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“Of course I should have told him. I could have,” she admits. “He was fair to us. But when it happened, he was too…” Mom pauses, seeming to search for the right word. “Not angry. It wasn’t that he was angry. He was…hurt? Grieving. I always thought he’d lost someone important, and I was afraid that I’d taken something else. So I left, and I didn’t say anything.”
“You could’ve toldme.”
“In the beginning, I figured it didn’t matter. I was never going to go back. You were never going to cross paths with him. Then I decided I’d wait until you asked about the…the more obvious evidence.”
“Whatobvious evidence?”
She blinks. “Sweetheart, you have golden eyes.”
“They’re brown,” I shoot back. “They’re like yours.”
“Mine aren’t gold.”
“Neither are Zeus’s.” He has brown eyes, too. They’re brown. They just—they have gold in them, too. The first day I was in his house, the first private conversation we had, I remember thinkinghe’s got golden eyes.I cover mine with my hands. “You should’vetoldme.”
“Now I have. What else do you want to know?”
“God.” I drop my hands and take in the sight of my mother, beautiful, happy, whole, in a grassy field, on a lovely morning. “Everything. But there’s no rush, right?’
She brushes her knuckles over my cheek, then presses her palm flat over that spot.
My mom looks…
Sad?
“I’ll stay with you in the cottage, Mom. We have time.”
She opens her mouth. Hesitates. “You don’t want to stay here, Hercules.”
“Yes, I do. This is what I’ve always wanted. Since you. Since Ollie. I always wanted to do this for someone, and this time I did it.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know you could get so much emotion into one word. “I’m so proud of you. I love you so much. I’ve missed you so much. But this isn’t what you want. And someone is here for you.”
A shout echoes from the valley. Down below, alongside the clear, glittering river, a person sprints toward the hill and our field.
I would know that run, and that hair, absolutely fucking anywhere.
“Ollie!” I shout, and he’s far, but I can still see when he picks his head up and beams. There’s the flash of his smile, just like I remember it, and he’s not dead on the ground, the life knocked out of him, he’s running as fast as he can. Like he was born to run by a river. It’s a graceful, loping run, like he could hop into—I don’t know. A chariot. Into flight. Any second, his feet could lift off.
Jesus, I’m so happy to see him. He’s okay. I’m laughing before I understand it’s me.
“If you mean him, then Ihaveto stay. He’s my best friend.”
My mom turns my face back to hers, and then keeps turning, to the other direction. “Not him, sweetheart.”
Hades walks through the grass in long, easy strides. My breath stops at the sight of him.
It’s jarring enough seeing him in full sunlight. In the eighteen months I lived at Zeus’s house, I saw Hades out in the sun twice. Maybe three times.
Evenmorejarring is how perfectly fucking normal it looks on him. He’s tall and blond. The light catches in his hair like a halo.
But what I can’t believe is that he’s the same.
Daisywasn’t.When we were here, she wasn’t hiding anything about herself, and she was a goddess. The way she looked is burned into my mind. Those black wings. Her black eyes. Her beauty. A true, terrifying beauty.
Hades looks like himself. He’s always been exactly who he was. He didn’t hide it from anyone.
I don’t know which thing is scarier.
