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Leo blinked, brown-gold lashes covering her eyes before she peered at me. I gazed at her, not breaking eye contact as I went on. “After yesterday, we should be grateful she trusted us this much.”
She blinked again. “Thank you.”
I smiled, a strange sensation. “It’s the truth.”
At my pronouncement of the word, she frowned, gazing at the table. “I need to go.”
“You can’t.” Hector didn’t bother directing the comment to her. It was me and Pollux he was informing. “We can’t let her. You know we can’t.”
“So what are you going to do?” she asked. “Lock me in the basement? Kill me?”
“No,” I answered firmly.
Pollux shook his head. “No one will hurt you. I promised you yesterday, and it stands today. No matter what.” And he held Hector’s stare. A flash of a similar conversation taking place between us thousands of years ago, hit me. Here we were again, divided. Albeit along different lines. But divided all the same.
We hadn’t needed the gods to do it.
“I can’t let her leave.” Hector placed both hands on the table, leaning toward us. I caught Leo’s gaze drift from his face down his arms to his hands. Her fingers twitched, as did her body, as if readying herself to run.
There was no running from Hector. He was still a soldier and a general, like Achilles. It didn’t matter how much time passed, he still thought like one.
And acted like one.
“I won’t stay,” she whispered.
Hector leaned closer to her, and replied in a voice like a promise, “And I won’t let you go.”
Leo
We were going back and forth like children.
You can’t go.
Yes, I can.
No, you won’t.
You can’t make me stay.
Pushing back from the table, I got up, letting my actions speak louder than my words. Behind me, another chair scraped against the stone floor, and a pair of footsteps came after me. “Leo.”
I didn’t stop, but threw over my shoulder. “Will you give me a ride to the station, Orestes?”
Another set of footfalls, heavier than Orestes, trailed after us, up the stairs to the room where I had my bag. “I’ll bring you, if you’re intent on going.”
A spark of anger made me clench my teeth. It took everything in me to relax my jaw enough to reply, “You know, there are so many things wrong with this. And not just the legal stuff, like keeping someone against their will, or—” My foot caught on the top step and I went down, banging my shin and catching myself on my hands. Righting myself quickly, I went on, “Trying to throw them off a train like a Bond villain.”
“That goes along with the MI-6 comment from earlier,” Pollux offered.
Maybe when I was a little less pissed, and scared, I’d laugh, but not right now. It was too soon, and too early in the morning for insults and threats.
The two of them followed me into my room as I went to the bed, pulling up the covers, straightening the quilt, and fluffing the pillows. Turning, I found both of them staring at me. In my head, I thought of them as having very few similarities. Pollux was in his late twenties, early thirties, at least, and Orestes had a youthfulness that was at odds with the seriousness in his gaze.
He’s seen a lot.
The awareness came from somewhere deep inside me, but it was right. Orestes might look young, but he’d lived through something that had changed him.
Right now, their similarities were what struck me. On the surface, there wasn’t anything that really made one look like the other.
