by Hayley Todd
He stood silently, giving me time co adjust to my surroundings. “Wanna talk about it?” He asked, gesturing for me to walk alongside him as we headed through more curving twists of forest.
I followed, half a step behind so he could lead the way. He didn’t hesitate anymore, allowing me to catch up but letting me feel like I could hold my own too. I appreciated that. I wasn’t a fan of showing my weakness and I didn’t exactly want his touch right then. His warmth only reminded me of Carson and my heart ached for him.
I wasn’t sure what had happened but I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him just yet. I felt around in my pocket, sagging in relief when I found the necklace there. It frightened me but it held some sort of connection to Carson, and I wouldn’t let that go.
“We’re almost there,” he said, accepting my silence as my answer. I hadn’t meant to be like that but my mind was flitting through a million thoughts and I just couldn’t spare the thoughts for conversation.
“Good,” I replied, unsure of what else to say.
He was right, of course. We hadn’t been far. It only took the better part of an hour to cross the last stretch, breaking through the trees into a clearing.
There was a large field between the house and us, but I recognized my father’s proverbial palace. It’s peaked roof jutted out across a rapidly brightening sky. I traded a worried glance with Eolis and we made our decent down toward the house.
Crossing the field was easy compared to the hours long trek through the woods. The hilly slopes farther from the tree line molded easily beneath my feet. I kept my focus there, telling one foot to move forward, then the other.
I had been thrilled at the thought of going “home”, but now, the idea of an empty, cold bed frightened me. I wasn’t certain that I wanted to be there anymore.
But, I needed to be. So, I pushed forward, against my better judgement, and the pain ringing in my heart.
A figure came into view as we neared the rear entry of the house. They were huddled forward, as though chilled by the crisp autumn air. They stood still against the wind regardless.
We grew close enough to see the figure and I was already in his arms, painful tears streaming my face. Anton brushed his fingers through my hair, shushing me softly. He rocked me against his chest, letting me sob into his neck.
I felt him look over at Eolis but I didn’t care. I wasn’t worried about him right then. I had an indescribable pain within me that only Anton could fix. Right then, I needed him.
He leaned forward without another word, looping an arm beneath my knees and carting me into the building. I was glad that he had found me. I still wasn’t sure that I could’ve found my way anywhere in this building. Plus, I wasn’t entirely sure that I had a place to find.
Where would I go? Carson’s suite? It was all I really knew here. It was the only place that I’d ever said. But what good could that empty hall of rooms do for me? In two years, I’d rarely had a bed alone. I wasn’t ready for that.
I didn’t even know where Anton took me. The identical doors swarmed past like a kaleidoscope, spinning before me in a dizzying spell. After what felt like an eternity, Anton stopped, swinging a door open with one hand.
I wasn’t within a clear mind as we entered, but I could still see the room’s extravagance. It opened onto a dining room, branching off into a kitchen on one side and a living room on the other. It had light hardwood floors with stair steps up into either room, creating a seashell shape.
Anton didn’t stop, turning toward the living room and bouncing up the steps. The back of the room held a hall that was lined with a dozen doors. Anton chose one, swinging it open and carting me inside.
The room inside was a modern styled beauty. The main part of the floor was made of a light wood, stretching up to a raised platform covered with dark carpet. The bed rested there in its center. To the right, on a platform raised to a different height, held a small living room set with a flat screen TV. At the level we stood to the left, a hall stretched into a huge bathroom.
Anton shifted me over to the bed, tugging the blankets back with one hand. He rested me amongst the sheets, giving me a moment to snuggle in before covering me up.
He dropped to his knees, leaning toward me. He propped himself on one elbow, running his finger across my forehead. I knew when he started drawing from me by the wash of relief through my heart and soul. The pain eased away from me, burdening him instead.
I felt almost normal when he pulled away. I think that bothered me a little on its own. I had needed Anton, and his power, but to not feel the ache within my heart at Carson’s absence, felt like a betrayal.
He backed away from the bedside and I threw my hand toward him, terrified of being left alone. He smiled fondly down at me and crossed the room, climbing onto the other side of the bed, pulling me onto his chest. It reminded me of Carson, though Anton wasn’t warm like Carson was and though Anton didn’t hold the same draw. But it was pleasant, my pain leaking away as it came.
An overwhelming exhaustion surged through me. The pain was keeping me awake, keeping me going. Without it, I was a shell. I blinked hard, my vision going blurry and my eyelids fighting to droop.
“Thank you,” I breathed, forcing the words out. They slid out in a slur, my sleepy exterior winding down.
He brushed his fingers over my forehead again. “Always,” he replied, letting me drift off into black, endless sleep.
The wolves poured out of the building, led by a furious Aphrodite. She daggered glares in my direction as she went, lifting them from the floor in some cases and leading them out.
The other “gods” were quick to follow, realizing that their cause had been stunted, if not outright destroyed.
I watched them flow out of the double doors, keeping a watch over Eris as she left. As she reached the doors, she glanced over her shoulder, her pale hair falling to the side so those violet eyes could stay trained on me. She shot me a grin that made me bitterly uncomfortable and exited without a word.
