“Your life is on the line, Mars. You are my family, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for you,” she said, feeling her heart in her throat.
Why am I like this?
I’m not usually so emotional...
Maybe I am just too stressed.
Maybe I need to relax a bit more...
Though as she tried to focus on the task at hand, she felt her nerves get the better of her. Once again a fresh wave of nausea hit and made her feel dizzy.
Perhaps I’m coming down with something...
The last twenty-four hours had been exhausting. She’d been battling feeling ill with feeling hungry and in need of emotional reassurance, sexual healing.
From one moment to the next it was as if her body, her mind, were not her own, ruled by impulses that were certainly new, tastes for things she’d never had suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
Like peanut butter.
On pizza.
Yes, Athena was feeling the culmination of the world converging on her, and it would seem she had finally snapped.
“How do I know I can trust him, you barely know this man you—”
“I would never put Athena or anyone she cares about in danger,” Brian said, his voice solid and unwavering. “I love her.” His words settled the storms brewing inside of her, making her heart flutter.
It was a bold, dramatic statement, and he’d only said it once earlier, in the throws of passion, something that could have easily been dismissed. But Athena knew as he took her hand, pulling her close, that his word was true.
He loved her.
And she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, the feeling was more than mutual.
But that didn’t make Brian suddenly immortal. Despite the fact they had admitted their love to the God and muse, Athena knew Brian’s days were numbered as any mortal’s were.
One fire at a time, Athena.
“Is this the artifact in question?” Calliope asked as she stopped before the glass case containing an opalescent stone that shimmered in the low museum light.
She watched as Brian noticed the glowing strands that emanated from it, like laser alarms, but bright, glowing silver instead. They spiraled out from the rock, touching his chest, and he followed the trail of its glow to...
Athena.
She let go of his hand, and the ropes of light followed him around the room, and she felt a strange sort of pull. As if she wastetheredto Brian by some heavy, solid cord.
“Can you see that?” he mused aloud as the others turned to look at him.
“See what?” Calliope asked, raising a brow.
“The lights,” he said as he touched his chest.
“The silver light connecting to the—”
“I see it,” Athena said, her eyes filling with tears.
She felt dizzy again.
“It’s not silver, it’s orange,” Mars said as he placed his palm against the glass.
