull away. I stumbled forward giving Oliver the chance to catch me, holding me up.
“Persephone, wasn’t it? Consort of Hades... And yet here you are, disobeying your husband by helping Zeus.”
“A daughter’s love never strays.” I muttered, trying to shake off the grip he had developed on my arms.
“Charming,” he said drily, spinning me around to face Aidan. “You’re going to play along Aidan.” He said simply, his tone indicating there was no room for arguments. Aidan scoffed, rolling his eyes.
“Good luck getting me to.”
Oliver sucked in a deep breath sharply, easily lifting me off the ground suddenly.
“Hey!” I struggled, trying to fight him as he moved us both back over to the edge Aidan had barely saved me from.
“Let me try again: you’re going to play along Aidan.” He gripped my arm tightly but at the same time he shoved me toward the edge, letting my body half dangle over it.
“Stop!” I screamed trying to grab him, to grab anything, so I could pull myself back up.
“Aidan?” Oliver asked passively, staring at Aidan whose eyes flicked from me to the Titan.
“Go ahead,” he said, calling Oliver’s bluff. “There’s plenty more where she came from.”
“Is that so?” Oliver’s grip loosened and I screamed, grabbing his arm, clinging to anything that might keep me from plunging to my death. I might be an immortal Goddess but there was no way of knowing whether I could withstand falling thousands of feet cliff-side. Aidan’s eyes quickly jumped to me, a little more panicked this time. Oliver’s hand slipped a little more as did my body over the edge and I felt another cry tear itself from my throat.
“Aidan, stop... Please!”
“Fine. Fine, I’ll play nice. Let her go.”
“Let her go? Well if you insist.” Oliver smirked and just like that he let go of me. Waves of horror washed over me, my eyes slamming shut as I imagined myself free falling to my death. But that lightness in my stomach, the one typically associated with falling never came and I opened my eyes to find myself floating in midair.
“Fascinating parlour trick.” Oliver said in wonder. I glared at him, swinging myself forward and jamming my legs right into his chest.
“You jerk!”
Oliver landed on his butt and I managed to release myself from the midair hold, landing on top of him in a heap. I scrambled around, trying to pin him down. I knew he was bigger than me, stronger too, so I did the only thing I could think of and pressed my hands down into his neck.
My stomach coiled, a darkness appeared suddenly encouraging me to press harder. It wanted me to effectively cut off his airway and I wanted to as well. The other two Titans saw what I was doing and one of them released Aidan quickly, coming to help. Aidan took the chance to throw the other Titan off him, sending him over the edge before summoning another lightning bolt into his hand and throwing it directly into the back of the Titan reaching for me.
“Jailbait, get off him.” My hands squeezed harder, watching in fascination as his face turned a deep shade of red before slowly turning purple. “Valentina!” I started, looking up at Aidan in surprise before glancing down at the man under me. I jumped back and climbed off him, running my hands down my jeans like I could wipe them clean.
“Sorry.” I said, watching Aidan wield his lightning bolt and point it down in Oliver’s face.
“You’re going to go back to Olympus now and you’re going to tell Soren that we’re coming. Tell him he was a fool to think we were just going to sit back and let you destroy everything we’ve built.”
Oliver laughed, not even shrinking back from the lightning bolt in his face, “you’re not as powerful as you think you are Zeus. You’re losing your grip and before you know it any hope you have of regaining your throne will be gone. Even if we don’t bring you down there is another who will. Your time is up, you thought you could stall it by putting us all to sleep but you’ve only sealed your fate.”
Aidan’s jaw tightened and I saw him release the lightning bolt but Oliver disappeared before our eyes and the mountain cracked open where the bolt landed.
“Who was he?” I said, looking up from the ground to Aidan.
He stood frozen for a moment before slowly turning around to face me, “Prometheus.”
“The - Prometheus?”
“Yes. It was his idea to bind me to the rock as a back up plan.”
“He doesn’t let go of his grudges easily does he?”
“No, he doesn’t.” Aidan finally turned to look at me, surveying me for any damage before taking a deep breath. “What was that?” He nodded down at the blackened crack where Oliver had been.
“I don’t know.” I muttered softly, feeling ashamed. “Something came over me, something wanted me to choke him...”
“Well, whatever it was you need to get it in check. I don’t imagine murder is something your conscious will take lightly.” I frowned knowing immediately that he was right. I hoped it wasn’t Persephone that had made me do that; I also hoped it wasn’t something I was going to have to contend with for the rest of my life.