She would be waiting in the garden. I clenched my fist, further crumpling the paper that Eris has pressed into my palm. The words there in elegant script read “Meet me in the gardens, when the feelings herein fade. I have a gift for you, from Hephaestus’ hands made.”
I had to bite back my bitterness at the line of poetry. Could anything in our lives be straightforward? We spent so much of our time with cloak and daggers, altering the lives of humans in a bid to make ourselves even more worshipped among them.
Despite her vanity, I was really pretty curious about what she might be giving me. Eris gave nothing without a price, but Hephaestus could make some pretty impressive things. What could he possibly have for me?
The room emptied pretty quickly, everyone headed out in either a sulking brood, or on to cheerier things, feeling triumphant. There were low murmurs of chatter, but no one truly spoke until only Athena, Hera, Zeus, Artemis, Apollo, and Hermes were left alongside myself. Zeus was the first to approach me and it was evident that he was still seething, though he seemed uncharacteristically sheepish.
He approached me, his hands drawn into clenched fists behind his back. “Thank you for stepping in back there,” he said, looking down to where I lounged in my chair. I nodded to him, unsure what other response he needed.
“I will not let Mount Olympus become another hub of fighting and war,” I explained, looking around the room. There were smears of blood splattered in various locations, the bodies that had created them already vacated from the room. Two chairs were broken, their splinters littering the marble floor. In one spot near the door, the marble had cracked, a web of division driven through the swirls of the design.
Zeus cleared his throat beside me, noticing the interior carnage as I did. “Yes. It would seem that there will have to be effort made to avoid such encounters in the future,” he replied. He watched me for a moment, though my gaze did not grace him, before he turned to Athena and Hera and they all spoke in low voices. After a moment, they too
made their leave from the room.
As they exited, Artemis leaned against the table, looking at me carefully. “So, that’s it,” she said. I wasn’t certain what she had meant but still, she stared at me.
“What’s it?” I asked.
Her brother leaned against the tabletop beside her, gazing at me. “So, you are the power behind all of Zeus’ furious lore,” he explained, watching me.
I froze for a moment. If I admitted to being stronger than Zeus, it may change the way they regard him and for that, he would not be happy. I shook my head. “Some things have been misinterpreted as his will, but he’s no fresh babe either,” I replied.
They both leaned back in unison, looking into the open air, as though reading answers there. Artemis smiled, reaching across the table to clutch my hands in hers. “You did well, Sage,” she said. Her grin was like the morning sun, balming and cleansing any fears or dissent.
I smiled back at her, appreciative of her willingness to let the matter go. She knew, as did Apollo, that Zeus wasn’t all he was cracked up to be. It was hard to fear a man that you had watched grow to the position that he had attained. The king doesn’t seem as intimidating when he was always around you growing up, like the screw-up uncle that you loved but had never asked for.
There had been a time when Zeus was nothing but a pup, subservient to a more ancient god-like force. They had been bloodthirsty meddlers, who enjoyed nothing more than destroying the lives of others for their own pleasure. Well, most of them anyway.
If there was any credit I could give to the current era of “gods”, it was that we were more benevolent than our predecessors. Some of us cared far too much about the affairs of humans, but even then, those individuals jumped through every hoop required of them. To start a war, they didn’t just strike down dozens of leaders. They poked and prodded in just the right ways to get the humans to fight amongst themselves. Maybe that wasn’t the proper way to inflict their power, but it was definitely effective.
Artemis slipped back in her chair, talking quietly with Apollo now. I bid them both goodnight, pushing myself free of my chair, and they beamed up at me with twin grins on their faces. “Goodnight, Sage,” they chimed simultaneously. If ever there were an argument for the unique communication of twins, it was their relationship.
I had only barely stepped through the doors when Hermes approached me from behind. He ran a fingertip along the exposed skin of my shoulder, sending a shiver down my spine. I twisted to put him in front of me, instead of leaving him at my back and he smiled down at me.
“Hello, Hermes,” I greeted, wanting to keep this encounter short. I wasn’t scared of Hermes exactly, but he unnerved me. Maybe it was because I found him to be quite pleasing to the eye. Or perhaps it was only because I knew of some of the more...malicious things he had done.
He gave me a knowing look before speaking. “So, will it be Sage or Harmonia now?” he asked. I went stiff for a moment, having forgotten about our conversation about names for just an instant.
“Ah, yes,” I replied, “Adonis.”
He grinned back, more playful yet. He touched my face and I fought against a more violent response that stabbed through me with its need. “Are you headed off to your meeting of the minds?” he asked, gazing into my eyes.
“I am,” I said simply.
He didn’t immediately release me, but watched me carefully for several long breaths. His light blue eyes shone in the near darkness of the doorway. We were caught between lighting, moonlight sheering through glass on one side of us, lamps and magick made light illuminating the room we had just left. It cast eerie shadows across his crystalline gaze.
“Be careful,” he whispered at last, watching me for some kind of response. I nodded sharply, detaching his fingers from my face with the motion. He dropped his hand to his waist and smiled again. “Eris isn’t one I would trust. Neither, Hephaestus, especially with his entanglement in your family.”
