If they’re smart, they’ll never try to return to Olympus.
Demeter carefully places the apple pie in the oven and turns to me. “I don’t trust you.”
Where is she going with this? “You’d be a fool to.”
“With that said, you’ve been a friend to my girls more than afew times over the years, so I’m going to show you something and trust that you won’t use it against me.”
Curiosity sinks its claws into me, sharp and prickling. I’ve always loved a good mystery, and she’s being particularly mysterious right now. “Okay,” I say slowly.
“This way.” She slips off her apron and hangs it on a hook by the doorway. Then she leads the way deeper into the house.
It’s strangely quiet, the faint sound of the central air and our footsteps on the hardwood floor the only things breaking the tense silence. We bypass a living room and a study, both decorated in a cozy, cluttered kind of way that makes my heart ache a little. No matter what else is true about Demeter, her love for her daughters is in every inch of this place, in how lived in it still feels even though the family hasn’t used it as their primary residence in years. There are pictures on the walls, too, a collage of the Dimitriou daughters in their various stages of growth, from chubby babies to beaming toddlers to awkward preteens. Most of them are clearly candid pictures, too, not the perfectly poised ones that professionals tend to favor.
We take the stairs up, and she stops in front of the second door down the hallway. There’s the barest hesitation as she palms the doorknob, but once Demeter makes a decision, she’s not one to falter. This instance is just as true; she pushes open the door and steps back to allow me to precede her.
It feels a bit like a trap, but if she wanted me dead, there has been plenty of opportunity to attempt it during the last hour. I’m still so tense I’m practically vibrating as I step into the dim bedroom. At least until I see the figure laid out on the bed. A very familiar figure with a head of blond curls and a devastatingly beautiful face. A person who ismost certainly dead. Why the fuck is Eros’s bodyhere? “What the—”
His chest rises and falls.
My knees go out and I sink to the floor. “Eros,” I whisper. The loss of him, barely held at bay through the last day, comes rushing back with a strength that leaves me breathless. “How?”
The bathroom door opens and Psyche steps out, her hair still damp from her apparent shower. She stops short when she sees me and her mother standing behind me. “What’s going on?”
“A change of plans,” Demeter says easily. “Hermes paid us an unexpected visit, and it seems we see eye to eye. Revealing Eros ensures that will continue to be the case. You know how she feels about your husband.”
Eros. Who is alive. Not dead. Alive and breathing and opening his blue, blue eyes to blink at me. “Hermes?”
“How?” I repeat. I don’t know who I’m asking, only that I need to know this isn’t a dream. I’m awake. IknowI’m awake. But… “I saw you die.”
“On the contrary.” Demeter sweeps into the room and sinks onto one of two chairs positioned on the other side of the bed. “You saw him shot. You saw him fall. You saw me yell that he was dead.”
I blink at her. Usually, I’m the one who thinks fast on my feet, but it feels like I’m up to my neck in mud that thickens around me with every step. IknowEros was dead…don’t I? I shake my head sharply, jostling my thoughts free. “That was quick thinking on your part. Circe didn’t even question you.” I didn’t question her, either.
“She was distracted by your presence,” Demeter says diplomatically. “My claim about his death might have been the truth if we didn’t get him medical care in time, but fortunately, our familydoctor was close and available.”
Psyche takes the other empty seat, the one closest to the head of the bed, and laces her fingers through Eros’s. “If Circe finds out he’s alive, she’ll have him killed just to avoid looking like my mother is undermining her.”
That was a concern an hour ago. With our current plans, Eros being alive will be the least of Circe’s problems in a day or two. I climb unsteadily to my feet and cross to stand next to the bed. “You look like shit.”
Eros’s normally warm, pale skin is bleached of color until he looks almost like a corpse. His chest is a mass of bandages, and there’s an IV hooked up to his free wrist and oxygen tucked under his straight nose. He gives a faint smile. “You should grab a mirror. When’s the last time you slept?”
“Hey.” I lift a finger but stop short of poking him. I don’t want to cause him any pain, even accidentally. He’s been through enough. “You know better than to comment on a woman’s appearance.”
“Guilty.” His smile fades away. “If you need help—”
Psyche tenses and parts her lips, but I speak before she can get a word out. “You can help by staying right where you are and continuing to breathe. No more heroics for you, mister.” My voice has gone all wrong, thick and watery. “Save that for the professionals.”
“Hermes, Iama professional.” He slides a glance at his wife. “Or at least I used to be.”
“Let’s keep it in the past tense.” My throat feels like someone has wrapped their hand around it and is squeezing tighter with each breath. “I’m really glad you’re alive, Eros. The world would be a dimmer place without you in it.”
Psyche bows her head, but not enough to hide the tears in her pretty hazel eyes. Neither one of them will be moving on from this violence anytime soon. It’s the kind of thing that leaves scars, and I’m not talking about the ones he’ll carry on his chest for the rest of his—hopefully long—life.
Eros looks again to his wife and then back to me. “I’m glad I’m alive, too.”
I have to get moving, to start putting things into place before… But all I want to do is stand here and drink in the sight of him. Eros isalive.
Demeter stands and smooths down her dress. “The doctor will be here in an hour to change the bandages. If you need anything before then—”
