Aphrodite

  Taking advantage of his surprise, I pulled myself free from his grip. “If you think he’s a threat, nothing I do will convince you otherwise. Though good luck explaining why you felt the need to sink a known ally of the entire pantheon to Persephone and the others.” I stepped away, or tried to. The shield didn’t allow me go farther than an arm’s length from the sea god. Instead of allowing fear to break my composure, I studied Poseidon for a long moment, trying to see past how angry and scared he made me.

  He shifted under the intensity of my gaze. “What?”

  “We’re not so different, you and I.”

  He snorted. “You flatter yourself.”

  “We’ve both been broken,” I kept my eyes locked on his, “and pieced back together. I know what it is to hurt, and—”

  “Oh, this is rich.” Poseidon rolled his eyes, but I didn’t miss the flicker of pain in them. “Words of wisdom from the infant goddess.”

  I took a tentative step forward. “I know what it’s like to feel as if you’re stuck in a role that’s not worth fighting anymore, but everything is different now. You can change. I did. It’s a new pantheon, and—”

  “You think you changed?” The filtered lights made the sea god look as if he moved in stop-motion. “Why? Because you rebelled against Zeus?”

  “He created me to be loyal to him.” When my back hit the shield, I gritted my teeth and fought back a wave of panic. “So . . . yeah. I’d say I’ve got some experience with change.”

  “No, he created you to be obedient to him.” When I tilted my head in confusion, smugness permeated the sea god’s voice. “You never wondered why he didn’t bother to make you want to obey?”

  Where was Poseidon going with this? “Because he didn’t care what I wanted? Why bother with the extra effort of—”

  “What? You think that it would be more work to ensure you didn’t spend every waking moment of your life trying to find a way around how he made you?” He smirked and shook his head as though astounded by my stupidity. “He didn’t have to bother with giving you a personality, Aphrodite. You were disposable; he could have made you an empty shell. Do you actually think the personality you received was an accident?”

  “Stop it.”

  “He liked a challenge.” The colored strobe lights glittered against Poseidon’s teeth. “Even when he had a sure thing. Unquestioning compliance would have bored Zeus, and you—”

  “Stop!”

  Poseidon gripped my arm so hard I saw stars. “You’re nothing but Zeus’s plaything. You haven’t changed, Aphrodite.” He gave me a rough shake and I cried out in pain. “You did exactly what you were designed to. He just never anticipated losing. And, don’t flatter yourself—you had nothing to do with that, either. He lost because he didn’t see Demeter’s sacrifice coming.”

  “I said stop.” I tried to pull my arm free, my shriek surprising even me. It wasn’t until clarity dawned in Poseidon’s expression that I realized his speech had been almost imperceptibly slurred. He let me go so fast I stumbled into the shield surrounding us.

  “Wait.” Poseidon reached for me, his hands out in a “calm down” gesture, befuddlement written across his face.

  “Don’t.” I backpedaled to the side and away from him in a futile attempt to find a weak spot in his shield. My breath came in sharp gasps. “You’re—” I tried to say “wrong,” but the word wouldn’t form. No, no! I wouldn’t believe him. I tried again. “Everything you just said is—You’re just—”

  Poseidon lowered the shield and I fell backward, crashing to the floor.

  “You’re scum!” I scrambled to my feet, cradling my arm. The people near me stopped dancing. “Nothing but slime.” I turned and stumbled out of the club, shoving past everyone until I could break into a run. When I reached the door to my suite, I stopped, realizing I didn’t have a key.

  “Come on!” I slammed against the door over and over again. Poseidon was wrong. He’d never been in my head. He didn’t know what fighting every instinct Zeus gave me felt like, day in and day out.

  But wasn’t I still letting Zeus define me? I let the things he’d done control my reactions. He pushed left, so I moved right. In the end, everything I did still led back to him.

  “No!”

  “Aphrodite?” A hand touched my shoulder.

  I jumped with a scream, backing into the door with enough force to hurt. When I registered Adonis standing there, I went limp against the wood, hand to my chest, struggling to draw breath into my lungs. “Don’t do that.”