I nodded. “I know,” I replied.
He hesitated, as though wanting to firmly decide that I would be safe before stepping away and allowing me to head off down the halls, into the maze of corridors that would lead me to the gardens.
Chapter Nineteen
I meandered down the halls, biding my time and hoping that I ran into no one else on this venture to meet with Eris. I didn’t exactly know what I was walking into but didn’t want the rumor mill spinning every step as a personal injustice to one of dozens of “gods”. I really didn’t need a personal war layered over the real war that was already building.
Fortunately, my path remained clear, no one diving free from the shadows to implicate me. The corridors were eerily quiet right then, not a soul to be heard from or found. Everyone had dispersed, heading back to their own homes and headquarters. A level of tension still rang throughout the building, pressing against my skin, like a prying hand.
The halls leading to the garden got progressively more ostentatious as I went, walls adorned with large paintings, still lifes, portraits, hanging tapestries, golden plated items on every surface. It was truly dizzying, like walking through a palace instead of what amounted to a prison.
We weren’t required to occupy Mount Olympus, but we didn’t fit in well with our human counterparts either, so this ended up being a better home for most of us. While the general populous revered us, they were...needy. Dwelling amongst them required essentially full time occupancy of a temple, which became tedious quickly. For some of us, it was easy enough to put on the show and the humans were eager to donate blood to the cause. Those that controlled the air, water, and earth, seemed to be most easy to please.
Add a little water, a little air, churn the earth, it all made for quick altering of the human’s lives, providing livestock, water, or fertile fields where there had been none. For those like myself whose powers proved to occupy mostly violent tendencies or mental powers, the temple dwelling became a very individualized process. We were treated like kings and queens, but with that, came expectations of magic and miracles in return.
The corridor I sauntered down opened at the end, exposing a large archway that fell upon a moonlit garden. There were large square planters sporting trees and a variety of bushes and ferns. Some were local, from villages and towns at the base of the mountain. Others had been brought from lands far away and were cultivated by those with magick in those areas.
The Deities were nothing if not travellers. Those of us that possessed the skill to soar across skies or the oceans had been to far reaches of the earth, some yet to be discovered by historians and politicians. We enjoyed that little benefit of what we were. I was not ashamed to count myself among them. I had at times, become one with the sky above, sailing over hundreds of thousands of people, towns, and cities. I enjoyed that little bit of alone time I could score myself.
I emerged through the archway at a leisurely pace, glancing around to find no one nearby. Now, that was odd. The gardens were regularly traversed by our kind. They were spelled by witches to never allow sunlight to leak through, making them a perfect setting no matter the time of day. It was a rare sight to find only a few there, let alone to find them standing empty.
I was surrounded by trees, plants, and flowering blossoms, leaving a fresh and living aroma all around us. The air smelled sweet, the night crisp and clear. Though the temperature was warmer on the grounds during autumn than in most places I had visited, it dropped several degrees atop the mountain, sometimes more. It wasn’t entirely rare to find snow here, though it hadn’t gotten cold enough for that yet.
My body ran several degrees colder than that of humans, making me, and others of my kind, more tolerant to the colder weather. It didn’t mean that I didn’t get cold, exactly, but it took colder temperatures for me to get uncomfortable. Heat could be a comfort but too much of it could be suffocating.
I walked aimlessly through the garden, seeking any sign of life and finding none. I rounded a corner, passing by another crop of trees and plants, hanging over
the path. I shoved aside the long leaves dangling in front of me, passing through the moonlight into a clearing sporting a large wooden bridge across a shallow pond.
At last, atop the bridge’s arch, stood Eris, watching fish dance around in the water below. She extended purple-white energy from her fingertips, letting it brush the mirrored liquid below, dispersing waves across its surface, then she pulled it back, watching with fascination as the power swirled through the air before relinquishing it and letting the purple fade into mist on the wind.
She didn’t seem to notice my approach, but I knew better. Eris was not one to be easily startled. Actually, it was usually she who did the startling. The moonlight bathed her, casting eerie shadows across her face, which held an expression that was innocent enough.
I rounded through the trees, approaching carefully. I stepped up onto the wood of the bridge and only then did she speak.
“I worried for a time that you would not come,” she called, still watching the fish do their lazy rounds about the pond. She seemed at ease, though she dug around in a satchel across her waist, fiddling with something there. Her violet eyes were alight when she finally turned to look at me as I neared.
“It was a valid concern,” I responded, forcing the words not to sound malicious. I leaned over the railing of the bridge, watching the fish too. They were large things, golden-orange and white designs spiraled over their backs. They weren’t native to Mount Olympus, one of dozens of things that had been imported, but they seemed to thrive well enough here.
“I come bearing gifts,” she said, ignoring the comment. She had a smile on her face but that was rarely an indication of good tidings when coming from her. She dug around in her bag some more and lifted out a long silvery chain. At its base hung an ornate silver setting, wrapped partially around a large blue sapphire gem. She lifted it high, dangling the gem between us.