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If she hadn’t disappeared so completely after that night, walking away from a castle with little more than a backpack, by all accounts, Zeus would have found her. He had tried.
He didn’t like to admit how hard he’d tried. He didn’t like to think of that strange autumn at all, when he’d been...not himself.
But he needed to remember his endgame. That was what he’d told himself then. That was what had to matter now.
He needed to keep his promise. He would.
For a moment he could see his mother’s face, tipped back in that marvelous laughter of hers that had become so rare near the end. He had been so small, and she had danced with him, around and around to the music of the sun and the sea. He remembered how she’d swung him up into her arms and kept going, twirling until they were both dizzy.
Then they’d done it again.
And by the time Zeus had grown to a tall eleven, she didn’t laugh any longer, and she certainly didn’t dance, so it had taken coaxing for her to let him pick her up and spin her around in his arms, trying not to notice how frail she was. How tiny.
How destroyed.
Zeus let go of Nina’s hands and stepped back. For a beat, he didn’t know what he would do. Maybe run? Shout? He did neither. Though it hurt.
He smiled at the woman he would marry, and soon. To fulfill the destiny he’d made for himself not long after that day in his mother’s chamber. Then he went and assumed his typical position on the couch, as if it had taxed him sorely to stand.
And he opted not to notice that Nina looked at him for much too long, her expression gone grave again, as if she could see straight through him.
When he knew no one could.
He’d made certain of that.
“Now,” he said, with his usual dark humor, though it stung more today than it should have. It made his ribs feel dented. “Let me tell you how this will go.”
