“Wait, wait.” Liora held up her hands. “Are you saying that we have to have something like…a big celebrity wedding? Like in the Upperworld.”
His mother leaned back and clasped her hands together. “Exactly.”
“No.” Maldenis would rather die than be paraded around like a prize-winning Galathean boar at the Alindale fair. And from the look on Liora’s face, she probably felt the same way. “Isn’t there some other way? How about we just take out an ad?—”
“Maldenis, you are skating on thin ice as it is,” his mother reminded him. “What makes you think you’ll get leniency this time?”
Liora perked up. “This time?”
“Alright, alright,” Maldenis relented, wanting to change the subject quickly. “Is that all?”
“Well, there’s the living together the rest of the year, but as I said, Medusa and I have worked it out. I think you’ll be wonderful addition to the team.”
“Speaking of which, ma’am’,” Liora began, holding a hand up.
“You may call me Melora,” she said. “Or Mother, if you like, though I won’t hold it against you if you do not.”
“Er, yeah.” She shifted in her seat. “Just to make things clear, once we do all this, you’ll help us on our mission?”
“Of course. I mean, I do want to protect my kind especially if they are in danger. Even if you hadn’t gone into the spring, I would still help you. But, it’s not really up to me at this point, is it? If you do this and convince everyone in Solkaris that you really are a married couple, then you’ll be able to proceed. All the other mothers and basilisks will talk to you.”
“Point taken.” She paused before briefly glancing at Maldenis.
There was a look in her eye that said she was up to something.
What the…?
Liora cleared her throat. “Well then, would you mind telling me what you know about Zeus?”
“Maldenis’s father, you mean.”
The outright admission from his mother struck Maldenis like a bolt of lightning.
In the last few days, he’d been trying not to think about the implication. He’d been too busy dealing with the dishonor he’d once again put on his family and the marriage he’d been forced into.
He never really thought about his father. No basilisk did, really. In many cases, it was possible for siblings born in the same clutch to have different fathers. Mothers did all the work.Once in a while, fathers popped in. On rare occasions they stayed.
“What do you want to know, child?” Melora asked.
“Just…did you have any other children with him? Or with other gods?”
She shook her head. “He was the only god I slept with and Maldenis was the only one of his clutch to survive.”
Liora nodded. “Ah, so there’s no doubt he’s the only child of Zeus you have?”
His father was a god, not just any god, but the king of the gods. Or former king anyway.
All his life, he was the black sheep of the family. The no-good fuckup. Why did Melora never tell him? Why didn’t he have special powers, like other demigods were known to have?
Maybe it was a good thing Zeus never acknowledged him. It was one thing to be a fuckup on his own, but then to have a no-good usurper and betrayer as a father?
“Do you know about the prophecy?”
“Yes. I mean, I do now, after I spoke with Medusa and Perseus.”
“Wait, what is this prophecy?” Maldenis interrupted. “You guys mentioned it, but no one’s ever told it to us.”
Liora opened her mouth to talk, but his mother spoke instead.
