I force myself to breathe more evenly. To swallow. My throat slowly opens back up, and I look at the Titan towering above me, seeing him through a haze of pain and hate. I’ll kill, I’ll maim, I’ll torture, and sometimes, I might not even care. But some things are sacred to me, whether I have them or not.
“Annihilating a family isn’t a game to me.” And family means everything to Griffin.
“You think he wouldn’t choose you.” A sly look goes hand in hand with the ancient God’s wilting jab.
Sitting back on my heels, I wipe a shaking hand across my mouth. I can’t stop my eyes from jumping back to the magic window. I don’t want to watch Griffin being happy with someone else, but I also can’t look away. My heart hurts with a fierceness I can hardly bear, but I also know deep down that there are worse things than this. Griffin could be dead. He could never have known fatherhood, or his children’s love.
“No,” I answer dully. “I think he would.” But Griffin would never let his children go. They’d always be there, and so would Bellanca. Reminders. Competition. Not mine. Notours. No one would ever be truly happy again.
Resignation settles over me, heavy and dark. Without me there to muddy the waters and force Griffin to tear himself in half, they can be a family forever—in this life, and in the next.
I look at the scene. I hate it, and my heart weeps for what should have been mine. I want Griffin for myself. I want him desperately, but I want him to be happy more.
Perses must read my thoughts, or simply my posture, because his power-deep eyes flare with sudden panic.
I lock my tear-sore gaze with that of the Titan God and chuckle. The sound is so black it’s like midnight has invaded my soul. “I guess the hard way didn’t work, either.”
My physical pain didn’t get him out of Tartarus. My emotional destruction didn’t even get us off this cliff.
“Fly,” Prometheus whispers from the side.
The eagle shrieks. My neighbor grunts in pain. I don’t even turn my head. I stare at the beautiful yet horrible tableau painted with living strokes on the rock wall before me. It doesn’t change. Time must pass, but they’re still in the great room, still curled up in Griffin’s chair.
“You wallow in self-pity when you could be taking your life back!” Perses spits out. “It’s not too late!”
I gaze at my husband, his wife, and their children. “It was too late the moment you showed me this.”
Perses growls like a savage beast. His primordial power ignites around him, flooding the air and biting my skin. The hand he flings toward the scene vibrates with anger. “Then I guess I can get rid of this.”
“No!” I leap up, putting myself between the Titan and the rock wall. If I’m going to be here forever, I want at least this much of Griffin with me.
Perses stares me down, his ancient eyes swirling with malice. “You need this, too? We have eternity before us. Are you afraid I can’t punish you enough?”
My raw and aching heart jerks in fear. He didn’t get what he wanted from me, and now he’s going to make me pay. “You son of a Cyclops,” I hiss.
“Zeus doesn’t come around here often. He’ll forget about you and never know about all the fun we’ll have together.” His metal-bright eyes shift briefly to the great void over the edge of the ledge. When he looks back at me, his voice drops to a lethally soft level that sends ice sliding down my spine. “I can put you back together so slowly you’ll beg for mercy before you even have a mouth.”
My eyes widen. I want to scream in terror. I also want to rip off his face. “Bastard,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Not technically,” Perses answers.
“Technical isn’t the point when calling someone a bastard!”
One smoky eyebrow lifts. “There’s the fire I’ve heard about. Too bad you didn’t find it before this happened.” Perses nods to the scene again.
I look, and my throat closes up tight. Griffin and Bellanca are in a shaded garden now. Her belly is huge and round with child. He leans down and murmurs something in her ear that makes her face light up with happiness and love. Then he sweeps her into his arms and kisses her just like he used to kiss me.
I stare, frozen in place. There are no tears now, only gritty, swollen eyes and lips pressed hard together to keep me from shouting out to people who will never hear me—lips that feel numb and bereft and betrayed.
“You’re here. They’re there.” Perses shrugs his massive shoulders, the movement filled with tension and dislike. “You’re not much of a fighter. I don’t know why Zeus thought you could have finished what you started. It all stopped when you did.”
The disgust in his voice is tangible, and I can almost taste it on the dreary air. But I couldn’t care less what Perses thinks of me. What’s the point of caring about anything anymore?
“You lost your favored soldier in the war, but yougave upeverything else. Maybe it’s for the best. You? You’re not what anyone needs anymore. But look at them. They fit just right. They’re perfect together, made for each other.”
Perses’s hateful words scrape through my mind like a sharp and rusty trowel digging for roots—the root of something important to me, something I know deep down and forever.
Made for each other?
