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Ares stares harder. “Rovers?”
“Mars rovers. I heard him when we were coming through. His cufflinks are supposed to represent Spirit and Opportunity.”
“What did he sound like?” Ares demands.
Hercules blinks at him. “You don’t know what your own date sounds like?”
“This isn’t about me. This is about Apollo’s surprise engagement,” says Ares.
“Now it’s about you, and where you disappeared to all day. Dad was so worried,” Hercules scolds. “And you missed playing the Xbox.”
“Shut up. There was no Xbox. No one brought an antique game system to get their nails done,” Ares argues, glancing at the crowd out of the corner of his eye.
“How would you know? You weren’t there. Neither of you were there.” Hercules leans in. “You could have just said you were in love with her,” he tells me, matter-of-fact.
Hercules has gotten more comfortable with treating us like brothers since he and Daisy got engaged. Right now, I’m finding it profoundly unsettling. This heat is not a fever. This is the embarrassed scorch of finding out that everyone—or at least Hercules—thinks me being in love with Artemis is obvious.
“That’s not what it is.”
“Fuck off,” Hercules answers. “They’re not going to kick you out of the family. And they’re not going to kick you out for having a secret Mars-rover date, Ares, so stop looking so scared.”
“I don’t look scared.” This, from Ares, is completely unconvincing. He lowers his hand from his collar and puts it faux-causally in his pocket. “And I had a meeting. That’s all it was.”
“Really?” Hercules’s eyebrows go up. “You led a protest on Calliope and Orion’s gala day?”
“No,” Ares says flatly. “A meeting.”
“Why don’t we all share secrets?” Hercules gestures around the circle of us in a move he’s blatantly stealing from me. “Since we are part of the same nuclear family, which is when?—”
He steals the speech, too. That part is impressive. I didn’t think he was listening so carefully when I said those things.
“—tell each other things for bonding purposes,” Hercules finishes.
“Don’t.” Don’t ask. Don’t make me explain. Don’t make me think of the Senator’s shadow-face or remember, with a cold pit in my gut, that he’s here at the party and I can’t see him. “Don’t ruin it for Artemis.”
Hercules takes another step closer and lowers his voice. “She’s wearing Daisy’s ring. What happened?”
“I’ll get a different ring.”
Ares and Hercules exchange a glance, and fucking crickets, I do not like being on the other side of this configuration. I’m not the one people exchange glances about. I’m the one who smiles and shakes hands and puts everyone at ease. I’m the world peace guy, not the guy everyone is guardedly concerned about.
If they’re openly concerned, then I’m fucked.
Ares claps my shoulder again. “It’ll be okay. You know that, right?”
I don’t know that. I don’t know what’s gone so wrong with the episodes or why the Senator makes me want to take Artemis and run or why, despite so many favors, my mother died in a hospital bed right in front of me.
What I know is that nobody’s coming to save me.
It won’t be okay in the end. It’ll just be over.
Calliope and Orion’s party proceeds in a series of still shots. Candles glowing on an enormous cake. All of us gathered around, singing. Daisy and Artemis posing for a series of photos with Daisy exclaiming over her own ring and somehow managing to hide it from the cameras. Those photos will be plastered across social media before the first guest has left the Intrepid.
I’m barely present for the photos of me and Artemis with her parents. My parents. My adoptive parents. Zeus shakes my hand and murmurs a long string of congratulations into my ear. Brigit hugs both Artemis and I tight, beaming.
Did they all suspect?
There are photos of Artemis and Calliope. Daisy and her parents. Daisy and Artemis and her parents. Poseidon holding up a bottle of champagne and saying about time! in a voice that carries all the way across Manhattan. The ripples are moving outward from the Intrepid. They’ll be across the ocean. Mociar is nine hours ahead of us. In the capital city, there’s less than an hour to sunrise. Soon they’ll be going about the business of fighting a coup, as though I haven’t just launched a much more terrifying one here.
