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“Hercules, it was everything. I don’t think Hades is going to stop crying any time soon.”
“It’s weird,” I whisper. “I didn’t think he could cry.”
“I thought the same for a long time, and guess what? He can.”
“Damn right.”
“I’m more surprised by what I can’t do.”
“Yeah?” I feel okay enough to eat bacon again, which is a relief. “What’s that?”
“I always thought the hardest thing was staying alive for them, but it’s not. I could stand that. Even if it was fucking terrible. I couldn’t stand losing them. That would kill me. I never would have survived losing my brother and my niece.” Zeus looks me in the eye. “I owe you.”
“Well…maybe not.”
“Hercules, you’re worth—”
“I saw my mom when I was there.”
“You—you mentioned that.”
“She’s super fucking happy. She has a cottage and now, I guess, Hades’s dead dog. I saw Ollie, too, but mostly I got to talk to my mom.”
“How did that go?” Zeus is cautious about this. I’ve shut him out for a long time, and I can feel how much he wants to know the answer, and how willing he is to live without knowing.
“It was great. I asked her about you.”
“Oh, God.”
“She didn’t say anything bad.”
“Whatdidshe say? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I asked her why she didn’t tell you about me, since that was—” I wave a piece of bacon in a circle in his direction. “—your whole thing. And she said she might’ve stolen from you.”
His eyes go wide. He’s got golden eyes. “What could she possibly have stolen?”
“It wasn’t sperm. Calm down.”
Zeus rolls his eyes and lets his headthunkon the headboard.
“She said the night I was conceived—which I’d rather not think about, so move the fuck on from that—she felt you freak out.”
He opens one eye. “Freak out?”
“Lightning in her room, or something like that. It went into her body somehow—not like sperm, Zeus, Jesus Christ.”
He wipes the expression of horror off his face. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Shesaid.” I eat the rest of the piece of bacon. “That it stayed with her, and she didn’t want you to think she’d stolen any of your…energy. Then, later, I was born.”
“And she realized she was wrong?”
“And I had your weird-ass golden eyes, so then shereallydidn’t want to tell you about me.”
“Oh.” Zeus nods. I don’t know what he’s doing with his head like that, or with his face. Is hehappyabout this? “Understandable.”
“Obviously…” ObviouslyI’mthe one who’s going to have to bring this home. “Shedidtake something from you. So we could probably call it even.”