  “Are you okay?” Adonis’s gaze latched on to my arm, which was fast turning into a mottled purple mess, and he drew in a surprised breath between his teeth. “Did Poseidon do that? Why isn’t it healing?”

  “I can’t—” I gasped again. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Here.” Adonis unlocked the door and reached for me, but I jerked away from him.

  “Don’t.” I stumbled into the room. “Oh, gods, he’s right,” I admitted, voice breaking. I stepped out of my shoes, moving on autopilot into the dark room, stopping when I reached the half-wall separating the kitchen and dining room. “He’s absolutely right. He could have made me love him.”

  “What? Aphrodite, what happened back there? What did Poseidon do?” Adonis flipped a switch and light flooded the suite. “Did he—”

  “Zeus could have made me love him.” The flat of my hands pressed against the countertop. I stood hunched over, elbows locked, hair falling in my face as I stared down at the matte, white surface, breathing hard. “He could have just made me.”

  “That would have been horrible.” The confusion in Adonis’s voice would have been comic under different circumstances. “But I don’t see what—”

  “I could have been happy.” A sob worked up my throat, but of course, I couldn’t cry. “I wouldn’t have known any better. Do you know how much easier that would have—” Adonis put a hand on my shoulder and something in me snapped. “Don’t touch me!” I pushed off the counter as I spun to face him.

  Adonis backed off, hands in the air. “Okay. I’m—”

  “Do you actually think you’re better than he is? Than any of them?” All my anger and confusion and fear focused on a safe target. I couldn’t hurt Adonis, and he couldn’t hurt me. And wasn’t that what I saw in him? Gods, how pathetic. “You’re the exact same. None of you think I’m real. That I can feel. That I’m someone not something. But you’re wrong. I’m real, and I—”

  “Whoa. I never said—”

  “You were supposed to be different.” Breaking off, I gasped for breath. “But you’re not even nice.” I swallowed hard. “I was so close to giving in to Zeus. To giving up. But then, you . . . I thought you believed in me, trusted me. And no one had ever—” I took a deep shuddering breath. “But it was all lies.” I leaned against the half-wall, hoping the steadiness would offset the spinning room. “You don’t believe in me, you don’t even know me.”

  “Aphrodite . . .” Adonis moved toward me, but stopped when I flinched. He held his hands up, taking a step back. “You need to—”

  I talked over him between gasps of breath. “Do you want to know what Poseidon has over me? What he thought I might be willing to—” If I could just breathe, I might finish this sentence.

  “Will you just—”

  “You!”

  Adonis froze. “What?”

  I slid down the wall until I reached the floor, and drew my knees to my chest. “He threatened to kill you, unless I—”

  “No.” Adonis stumbled backward, his hands going to his head, as if he was ready to plug his ears if he didn’t like what he heard. “No. No! You didn’t.”

  “Of course I didn’t, you jackass.” I was going to pass out, or suffocate, or something if I didn’t catch my breath soon. “But I considered it. And for what? You don’t
see me. No one sees me; they just see the thing Zeus made. But I’m more than that. I’ve got to be more than that.” I drew in one sharp breath after the other, in rapid succession, trying to get my lungs to fill with air. “I’m real. I know that I’m—”

  Adonis knelt beside me, pushing something into my hand. “Breathe into this.”

  I shoved the plastic bag away. “Never try first aid again.”

  “Right. Bad idea. It’s supposed to be paper, isn’t it?” He pocketed the bag and tapped at the screen of his phone. “Okay, so this says you need to—”

  “Adonis.”

  He looked up from his phone, gold hair falling into his eyes. “Yeah?”

  “Stop . . . pretending to”—I broke off with a gasp—“care.” I looked up at him, my voice pleading. “Just—I need you to go away.”

  “Aphrodite, I can’t leave you alone right now.” He waved his phone. “I think you’re having a full-fledged panic attack, and if I leave you alone—”

  “Please.” The rapid beating of my heart pounded against my chest so hard I felt like if I looked down, I’d be able to see the organ trying to break free from my flesh. “I—just—please!” I raked my hair back, hands trembling. “I’ll heal. I need—I just need—”

  “Aphrodite . . .” He knelt beside me.

