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You said his name.
I hope to God I didn’t call him Daddy when I told him I wanted to die.
That’s the thing he can’t live with. He’ll do anything to stop that from happening again.
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry,” my dad says.
“It’s okay.”
But from the way Hercules’s hold on my hand feels distant and wrong, I’m sure it’s not.
14
HERCULES
The discussionabout going to the mountain continues.
I stand it for as long as I can, feeling sicker and sicker, until finally I have to do something about it or throw up on the floor.
I’m not going to be the person who causes a fucking scene when Daisy might die.
“Persephone.” Her name feels awkward in my mouth. Maybe it would be better if I called her Aunt Persephone, like Zeus and Poseidon’s kids do, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to do it.
“Right here.” She sounds like a sunny day, like a flower opening to morning light, and she’s on the right side of the room. I thought she was on the left, with Poseidon.
“Take my spot for half an hour.”
“Hercules,” Daisy says.
“I’ll be right back.” I squeeze her fingers and get to my feet before she can ask me to stay. I have to move. I can’t sit here while they casually discuss taking her to that mountain to die.
That’s what it is. That’s what it means. I don’t know what made them so certain that it would save them, but it doesn’t feel like that to me. Demeter is poison. In small doses, she can help with pain. More, and the painlessness ends in death. With Daisy at the gates. And if they’re taking her to the mountain, she needs more.
It’s a death trap. It’s a fuckingdeathtrap.
Persephone slides into my spot and murmurs to Daisy. Everyone in the house tried holding her hand while she was asleep, once we figured out that she has to sit as close as possible to Hades, preferably in his arms, to get her brain waves under control. Next to mine, Persephone and Zeus have the greatest effect.
They should be fine without me, then. The two of them together should be enough to keep her stable until—
Until she dies, or gets better. I guess those are the only two choices. Those are the choices for everybody in the world, except for me, and I’m so pissed about it. Anger burns through me like boiling oil, so hot that when I toss gym clothes onto the bed in the guest bedroom I end up following them with my fist into the mattress.
Five times.
Ten.
Finally, I get a fucking grip and put the clothes on, never mind that my hands are shaking. I go back down and take a hall that goes the opposite way from the family room to the gym. It’s high afternoon, sun streaming through the windows, and it makes me want to be sick again.
The sun is a fucking crime when Daisy can’t even be in the same room as a nightlight. It shouldn’t be coming up at all when things are so uncertain with her.
I stare around the gym like I’ve never been in one before, then go to the treadmill like a robot.
I’ve been walking for three minutes when Ares appears at the doorway. He takes one look at me in the mirror and blows out a breath. “Fuck, man.”
“Why are you here?”
“You’re pretty stressed. Been sitting in a room in the dark. Thought you’d want to talk it out.”