“I know.” I said, nodding my head sullenly as I glanced back up at Aidan. “Are you okay? You look exhausted...”
“Well, I’m not healing as fast as I would in Olympus and so it’s taking me a lot longer to recharge from using my powers than usual.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” He said, starting to walk again though there was a tired swagger to his movements.<
br />
I couldn’t help but think smugly that if Zeus really had put everyone to sleep to avoid his own fate he was just as selfish as Hades was. If anything I had learned in the Underworld it was that those fates the Moirai dealt out were final and no matter what you did there was no re-cutting of your thread. If there really was someone who was going to bring down Zeus Aidan needed to accept that gracefully, it might be his only way of survival.
But Aidan was a fighter; he wasn’t going to go down without giving it his all. Even now, when I was sure he was exhausted and wanted nothing more to go somewhere and curl up to go to sleep, he trudged on.
But to make matters worse the elements were beginning to reflect how Aidan was feeling. The sun was slowly swallowed up by hundreds of clouds that seemingly blew in from nowhere, making it even harder to see in front of us as we walked. Whatever turmoil Aidan was dealing with, it was withholding the sunlight from us.
The sky rumbled overhead and I turned to look over at Aidan, “rain is not going to make this trek easier.”
“I know.” He said shortly as another rumble of thunder shook the mountain. I stopped walking for a moment, casting my eyes back up to where we had come from and watched as the rocks shook in their place. They weren’t fastened very tightly and I knew that, no matter how immortal we were, an avalanche would hurt.
“Aidan, you need to get ahold of yourself.”
“It won’t rain.” He said firmly.
“That’s fine but it might hail rocks down on us if you keep letting thunder out.”
This seemed to get through to him as he looked up in surprise at the rocks above of us. He nodded his head and although the clouds didn’t let up the thunder dulled down enough that they weren’t shaking the mountain anymore.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“I think there’s a lot to talk about and the problem is no one wants to start the conversation.”
Aidan didn’t say anything for a moment as we continued to trek along. I wondered if this was his way of dropping the subject when he suddenly broke the silence once more.
“It’s harder than you think Val.” He took a deep breath, “it’s harder than you’d think to just accept that someone else’s baggage is suddenly yours, that everything you feel might not be you feeling it. It’s hard to accept the shit storm that comes from the other person might be their shit storm but you have to weather it without their navigation because they choose when to help you. If they help you.”
“You love Savannah.”
“I’m not talking just about Savannah, but even with her I sometimes wonder if it’s me feeling that way or him. He still has these fits of jealousy when we see her talking to other people, any other people, and his immediate reaction is to do something hasty like find a girl to talk to himself. But I’m afraid that if I even give him that much of a leash he’ll go a mile and Savannah will definitely not forgive me if we slip up again.
But then there’s the whole being the King of the Gods thing… This is the second time in the month that we’ve even known about being Gods that someone has tried to take my power from me. Is this what my life is going to be like for the rest of eternity? A constant struggle to maintain my power until one day fate inevitably catches up to me? Because that’s what Oliver was saying, he was insinuating that no matter how hard I’m going to fight it’ll all be for naught one day... So I can’t help but think what’s the point?”
He kicked a stone under toe and watched it bounce down the steps we were descending, “not to mention it’s going to get old - this constant threat of usurping. I love Savannah and for the first time in my life I’m with someone who I want to settle down with - properly. I want to marry her and I want to have a family with her but can I do that if she’s always going to be threatened by that love? Or when we’re going to be constantly torn apart because I’m always going to be the target?
Since the moment I found out I was Zeus I’ve had nothing but questions and every time I get an answer there’s four more questions that need asking. It’s exhausting, more so because I have to pretend I’m fine so everyone else feels fine. It’s okay now to tell you this because it’s just us and you’re not relying on me the way the others do. I don’t want to be relied on; I’m not strong enough to be that kind of pillar of strength for someone. I need more people like you to stand at my side as my equal and take some of the pressure off.
Maybe Zeus had selfish reasons for putting us all to sleep but I think too a lot of us had lost sight of why we took Olympus in the first place. We vowed to do it better than our parents and yet we were just as corrupted in the end as they were, just as separated and individually defined as them. Atlas said it himself, we need to start learning to work together because therein lies our strength but it's not just that... Being together makes me a little bit weaker and a little bit less of a target. Why would someone come for me alone if not all the power is held in my hands?”