  “Leave me alone!”

  My hoarse shriek had him jumping backward, startled. “Okay, okay.” Adonis climbed to his feet. “I’ll be right upstairs if you need me.” He paused when he reached the staircase. “Oh, and Aphrodite?” The demigod turned, his gold eyes locking on mine. “I’m not pretending.”

  I waited until he walked all the way up the stairs before I tilted my head against the wall, and closed my eyes. What’s wrong with me? Gods didn’t get panic attacks, not like this. I’d woken up from nightmares, sick and gasping with fear, but within a few moments, my healing would kick in and the worst of it would stop, leaving me unsettled, but functional. This was different.

  Realm sickness? I wondered again. Surely this went beyond minor discomfort. Worry about it later; breathe now.

  Right.All the knowledge mankind had accumulated over the years for self-coping with panic attacks clicked into place.

  Deep breaths, Aphrodite, I coached myself. In one, two. Out one, two, three, four. I focused on breathing from my abdomen and eventually calmed down. Was anything I’d learned tonight any worse than what I’d already gone through? Poseidon’s revelation put a different spin on my entire life, sure, but Zeus’s manipulations were all in the past.

  Of course Zeus shaped who I was. Even if he hadn’t hand-sculpted my personality, his actions, the threat of him lingering over me, had shaped my entire life. But Zeus couldn’t hurt me now.

  You stood up to Zeus. You can handle anything. Ares’s voice echoed in my mind.

  I opened my eyes. The similarities between Poseidon and Zeus put me on edge. He outranked me, he ruled the realm I was stuck in for the moment, and he was intimidating. But at the end of the day, he was nothing compared to his younger brother. Poseidon was powerful, sure, but Zeus had been powerful too, and in the end, I’d done the impossible.

  I’d fought back.

  Even in my darkest hour, I’d found the strength to resist Zeus. I’d given Adonis the credit for that, built him up as a symbol, but my strength bought the second the demigod needed to knock me out.

  Standing, I walked to the kitchen, and grabbed a water from the fridge to alleviate my Sahara-dry throat. I drained the bottle, then grabbed another, and forced myself to take slow sips while I pondered my predicament.

  After a moment’s deliberation, I grabbed the key card off the countertop and strode out the door, shielding the room behind me as the door closed.

  I refused to be afraid of Poseidon. And I was going to make sure he knew it before the night was up.

  Chapter XIV

  I DIDN’T EXPECT Poseidon to hang around on board, but I’d be stupid to try summoning him without checking to see if he was still at the bar first. Unfortunately, searching for his power signature required a level of calm I didn’t possess in my current state. I forced myself to take a deep breath, trying to feel at ease within the safety of the writhing crowd. Music thudded through the room, reverberating through the floor. The cramped, close quarters of the club and the press of people against me made my chest tighten. Closing my eyes, I took another deep breath and inhaled the scent of alcohol, fruit juice, sweat, and the ever-present briny smell of the ocean that seeped into the fabrics on the ship and latched onto human skin. Bright, multicolored lights danced across my closed eyelids.

  “Okay,” I murmured as the tightness in my chest eased. My eyes fluttered open, and I looked around the club with a renewed sense of purpose. He wasn’t in the cluster of tables by the door. Nor did I find him on the dance floor. My eyes traveled the polished wood of the bar curving around the club, searching for inexplicable gaps.

  There.

  I zeroed in on an unoccupied length of the bar, the sheer amount of people-free space tipping me off more to Poseidon’s location than his power signature. When I approached him, the shield flickered, allowing me to step across the barrier.

  “I’m sorry.” He didn’t look up as the shield re-formed behind me, bringing the music of the club to a quiet murmur.

