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Like poor Danaë, the daughter of a king who locked her up to prevent her from falling in love and getting pregnant with the son who was prophesied to kill him. Locking his daughter up didn’t work, of course. Never did. Lock up a girl in a tower or a dungeon and it was like catnip to the gods, Lia knew. Might as well hang a sign over the house that said Get It Here, Gods!
That thought made Lia smile. Or maybe it was exhaustion making her loopy.
But something was definitely wrong with her.
Why was she hearing...bird noises?
Was that it? Bird noises? Not birdsong or crows cawing, but she knew she’d heard the fluttering of wings. Wings?
Lia rolled up and turned on her lamp.
August stood by the foot of her bed.
“August!” She stared at him in gobsmacked wonder, her lips parted and her eyes wide as the sky. “You’re here. And...naked.”
“Did you miss me?”
“Yes,” she said. “But you can’t be here. Or naked. You’re getting married. Go away. Put clothes on, too. Not in that order.”
He laughed and climbed on the bed. He crawled to her and loomed over her on his hands and knees.
“What are you doing here?” she rasped. “I’m under house arrest. You’re going to get me murdered. And you...you’re supposed to be in Greece getting married to a cloud or something.”
“I’m free,” he said. “My mother let me go.”
“She did? Oh...” Lia was so happy she could do nothing but reach for him to hold him and never let him go.
But he stopped her. He took her wrists in his hands and pressed them down into the pillow at either side of her head.
This she did not mind.
“Do me a favor, Lia,” he said. She lay under him, pinned down and basking in her joy. “Don’t scream.”
“Scream?”
Two massive white wings sprouted from August’s back and filled the room wall to wall.
Lia started to scream. August slapped a hand over her mouth.
“You are very bad at following instructions.”
He took his hand off her mouth.
She stared up at him, at his strange changeable gray eyes and his dark waving hair falling over his forehead and his smile nearly as wicked as he was, and she knew him, she knew who he was. August Bowman. Her love and her lover.
“You have wings.”
“You like them?”
“Where did you get them?”
“Born with them. Weird, aren’t they? You just never know what’ll happen when two gods make a new god.”
“You cannot be a god,” she said, gazing at his wings. They certainly looked real enough, though they could just be clever props.
“You still don’t believe me?” he asked.
“I’m struggling,” she said. “Though trying to maintain an open mind.”
