“What is that smell?” I asked cautiously. Ryder might be immune to everything, but that didn’t mean I was.
“The herbs I use for my visions. It’s nothing to be nervous about,” she explained.
Yeah, right.
“What are we doing here?” Ryder asked. He reached out and slid his hand over my shoulder blades before dropping it to my waist and pulling me next to him. Possessive. Dominant. Protective. I felt each of Ryder’s emotions as if they were my own. He wasn’t giving me anything of himself in this move, but he was proving to the Greeks here that he would continue to protect me, that he would not let them touch me without his permission.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Okay, that was a lie. I loved that he felt compelled to stand up for me. I loved that I wasn’t completely alone in this. After a year of truly being isolated and a lifetime of loneliness, having a partner stand beside me that would fight all of these battles with me was unquestionably one of the greatest feelings on the planet.
But I was also confused. I had strong feelings for Ryder that had not lessened one bit during our time apart. In fact, I swore they had grown with a veracity that scared me. But I had left this man. I had abandoned him when he needed me most and treated him with disrespect I was embarrassed of. I didn’t deserve his affection. Not after everything I had done to him.
Not after I had forced him out of my life and out of my heart.
In fact, he’d spent an entire year thinking about how much he wanted nothing to do with me. How could I stand next to him, with his arm so tightly around my waist, and breathe through this guilt? How could I hope for a future with him, when he would never want anything to do with me after this? How could I let him touch me and still protect my heart from the inevitable destruction I knew he would bring when this was over?
Assuming that this ended in a way that wasn’t with my death. Or his. Or my complete enslavement to Nix and his nefarious plans.
I felt Hermes’ unwavering gaze on us as he watched Ryder’s affection. I couldn’t read his take on it though.
I couldn’t tell what Della thought of it either, because whenever I looked at her I could only see her startling blue eyes and they were always trained so wholly on mine.
“Business,” she murmured. “Let’s get down to business.” She moved and I felt, more than saw, the gesture to move to a sitting area that had simply appeared out of thin air.
Or at least I thought it had. I hadn’t remembered seeing it there a second ago, but everything in this place seemed to happen with a confusing twist and my memories had a blurry edge to them. I wondered if I would even remember this place when I left it or if like Della’s indiscernible features, they would simply fade into a murky haze.
Ryder kept his hand on the center of my back as we moved to a cluster of chaise lounges draped with silky coverings and buried in small pillows. Each piece of furniture had been so lavishly decorated they looked awkward with it. I had to shove several pillows out of the way to find room for my bum. And when I sat down, I perched rigidly at the edge so I wouldn’t be forced to lie down.
Neither Della nor Hermes felt the same awkwardness. They both relaxed onto their settees as if that were the only way to sit. Ryder and I shared a look and I nearly laughed. I half-expected servant girls to rush over with platters full of grapes.
Hermes was the perfect picture of how I’d imagined gods in the past. One of his arms draped languidly behind him, propping up his head, while his other fell over the edge to trace the lines of the tiles. He was a perfect dichotomy of aristocratic snobbery and lazy boredom.
Della lay on her side with her head propped up by a hazy hand. She seemed to fade in and out of focus the longer we stayed here with her. Sometimes her features were so sharply in focus I wanted to jump back from their clarity, and other times she was hidden behind a veil of obscurity.
I wondered if I would ever see her clearly. I wondered if I would ever see this entire thing clearly.
“You’re going to have to go to Olympus,” Della started. “We need you there. It will be impossible to squash the uprising if you’re hiding.”
“Nix, you mean?” I felt a trembling of fear rumble through me. It started in my toes and worked its way up my body with scarring impact.
“Nix and Ares, Hades and the rest of my brothers that think they deserve unlimited power,” Hermes growled. “While Zeus is away, the Underworld has come out to play.”
“Wait,” I held up my hand. “What do you mean Zeus is away? If he’s not on Olympus, then where is he?”
Hermes turned his amber colored eyes on me and said, “Your guess is as good as ours.”
“You don’t know where he is?” Ryder asked dryly.
Hermes let out an impatient sigh, but Della covered for him. “He’s been gone for almost two decades now. Which is nothing new. Nobody thought anything of it, well, until you came along. Suddenly Poseidon sees that he can grab power and Zeus’ absence is more meaningful.”
I stared at Hermes. “Why can’t you just zap yourself to him? Isn’t that why you exist?”
“To fetch my older brother?” Hermes snorted a derisive laugh. “Hardly.”
“We’re not going anywhere until we have more details,” Ryder cut in. “It’s time to stop holding back and tell us what the hell is going on.”
Della smiled. Or, I got the feeling that she smiled. I heard it clearly in her voice when she looked at Ryder and said, “He’s going to save your life, Siren.”
