“I can’t,” I rasped.
“You can. You’re capable of more than you know.” His hands squeezed mine, and I returned it, digging my nails into his flesh just to feel something. “In through your nose and out through your mouth.”
As Archer exaggerated his breathing, I copied the best I could. I wasn’t sure how long we sat like that, me clinging to him as he calmed me down. When my breathing evened and he tried to move, I gripped onto him tightly, terrified that the moment I let go of him, I would spiral again.
“Quentin,” he said, an essence of amusement in his tone that I didn’t appreciate. “I’m just coming to sit next to you.”
I was too exhausted to feel embarrassed and hesitantly loosened my hold on his hands. Archer rose in one fluid movement and sat beside me again. His weight pushed the bench, causing it to swing. The repetitive motion brought a sense of calm, forcing my heart to mimic the rhythm.
“What happens next?” I asked quietly, needing answers.
“You’ll stay here with me. I’ll teach you how to control your aura.”
“What about my brother? My job?”
“We’ll deal with it, but going back to Earth isn’t an option until you know how to keep your powers under control. It poses too great a risk.”
“He’s going to kill me before I get the chance to go back down there,” I whispered, finally admitting the truth out loud.
“I won’t allow it,” Archer replied, a steely edge in his voice. “The council voted, and he doesn’t have a majority.”
“Does it matter?”
Voicing my concerns brought another dimension to my panic. Since being pulled from the pool, I’d seen a different side to Hunter. The calm and collected God that stood in my kitchen and healed the damage Grayson inflicted had been replaced with an icy deity that needed everything to run the way he saw fit. Protecting himself, what he’d built and what he stood for, outweighed anything else.
I would do anything to go back to being an inconsequential speck instead of a glaring error in his master plan.
“Try not to worry about him,” Archer said, turning his head towards me. A smile stretched across his features, dimples forming in his cheeks and making him look younger. “You should celebrate, Quentin. A demigoddess.”
He said it with such reverie that I wanted to shake him. Did he understand the magnitude of my situation? It was fine for Archer to romanticise what I was and behave like I was some lost princess being brought home, but the reality was far from the fairy-tale he appeared to be concocting.
His fingers brushed across my hairline, and I pulled away. There was nothing to celebrate. No reason to be overjoyed by the news.
“I wish I’d been there,” he continued, oblivious to my discomfort. Or maybe he didn’t care. “What was it you were gif—"
“Archer!” A voice rang clear from inside his home.
Archer’s face fell before he fixed the smile back in place. It was forced, dimples hidden away and masking his irritation at the interruption.
“Archer,” the voice called again, closer this time.
I craned my neck towards the doors that led back into the house to see a tall woman scanning the grounds. Her skin was dark and her raven hair was twisted into dozens of thin braids that hung down to her waist.
“There you are,” she said, spotting us and flashing perfect white teeth.
“Dionne,” Archer gritted out, refusing to move from his position. “It’s polite to knock.”
“When have I ever needed to be polite with you?” Dionne quipped before setting her dark gaze on me. “You must be our latest addition.”
Archer rose from his seat, stepping in front of me so that he hid me from view.
“I see Bexley couldn’t keep her mouth shut,” he commented tightly.
“There are no secrets between us,” Dionne replied.
Archer clucked his tongue knowingly. “We both know that’s not true.”
The comment hung in the air, wiping away the ease both of them held and leaving me curious to what Archer was alluding to.
