When I peeled my bandage off, blood welled to the surface of the cut. Slowly. I wasn’t in danger of bleeding to death or anything, but it should have stopped by now. A solitary red drop fell to the wooden floor with a plop before I could stop it.
“Thanks.” I tore open the alcohol wipe she passed me and dabbed the cut, hissing at the sting. How was I still alive? Had the Steele affected Adonis through our bond? I hadn’t felt any new agony from him since Calais punched him in the cell, but Steele attacked power, and my power was in him. He doesn’t seem to be affected by the poison he gave you, I reminded myself. Just the pain of the side-effects. So he was probably fine. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Medea watched me without comment while I applied the new bandage. Determination glittered in her eyes, and her mouth drew into a tight line. “So you didn’t know he was a god?”
I sank down on the bed. “Not you, too.”
“Hey, look at me.” She waited until I complied before continuing. “I’m not mad at you. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m wondering exactly what I should be accusing him of. Is it true? Did he . . . ?” She couldn’t seem to say the word. “Did you think he was someone else?”
My heart seized in my chest when I realized the full breadth of what she was asking. I couldn’t accuse him of that. Even if I could lie, I couldn’t pretend something so terrible. It would make a mockery of everything I’d been through at Zeus’s hands, every sanctuary from those memories Ares had offered me.
Medea watched my struggle play out on my face for a full minute before turning away from me. “How did you survive the Steele?” She punctuated the question by zipping Elise’s suitcase closed.
“I—” I stumbled over my words, still knocked off balance. “I don’t think it affects demigods.” Glancing around the room, I searched for something else to pack, trying not to see Ares around every corner. But we hadn’t had much. Neither one of us had felt right using any more of the demigods’ limited supplies than we’d had to. I spotted a bunched-up, black shirt kicked against the wall and grabbed it, clutching the fabric.
It smelled like a mixture of briny-ocean air, lavender laundry detergent, and burnt cinnamon. Tears pricked my eyes as the strange combination of scents evoked a thousand memories. His laughter, his smile, his burning touch.
He’d find me. It was just a matter of staying alive long enough to be rescued. I folded the shirt gently, and placed it in the bag.
“But you’re not a demigod,” Medea said, tearing me from my thoughts. She turned away from the suitcase to study me, her violet eyes narrowed. “Are you?”
“Wasn’t the whole point of this—” I held up my arm “—to put that rumor to bed? Come on, Medea.”
“You’re not Elise. The way Adonis—” She broke off with a sharp shake of her head. “Whoever he was, when he talked about you . . . you weren’t just some person he was fooling. He cared about you, and the only other person I heard him talk about like that was Aphrodite. You’re a goddess. I know you are. So how did you survive the Steele?”
I leaned back on the shredded bed, trying to affect a casual air despite the thudding of my heart against my chest. “If you think I’m a goddess, why did you summon me? Why ‘port me with the rest of the island? Why not just let me leave with him?”
“Because, I needed—” Medea sighed, flexing her hands as if they could grasp the words she searched for. “I trusted everything Jason said about you guys, but you—you’re not like he described. You’re different.” She spoke faster, the words coming out in a tumble. “So when I figured out what you were, everything I knew turned upside down. But I’ve believed too much, too fast before. And this time, it’s not just me. All my people are on the line. I needed to talk to you. To figure out who you were, what you stood for, whether or not I could trust the rest of you. I wasn’t expecting to get overthrown.”
So she hadn’t brought me along because she thought I needed saving. Anger burned in my chest, but I shoved it down. I didn’t have a right to feel betrayed despite the danger she’d put me in. I’d pretended to be someone I wasn’t for months to gain her trust. And now, for better or worse, it looked like I had it.
But could I trust her? She could lie, and she had every reason to hate me. “Did you poison Glauce?”
Tears filled her violet eyes, and she jerked away from me. “It was an accident.”
Oh gods. I closed my eyes. I’d really wanted to be wrong about that.
“I was going to heal her as soon as I got back.” Medea’s thick voice seemed to echo off the walls of the suddenly too small room. “I just needed to leave the island for a minute. She wasn’t supposed to—”
My mind flashed to an image of Glauce writhing on the floor, seizing as her body reacted to the poison. Did Medea know anything about how poison worked? By the time Glauce went still, it had been too late. The damage had been done. It was amazing she’d lived long enough to get to the hospital. The idea that she’d just be fine while Medea ‘ported away to go run whatever errand she’d deemed life or death was laughable.
She has no concept of how people work, I realized. Medea was used to healing instantly. And unlike gods, she didn’t come with an endless font of knowledge to fill in the gaps. Stupid, stupid girl. Gambling with lives she couldn’t begin to understand.
“Please don’t be mad,” she begged, her narrow shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. She stood in the midst of all the destruction, looking all too at home there. “I didn’t mean for her to die. I thought I’d be fast enough.”
