Heart on Fire

by Amanda Bouchet

  I shake my head. She’s talking, but all I hear is noise. “Why can’t I make my lightning work? How do I get rid of these wings? I can’t protect my baby!”

  And there it is. The crushing root of my fear. The reason I’m terrified like never before.

  I stumble back, bumping into Griffin.

  Ares moves toward us, angling his head in concern and making a gruff sound I remember from my childhood. The low hum hurtles me back to a time when I still had my sister, when I was sure I’d fight harder than anyone, save the people I love, and die on my feet. It was a time when Thanos was my only God, even though I thought he was human, just like me.

  All of my earliest memories include him. Eleni and I hiding behind him, because he’s as big as a house. Thanos spending hours in the nursery, watching over us and scaring off our older brothers when they took their cruelty beyond the usual harassment. Crying in his arms before I understood how to control my tears—a skill I’ve obviously forgotten lately. This scarred, hardened, giant-of-a-man lifting me up off the blood-slicked floor after Mother beat me and then holding my hand through the hard bite of healing, Eleni always on my other side. I threw up on him more than once, usually when I was at the final threshold of pain. Thanos put my first knife in my hand, curled my small fingers around it with his enormous ones, and then showed me how to use it.

  My eyes snap up to meet those of the God of War. Persephone is wrong about who raised me. Eleni was my best friend. But Thanos was everything else.

  Ares and I stare at each other. He knows exactly what I’m thinking, and how my emotions are raging inside me right now. His wide-set eyes soften, but that just makes it worse.

  “You could have stopped it!” I lunge forward and pound on Ares’s chest, anger, hurt, and bitterness making me rash. “You could have stopped it all!”

  Griffin wraps his arms around me and drags me back. I shout, still striking out as he plants me on my feet and holds on to me.

  Ares’s expression shows just enough of the temper he has boiling beneath the surface to make me straighten up and pause. But doesn’t he understand? I saved no one. Eleni died right next to me, and I was too weak to even get up. I’ve dragged Griffin through vats of blood—his own and mine—and put him through so much. And Little Bean… Mother was in her head! What lies did she feed my baby? What horrors did she expose her to? Will they stay with her, even though she’s so tiny right now?

  Persephone spreads her hands in a calming gesture. “Zeus didn’t create humans so we could play with them like dolls, moving them here and there and filling their mouths with our own words. You’re not marionettes, and you don’t dance when we pull strings.”

  “So what in the name of the Gods are you doing?” I ask, still too seething to let this go.

  “Setting things into motion,” she answers. “Helping—when really necessary.”

  “You mean when it suits you!” My heartbeat echoes in the hollow space beneath my ribs, the place that should have been filled with siblings and family and home, but they were ripped out, one by one, or else I never had them at all. Slowly, that empty space has been filling up with people I love, but what’s to stop them from being torn from me now? “Where were you when I needed you the most?”

  A shadow flits through Persephone’s eyes. Ares’s expression tightens just before his seafoam gaze drops to the ground.

  My voice lowers, trembling. “If anyone should have been chosen, protected, it was my sister.”

  Persephone reaches out and gently grips my face with both hands. Magic thumps from her palms. It should sting my cheeks, but it just feels cool and gallingly numbing. “Stop, Cat. You need to move on. Eleni served her purpose.”

  I gasp. If she’d struck me with a hundred whips, her words couldn’t have cut me deeper, or scathed me more. I jerk my face out of her hands and lurch back into Griffin. “So you killed her?”

  “We did nothing of the sort.” Persephone’s hands fall slowly back to her sides. “Your mother and brother did that.”

  That may be true, but… I turn accusing eyes on Ares. “You were there. You let it happen.”

  Real sorrow clouds his rugged features, the kind that’s unmistakable and true. “Would you be where you are right now if Eleni had lived? Her death influenced the road you took on the Fates’ map. It brought you to Sinta. To Persephone. To him.” He nods toward Griffin. “It got you to Poseidon’s Oracle. It got you away from your mother. It brought you to where you needed to be.”

