“Maybe.”
“I struggle with my past sometimes,” Silas said softly. “Sometimes I wish I could start fresh like you. I could spend years reminiscing on the darker parts of my history, but that wouldn’t get me anywhere. The thing that gets me through the day when I remember some of those difficult years is that they led me here. It led me to today. It led me to you.”
I curled toward him, and Silas again smiled in the darkness, a soft, tender smile. He ran a hand over my cheeks and pressed his lips to mine. It was a tender, sensitive kiss this time. Needy, but full of heart, passion, longing.
I wondered if maybe he was right. Maybe we had both ended up exactly where we needed to be.
“What happened?” I asked, as we pulled apart and lay together with the fresh breeze filtering through the open window. “Even Atlas doesn’t mention your history much.”
“He’s smart not to,” Silas said. “He knows where that would land him.”
I waited, sensing there was more.
“I just don’t feel the need to dwell on a tragic past,” he said. “It all happened so long ago it’s literally ancient history.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not still relevant to who you are. Some of the stuff that shaped me happened when I was a kid. Even if you were a child a really, really long time ago, the things that happened to you still hurt.”
“My mother and father were never together. She wasn’t”—Silas paused, considering—“high enough in social standing for his tastes.”
“I understand social status issues very well.”
Silas gave a soft huff. “Some things between mortals and the paranormal are not that different after all, whether it’s New York or Mount Olympus.”
“My father wasn’t in my life long. He disappeared very early on, and that was fine. My mother was wonderful,” Silas said. “But she was killed when I was still young.”
“Oh, Silas, I’m so sorry.”
“I showed up at my father’s, expecting him to take me in by default, even though he wanted nothing to do with me,” Silas continued. “I was young, his only son.”
“Did he?”
“For a while. Until he started an affair with Atlas’s future mother. Then Atlas was born—the golden boy, the titan my father had always wanted—and I was old news.”
“That’s awful.”
“My father, Atlas’s mother, and Atlas, decided to spend their days on Olympus. I have no Greek or Titan blood, so I couldn’t make the move with them, which left me very alone indeed.”
“Oh, Silas,” I said, running my hands through his still-damp hair. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how you felt, being abandoned so young. It’s unfathomable.”
“It’s just the way of the world,” Silas said. “Especially back then. Especially when you’re talking about Olympians.”
“You and Atlas must have reconnected at some point?”
“As the years passed, our paths crossed. Atlas is… not always as bad as he seems.”
“No kidding,” I said with a smile, as I traced my finger along his lips. “It’s okay, you can say that you like your brother. I’ll keep it a secret.”
“Let’s not go that far,” Silas said. “Though I’ll admit Atlas has proven himself trustworthy when it mattered. He’s got more of a heart and a conscience than I like to admit; he must get that from his mother.”
“When were your darker years?” I asked. “Was that before or after you reconnected with Atlas?”
Silas made a somewhat unhappy noise in his throat. I got the impression these were the parts he especially didn’t like talking about.
“Atlas helped pull me out of the dark years,” Silas said, which kind of explained a lot. “He was a pivotal part of that.”
“What do you classify as your dark years?” I asked. “Is it a period of time like the Jurassic Age, the Ice Age, Silas’s Dark Age?”
Silas laughed softly. “I classify them as my stint of working for the Darkest Lord.”