  If singing kittens had erupted from his cranium, I wouldn’t feel more surprised. “You’re . . . sorry?” The words were so simple, considering what he’d done, that I somehow felt more insulted than if he’d said nothing at all. “For what, Poseidon? Assaulting me last night? Threatening to kill my friend if I didn’t sleep with you? The horrible things you said? This?” I held out my arm, showing off the purple welt his handprint had left. “I’m a goddess, Poseidon. I heal pretty quickly. Do you know how much pressure you have to apply to even leave a mark on me? Much less one that takes this much time to heal?” If I’d been human, my arm would have shattered.

  He closed his eyes, deflating into a defeated figure nursing a glass of ambrosia. “Yeah, I do. I don’t know what got into me. I’m—”

  “You don’t know what got into you?” My voice rose to a shout. “Let me give you a hint.” Snatching his glass off the bar, I threw the ambrosia down. The blinking shot glass hit the ground with a satisfying smack. “You are too powerful for this crap.”

  “—the hell?” Poseidon sprang to his feet, his features twisting into a distorted mask of rage. I grabbed the bottle next, but he reached out and caught my arm, shifting his grip above the bruise when I winced. “Have you completely lost your mind?”

  “You don’t get to not know what you’re doing. You run a realm, for crying out loud!” Wrenching my arm free, I stepped backward, shaking droplets of ambrosia off my shoes. “I meant what I said before. This is a new pantheon. Persephone—”

  “Has no authority here.” Poseidon’s eyes glittered with challenge.

  “We’re all playing by new rules. That means you don’t get to threaten or coerce or assault me when things don’t go your way.”

  “Or you’ll what?” The happy, multicolored, flickering lights dancing over Poseidon morphed into menacing flashes. “What exactly do you think you can do to stop me?”

  “Not me.” I shook my head for emphasis. “Her. You gave Persephone a natural right to your realm when you refused to take back Triton’s powers.” A thought gave me pause. “That was intentional, wasn’t it? You’re using her as a safety net. You know that if you screw up badly enough, she’ll step in and make sure your realm is still safe. You can’t do that, Poseidon. You don’t get to be depressed.”

  “I can do whatever the hell I want,” Poseidon growled, towering over me. “The only people whose opinions I valued are dead. They’re all dead. Amphitrite, Demeter, Tri—” He cleared his throat. “Triton.” His voice softened so much I almost didn’t catch his last words. ??
?How am I one of the last ones standing?”

  “We are gods. We have responsibilities, obligations.” I tried to inject some sympathy into my tone but failed. Forty-eight hours ago, I could have conjured some, but I’d learned a lot about Poseidon in the past two days. He didn’t deserve my pity. “You have a realm to run and enough power to do some serious damage if you get more than a little tipsy.” I slammed the bottle of ambrosia down to the ground. Instead of breaking, it hit the floor with a hollow thunk before rolling under the bar. I glared at the bottle, disappointed the ambrosia didn’t live up to its dramatic potential, before I turned my attention back to Poseidon. “Crippling grief is a mortal luxury. You don’t get to wallow.”

  Pot, meet kettle.

  Shut up! I argued with the snarky side of my brain. The last twenty-four hours were hardly typical and I don’t rule a realm.

  Realm-rulers didn’t get to place their friends and family above the fate of everyone else, no matter how much more they mattered. Hades had been willing to break the world to find Persephone. That’s why gods didn’t do the whole family thing. Because balance is hard and we didn’t trust ourselves not to fail.

  Maybe Poseidon’s generation was defective. I considered all the drama, jealousy, and angst permeating mythology since they had come along. Maybe the Titans had a point when they tried to put a stop to his generation.

  Poseidon glared at me with so much vehemence that, for a second, I wondered if he could hear my thoughts. “I’ve seen you with that demigod. Don’t pretend not to care. I warned you he might be a threat—”

  I rolled my eyes. “If you had proof he was actually a threat, I’d act on it.”

  “How vague.”

  “At least I’m not so wasted, I don’t know what I’m saying. Gods! That is so dangerous.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not going to listen to Zeus’s latest blow-up doll lecture me on what it means to be a god. I have given up more than you’ll ever—”

  I tilted my chin up. “I never met Triton, but I know for a fact Demeter would hate you for using her as an excuse for your stupidity.”