  Unbelievable! “You can’t rationalize her death like that! My life’s not worth hers. And I could have gone to Sinta with her. We could have gone together!”

  Persephone shakes her head. “Eleni had a destiny, just like you. She knew it, and she fulfilled it. She chose the road she needed to, and she took it without regret. Her life was worth a great deal, and she knew that, too. She knew how much it was worth to you.”

  I gulp back more angry words. Persephone—my Selena—has always mixed empathy with hard truths in a way that makes them impossible to escape or ignore. She’s right. Eleni must have known what her death would do to me. Did she also know it would get me out of Fisa? To Selena? To Griffin?

  Eleni had her secrets, just like we all do. I have oracular dreams. They’re infrequent, and usually apply only to the near future, but what if Eleni had visions, too? What if she saw much farther than I ever have?

  I reel in shock, remembering. She once told me the entire world was mine.

  My Gods. She knew.

  “I felt her loss, too.” Ares’s simple words neither heal nor cut, but like Persephone’s, they make me listen again when I don’t want to hear. “I was with her for fifteen years, just like you.”

  His truth hits me deep in my magic with the usual burn, and a sudden image of us all together invades my mind, both wonderful and heartbreaking. And utterly simple—as the best things are. We were outside in the springtime, away from the castle, and Eleni was practicing with her flaming birds since her Fire Magic had finally started to mature. They were still wobbly, half formed, and slow to react, but Thanos let her chase him around the field with them, running, dodging, and acting like he was scared. We knew he wasn’t, and it made us laugh. We never laughed much otherwise.

  Persephone moves forward and takes my hand. Magic sparks, and I hate it because I know she’s using her healing power to calm me down. I want to stay angry. Devastated. Eleni deserves it. She deserves my loyalty.

  “I don’t need your tricks.” I pull out of her reach again, refusing to lessen the fury in my heart. It’s been my companion for so long that I’m not sure how to function without it.

  Persephone steps back, glancing briefly at Griffin. “No, I suppose you don’t.”

  Is that hurt in her voice?

  Feeling guilt now along with everything else, I reach up, take Ianthe’s circlet from my head, and then wrap it around the front of my belt, right over where I think Little Bean is. Mother won’t reach her again with compulsion. No one will.

  “We thought she’d inherit her father’s immunity to harmful magic, but apparently she hasn’t,” Persephone says. “Or maybe it simply hasn’t matured yet.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I say bitterly. “If she lives long enough. Maybe I can even keep her alive past seventeen.”

  The Goddess’s mouth turns down before she speaks again. “You’re too adept at focusing on the negative. Think about what Eleni gave you. She taught you goodness, compassion, laughter, and love. You were sorely in need of her influence, because I doubt your Thanos was teaching you any of that.”

  “You’re wrong,” I shoot back. “He did.” He also taught me to fight to win, to see even when there’s blood in my eyes, to overcome the worst kinds of pain, and to never give up. Lessons that served me well—until today. Today was an epic example of all things not to do.

  “Nevertheless, she was your l
ight in the dark,” Persephone insists. “And she kept that spark of hope inside you alive, no matter what you went through.”

  “Were put through…” Ares mutters.

  I look back and forth between them, trying to understand, maybe even trying to accept what they’re saying instead of just railing against it. “So why take her from me? Why take my light? Wasn’t there some other path?” I’m desperate for a reason, anything to justify my loss. Maybe I’m even desperate for something to take the blame off my shoulders for something I always believed was my fault.

  “Elpis, my dear, damaged Cat.” Suddenly, Persephone is Selena again, having reduced her physical body and Olympian radiance back to human proportions. She takes both my hands in hers and squeezes hard. There’s no nip of magic, and I don’t protest. I’m still angry, confused, and hurt, but I’m also stupid and needy enough to crave her maternal touch.

  “Elpis?” I ask.

