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Saved by a knock on the door. I don’t have any idea how that sentence was going to end. Ares gets to his feet, nods to Zeus, and goes out.
“You okay?” Zeus says into the hall.
Ares makes an affirmative noise.
Zeus closes the door behind him. He crosses to the armchair, sits, and runs both hands over his face. “Hi.”
“Hey,” I say back.
He peers at me. “Are you drunk?”
“Yep. Your sons made me do it.”
His eyes narrow. “My sons?”
“Yes. Your real sons. Yourfirstsons. What happened to their mom? You didn’t tell me about any of that shit.”
“From what I understand, she was a sex worker who was attacked on the job one night and died in the hospital.”
The nightmare elbows its way back into my skull. It’s not a tough job, because it was mostly a memory. It was a memory of the way my mother died. The only difference was that I found her later, after it was too late to stop anything.
I only discover I’m replaying the whole damn thing again when I become aware of Zeus’s hand on my non-fucked shoulder. He’s crouched in front of me, and has been talking to me for…
No idea how long.
“—thinking about? Hercules. Talk to me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you collected the sons of whores?”
He doesn’t flinch. “I left it to them to talk about it, if they wanted. I left it to you.”
“Fuck that.Youtell them.”
“Hercules.” Zeus’s voice is even softer now, like I’m some fragile bastard who has to be coddled. “I don’t know what happened to your mother.”
“I—” I did. Didn’t I? “I told you.”
“Remind me what happened.”
I never fucking told him. I never told anyone.
“One of the men killed her.” I could spit at him. I could be sick. “When I was thirteen. Snapped her neck. I found her in the bed. He didn’t bother to cover her. She never got her cottage.”
“Fuck.” Zeus squeezes my shoulder, so gentle I want to punch him. “I’m sorry.”
“If you’re that sorry, stop being a fucking liar.”
His eyes widen. “I didn’t lie.”
“You told me to bring her home, and that was bullshit, wasn’t it? You told me to bring her here, but you can’t save her.”
“Hercules—”
“Youpromised.” Now I sound like a fucking kid, and there’s fuck all I can do about it. “You promised it would work. Why did you lie to me?”
“Itdidwork. You got her here. She’s okay right now, and she—”
Horror crashes into me. I fumble in my pocket for my phone, and bring up the app.