“I believe you.” I worked my jaw and made a decision. If there was one thing I’d figured out in my time locked up with Adonis, it was that I couldn’t get out of this on my own. But just because I was essentially helpless, that didn’t mean I was limited to just sitting around and waiting to be rescued. I could make my own allies. Medea might be a loose cannon, but she was a powerful one. And if I misjudged her, well, at least no one else was here for me to drag down with me. “How long have you known?”
Her words came fast, as if she were eager to please. “I didn’t for sure until I summoned the real Adonis, but I think I’ve suspected something for a while. Your story never added up, but if I saw you for what you were, I’d have to claim responsibility for what we did to you. You weren’t conscious when they rushed you into the hospital, but if you’d seen . . .” She shuddered, pale arms rising to give herself a tiny hug. “You were garish, streaked with blood, and he watched you like if he just looked at you hard enough, he could take your pain, magnified times ten if that’s what it took. The idea of you guys loving like that, or being so fragile, it doesn’t fit what we want to think of you.”
“And what’s that?” I narrowed my eyes.
She looked away, her gaze settling on the splinters that used to be my desk. “You guys have been the thing that goes bump in the night; any bad luck that has ever befallen us got laid at your feet, because historically, there’s truth to that. We never thought of you as individuals. As people who love and feel pain. And your glamour gave us all the excuse we needed to keep buying that lie.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m ready for the truth.”
No. She wasn’t. “What do you want to know?”
Medea picked up the suitcase and set it by the doorframe before glancing around the room as if looking for something else to keep her hands busy. Finding nothing, she cautiously sat next to me on the bed. She cringed, watching me with hopeful eyes. “You were poisoned and scratched with Steele. How did you survive?”
“I don’t know that I did.” I glanced at my arm. When I saw a thin red line already streaking across the bandage, I got a sinking feeling in my chest.
“W-wouldn’t you already be dead?” Medea’s hands worried at the comforter, plucking stray feathers from the rent fabric.
“Maybe?” I shrugged. “See
, the reason Steele is fatal to us is because of the way it resonates with our powers. From what I can gather, the poison you guys made works on two levels. It binds to the powers, attacking them from within us, which makes it work like poison in the traditional sense. When our powers work to heal the damage the poison causes, they get attacked that much more, and it turns into this kind of bitter cycle of death. If you can turn off the powers or send them elsewhere for a bit like I did, then you should be safe while the poison works its way out of your system. But this—” I held up my arm. “This should have stopped bleeding by now if I healed like a regular person. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen when my powers come back. I’m willing to wager it won’t be good.”
But there was no help for that, so I wasn’t going to think about it right now. Plus, I was used to my body being turned into a ticking time bomb. I’d either find an out or I wouldn’t, but frankly, I was tired of worrying about it. “What else do you want to know?”
She chewed her bottom lip, looking troubled. “What happened to the real Elise?”
“She didn’t want any part of what DAMNED was up to, so she let me take her place to infiltrate you. She’s hanging out in the Underworld until this is all over.”
At Medea’s panicked look, I hastened to add, “It’s a lot nicer than it sounds. They have coffee shops and everything. Literally anything you can imagine can materialize there. Last I heard she was designing her own line of clothes for the souls.”
“Good.” Medea’s violet eyes glowed with equal parts excitement and relief. “Now I want to know everything else.”
So I scooted to the headboard, leaned back, and told her everything. Quickly. Otrera would be back any minute.
I told Medea the good, the bad, the ugly. The way the gods were before, how they were now, how nothing was cut and dried. That we weren’t perfect, but we weren’t all monsters either. I told her what had been done to me and what had been done for me, leaving nothing out. It might have been a mistake to trust her, but at this point, I was pretty much screwed either way. Besides, it felt damn good not to equivocate with her for once.
The more I spoke, the easier it got. I’d been forced to recount my story to Athena over and over again. And she’d been right. The repetition gave it less power.
“I knew it.” Medea’s smile lit up the dim room.
“Yeah.” I threw her a bone. “You were right about me being a goddess. Good catch.”
“Not that. I mean—” Color bloomed along her pale cheeks. “I was right about that, too. But I meant about us. Didn’t you feel it? The moment we met? We have a connection, you and I. We’re the same.”
How many times had I made that comparison with the other gods? I saw myself in each of them. Athena had pointed out I tended to identify most with their less desirable qualities, but even that felt like wishful thinking. I’d searched so desperately to find something of myself reflected in others because I’d needed to see it in others before it felt real to me. I’d never expected to hear that longing, that desperate need to identify with something, anything, in anyone else’s voice.
I wasn’t sure how I felt being on the other side of that observation.
She leaned closer to me on the bed, her cold hands reaching out to grip mine in excitement. “Think about it. Our parents used us, turned us into things. We both found hope in the person who saved us from them, and then they turned around and betrayed us in the worst possible way. I mean, you’re me. We are the exact same. I knew you understood. I just could never put my finger on why.” She threw her arms around me and buried her face in my shoulder. “It makes so much sense now, us being best friends.”