  Persephone nods. “Could you have ever truly understood the primal, raw hope you carry inside you, that you give to others now, without having experienced suffering first? Without nearly unbearable loss and pain to overcome? How can you gauge joy without knowing despair? It’s the journey, Cat. The outcome. Certainly, you were special from the start, but you weren’t born with the inner strength of a thousand men or the wisdom to rule a kingdom. You’re building them, minute by minute, as you live each wonderful or terrible day of your life.”

  A chill ripples over me. A wave of warmth chases it away. Her words resonate on a deep level, but I’m still not ready to let go of my resentment. Clearly, I’m not that strong yet, or that wise. “You let her die so I’d have suffering to overcome?”

  “We didn’t intervene to save her,” Ares says gravely. “And her death saddened us greatly.”

  Heat builds behind my eyes. “You should have chosen her. Why would anyone want me to rule Thalyria when Eleni could have done it? She was kinder. Brighter. More responsible. Gods…” I shake my head. “She was everyone’s light, not just mine.”

  “You’re wrong.” Ares looks at me, his eyes flat with pressure. “You’re everything she was, and stronger still. Your light shines just as brightly, but to see it, you had to come out of her shadow first.”

  I inhale sharply and then flex my hands, forcing away the urge to make them pay with my fists for what happened to my sister, these two who were supposed to protect me.

  None of this is even remotely fair, especially to Eleni, but could they be right? Did her death somehow trigger light inside me instead of the darkness I’ve always thought? Is that where it comes from? Is that—

  “Elpis.” Griffin unknowingly finishes my thought. He looks down at me, his eyes shining, his expression veering toward awestruck. “It’s not just an idea. It’s you.”

  Persephone nods. “More or less. She’s grown into Elpis—with your help.”

  “You mean…” I frown. I don’t know what she means. “It wasn’t in me from the start?”

  “Hope is always there in everyone, to be crushed or nurtured, held close or abandoned. Elpis is the ancient, original spark from which all hope springs, and she only seeks out and attaches herself to the selfless warrior, the one who fights not for herself, but for others.”

  My mouth opens. Closes. I have nothing to say.

  “Ares taught you to fight, but you adapted that to your own moral code. Your guilt is enormous each time you’ve killed in self-defense, but you feel no particular remorse when you do whatever it takes, no matter how violent and extreme, to defend someone else.”

  I snort, the sound raw. “I guess Elpis isn’t any smarter than I am. We’re sure to get each other killed. Or ourselves, since we’re apparently the same thing now.”

  Ares’s blue-green eyes blaze with sudden inner brightness, and a shiver tracks down my arms, leaving the hair raised. When he speaks, though, his voice holds more gruff affection than anger.

  “No one does everything alone, little monster. Not even the Gods. We have our wives or husbands, our lovers, our allies, our offspring. You had Eleni, but she wasn’t the person you needed for this part of your journey. When we put the weight of this world on your shoulders, we never expected you to heft it alone.”

  My mind skips over the “weight of this world” thing like a rough bump in the road—something to fix later. “So you made Griffin for me.” Pressure bears down on my chest, the heaviness coming from a feeling of unease I can’t seem to get rid of, despite Griffin’s assurances. “The man the Origin couldn’t intimidate, dominate, or accidentally kill.” Those were Athena’s exact words. I’ll bet Griffin remembers them, too.

  Ares folds his massive arms over his chest and looks sideways at Persephone. She’s more than a full head shorter than he is and not vibrating with magic now that she’s in her human form, although she’s still stunning, powerful, and otherworldly in her own way. She nods, indicating that he should go on.

  Good Gods, they’re sharing.

  “We knew you’d be headstrong,” he says.

  Griffin snorts. I guess that’s putting it mildly.

  “And powerful,” Ares continues. “And we knew what gifts you’d be likely to earn, and need, if you were to fulfill your destiny. The idea of a partner was formed. Like you, he’s physically a mix of his parents. His mind is his own. His loyalty, inner strength, and calm are both a product of his experiences and inherent to his nature, and a good match for your loyalty, inner strength, and…”

  “Not calm,” I supply, narrowing my eyes.