“From the sounds of it, you want a democracy.” I said with a small smile, “and that’s possible, but you need to tell Zeus to put aside his ego and his former feelings for people - people like Griffin and Hades. I understand his reservations about Hades; I truly do, first hand... But he’s also changed. Zeus needs to understand that we’ve all changed. That’s the whole point of this experiment, we’re supposed to work together - immortals and mortals - in order to find the harmony that was originally lacking.”
“It’s harder than you think Val.” He said softly, repeating himself.
“Harder than I think to put Zeus aside?” I arched an eyebrow at him and grinned slightly. I understood now what the Erinyes meant about the Olympians not being fully united yet. As much as Zeus was resisting the change, so was Aidan.
“You need to stop thinking about Zeus as “him” and start realising you and Zeus are one in the same. His thoughts are your thoughts, just as your thoughts are his thoughts. You might have united enough to control his power but you haven’t united enough to become one. I don’t hear Persephone’s voice anymore because I know that my thoughts are just as much hers as they are mine. In the last few hours I’ve overcome things that had it just been me I would’ve never been able to figure out alone. It’s because we’re properly united that when I don’t know what to do anymore she guides me and gives me the answer naturally. I’m sure Zeus is just scared because he’s never given up power to someone before but he can’t look at it like that, he needs to see that your power is his power.”
“You’re pretty smart, did you know that?”
I smiled sadly and shrugged, “growing up I had a lot of time for reflection and study. I spent a lot of time thinking about a lot of things, so now I just tell people what I think.”
“You’re not a mortal anymore though Valentina.” Aidan stopped walking and I came up short behind him, he turned to face me, hugging me in a very uncharacteristic fashion. “And you don’t have to make excuses for who you are. You’re intelligent. You’re a very intelligent Goddess.” Overcoming my initial surprise I hugged him back and smiled slightly into his chest.
“Thanks Aidan.”
“I’m sorry I took my anger out on you.”
“Don’t worry, I stopped taking your temper tantrums personally.”
“That bad huh?”
“Well, I know I’m not the only one.” He laughed and pulled away, suddenly feeling awkward before turning and starting to walk again.
“Well, as a King I’m entitled to temper tantrums.”
“Said every three year old ever.” I laughed at him, pausing as we both stopped to look at the expanse of grass in front of us.
“Now where?”
“Now we need to find a door, any door and get to Savannah. If she’s mortal she won’t be able to travel without us, the others though...”
“I have an idea.” The sky overhead rumbled once more and a harsh wind shook the trees. I pulled my jacket tight around me and looked over at Aidan who
was concentrating so profoundly on something I couldn’t see.
“Stonehenge you said?” He muttered to me.
I nodded, “yeah.”
Despite the cold winds that wrapped around us, lifting my hair into the air I suddenly felt warmth pulling at my stomach and curling tightly into a ball in the pit.
A crack of lightning struck down in front of us, splitting a tree in two. The half fell to the ground at our feet and the other, still barely standing, smoked.
All at once I felt fine again and turned to look up at Aidan, “that’s your idea?” I said, sounding more judgmental than I meant. Aidan laughed and opened his eyes, pointing to the smoking tree.
Approaching it slowly I saw a message written in on the tree, telling whoever found it to go to Stonehenge and to use the doors like we do in Olympus.
“But-“ I started to protest that anyone who stumbled on the tree could see the message when I blinked and saw that what I thought I was seeing was just a lightning bolt symbol.
“How did you do that?”
“Sorry, I channeled some of your powers and used your ability to make things grow while combining it with my ability to create the symbol. Any mortal who sees it will just find it strange, any immortal who finds it will see the message.”
“Clever. Your idea or Zeus’?”
He looked down at me for a moment before smiling, “both of us.”
Chapter Twenty Four
We walked for longer than I liked through the woods at the edge of the mountain, turning every so often to check to make sure no Titans or creatures were following us. We seemed lucky as we finally reached a small village on the outskirts of the forest. Hurrying to the first door we saw we pushed through, thinking hard about Savannah alone in the Amazon. We came out through the roots of a tree, both of us getting stuck and having to pull our way through.
Gods Save the Princess (Grace of Gods Book 2) Page 21