I patted her back as a loud burst of thunder rattled the room. I knew the mechanics of social skills, but they were by no means my forte. I’d only been alive for three years, and those years had hardly been filled with typical people and situations. False confidence was all well and good in unimportant situations, but the emotionally charged stuff was rockier ground.
Or maybe it just hit too close to home.
“He used me.” Her voice muffled as she spoke into my shoulder, recounting her own discovery of the hidden hospital wing. The way Jason had used her blood to create the Steele rather than using it to heal injured demigods. How she hadn’t been fast enough to heal Glauce. About her pregnancy and termination. And about how she was pretty sure Jason had impregnated her on purpose. “I have all this power, but I couldn’t leave. If anyone else found out what I could do, I’d end up being used as a cure-all all over again. That’s why . . .” She drew in a deep breath and pulled away, drying her eyes. “I want to join the Pantheon.”
“Wait, what?” I pulled away in surprise.
“I figure I’m more god than demigod, right?” Medea’s feet dangled off the edge of the bed. She kicked them back and forth and the action reminded me of how young she was. “And after everything that happened with Jason, I can’t stay here. But, I kind of sort of don’t exist on paper anymore, and I’ve got to figure the Pantheon can help with that.” She brightened. “I can teleport us off the island today. You, me, and Otrera. Well, once I recover. Anywhere you want. We can meet with your people and leave all this behind us.”
“You’d just leave your people?” She’d said as much before when Otrera was in the room, but that was when we’d been talking about just getting off the island. There was a world of difference between deserting and completely turning coat.
“I practically killed myself to protect them from the Pantheon and buy them time to make a truce, and they turned around and chose to follow Narcissus.” She pushed off the bed to stand, the movements bouncy, as if her tiny frame could hardly contain her excitement. “I’d rather you guys not smite them, but I don’t feel obligated to stay behind and fight their war. I’ve done enough.”
Persephone would be horrified by that logic, but it made total sense to me. “Well, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think I could survive another ‘port like that. Besides, the Pantheon isn’t just going to welcome you with open arms.” And I was in no position to promise her safety. “You need to offer them something in return. Something big.”
“Like what?”
“Persephone’s your best shot as an ally, and her biggest concern at the moment is finding her husband.” Resolved, I pushed off the bed and grabbed my suitcase. A quick glance around confirmed there was nothing else that could be salvaged as we walked through the house.
Medea followed me out of the cabin into the never-ending drizzle, pulling my door closed behind us. “The guy who dragged her kicking and screaming down to the Underworld and forced her to marry him? You’d think she’d be happy to get him out of the way.”
“The guy who what? That’s not even a little bit what happened.” As we walked along the muddy path to Medea’s cabin, I caught her up on how Hades had saved Persephone from the God of Winter by offering her shelter in the Underworld and the epic romance that followed.
“Sounds like instalove to me,” Medea grumbled.
I shook my head. “Well, he did have the benefit of being able to see inside her soul. Hades knew exactly who she was, who she’d become. She didn’t have that advantage, so it took her a while. But even once they were both on the same page they had their—” What was I doing. “That’s a whole different story. My point is, she absolutely wants to find him.”
Medea’s gaze went thoughtful. “He twisted it. Jason, I mean. He took their story and manipulated it until it fit his message. Misrepresenting divine, interpersonal drama is one thing, but what else did he lie about? Is anything I’ve learned this last year real?”
“Everyone bends and breaks the truth,” I said bitterly. “That’s why you have to do your own digging.”
She held up a hand over her head, as if that could shield her from the constant deluge of rainwater. “I could summon Perseph
one to the hidden hospital wing, and she could—”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “I’m not going to let you summon the Queen of the Gods to an island full of pissed-off, armed demigods.” Carrying the suitcase made my arms ache. Blinking rainwater out of my eyes, I squinted at Medea’s cabin, looming a mere four houses away and wondered how I’d make it. “We need to get rid of the Steele. The poison, too. You said they’re making it from your blood?”
When I glanced at her, she nodded.
“Okay, then we need to get rid of any that they’ve got on hand too, make sure they can’t make any more weapons once you leave. We know where it is now. And if they’re using your powers to create them, it should be simple enough for you to lock into everything with your power signature and ‘port it away. It’s just a matter of getting past the shield.”
“That might be hard to arrange.” Medea looked troubled. “But we can try.”
“Oh, we can do more than try,” I said flashing her a grin. “After all, we know exactly where they put troublemakers.”
Chapter XII
Persephone
“I AM NOT TURNING him over for you to torture!” I stood in the center of my mother’s brightly colored living room, too worked up to sit on the floral print couch. The faint smell of the ocean still lingered in the air despite every window being open.
“I realize that in your naïveté, your refusal to subject the young demigod to interrogation may seem admirable.” Athena sat primly on the couch. She’d changed into a tan power suit and lost the bun, opting for a stern half-up, half-down hair style. “But let me assure you, it is in fact quite foolish.”
Venus Rising: Book 3 Aphrodite Trilogy (The Daughters of Zeus 6) Page 8