  “Exactly.” Ares nods. “But we decided on a vital improvement before we set everything into motion. The Goddesses came together and Aphrodite had a stroke of genius,” he says proudly. “Just like she never wanted a male she could control, she knew someone as strong as you were destined to be would never fall for a man you could overpower.”

  My cheeks start to heat. In some situations, I definitely want Griffin to be the dominant one.

  Persephone looks first at Griffin and then back at me. “But putting you in that vulnerable position also meant giving you someone you could trust.”

  Of course I trust Griffin. More than anyone else.

  “You chose me for Cat.” Griffin’s voice vibrates with something very close to anger. “You changed me for her.”

  My stomach suddenly feels off-kilter. I didn’t like this the first time we heard it, and I like it even less now. Griffin’s expression remains mostly neutral, but the mask looks close to cracking and revealing something dark and irate underneath.

  Nerves build inside me, and words pour out before I can stop them. “I’m so sorry, Griffin. They forced this on you. You didn’t ask for any of this. For me…”

  His eyes shift to me, hard as rocks.

  “Griffin was selected before you were born based on his own potential merits,” Persephone explains, “and then enhanced to fit the future Origin’s needs.”

  Griffin’s mouth twists in fury, and a horrible, sinking feeling carves through me, hollowing me out. The same fear I felt the day Piers betrayed us comes roaring back, this time doubly gut-wrenching because Griffin isn’t fooling himself anymore. I can see it in his face. His anger is terrible to behold.

  He’s given me everything—command of Beta Team, the crown, his body, his devotion. His child. He’s loved me unconditionally, despite my many faults, because he convinced himself that I was made for him, not the other way around. If that illusion somehow hadn’t fully shattered before, it has now. Persephone just crushed it and threw it to the four winds.

  I stop breathing at the angry flush spreading across Griffin’s face.

  “You waited this long to bring me to her?” His voice turns low and livid. “Why all this wasted time? I could have been healing her broken heart, protecting her, giving her a family! Do you have any idea how unsatisfying my life was without her? Without my missing piece?”

&n
bsp; Stunned, I watch him rage.

  “And you…” He turns to me, his eyes shockingly bright.

  Goose bumps wash over me in a wave.

  “If you still doubt me—doubt us—then clearly, I have things to prove.” The promise in his eyes is unmistakable. And scorching. “Because I swear to the Gods, you’ll never doubt me again.”

  Pain laces his incensed words, and guilt slams into me like a hard punch.

  Why did I doubt him? “What is wrong with me?”

  It’s only when Griffin answers that I realize I spoke out loud. “You still don’t trust yourself, and that makes you incapable of trusting anyone else.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “I trust you!” I cry, stung. No, worse—hurt.

  “Insofar as you’re capable,” Griffin answers stiffly.

  My jaw drops. I want to say something, but nothing comes out. Is he right? He’s usually right.

  “You’re wrong!” Damn it! I slap my hand over my mouth.

  Both Olympians abruptly disappear, apparently leaving us alone to fight. The magic that gets sucked from the air, vanishing along with them, is staggering. I didn’t realize how much it weighed on me until it was gone.

  “You want to know why your magic doesn’t work?” Griffin asks.

  I lift my chin, knowing I’m not going to like whatever he’s about to say, and that it’ll hit me straight in the heart. “Why, then?”

  His eyes flash with gray fire. He doesn’t even try to contain his emotions, and Griffin without his usual calm in place is a formidable sight.

  “It doesn’t work because you don’t trust yourself. Because you think it’s going to backfire. Because you’re so sure you’re going to hurt someone you want to protect!”

  “Oh, and that’s never happened!” The sudden spike of adrenaline in my blood sets my heart to pounding. “The fire in the woods? Flynn under the arena? I burned a hole through his leg with a lightning bolt!”