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And then another man said—through the closed, barricaded door—that there wasn’t anyone from social services out in the hall.
At the time, I didn’t have the words to describe Hades’s voice. He wasn’t loud, but there was something icy and unbreakable in his tone.
At the time, I thought he was dangerous.
At the time, I was right. He and Zeus and their third brother, Poseidon, are all dangerous.
But not to us.
Zeus and Hades gave us food and bought us more of it when Ares and I got into a fight and ruined the first takeout bag.
She was a liar. I can still feel the words in my mouth.
My mother had said?—
My mother.
She hadn’t meant to lie. That wasn’t her fault. That was mine.
By the time Zeus and Hades suggested a drive, I was at the end of my rope. Both Ares and I were. I forced food past this horrible sharp grief in my throat and stared at the men who’d whisked us away from the shelter—which, we learned later, was Zeus’s shelter, and Zeus’s project, and Zeus’s penance. Zeus looked exactly like he sounded. Warm. Golden. Hades was just as tall, but pale and blond, with black eyes. He didn’t flinch when Ares called him a freak right in front of him. He told us about his eyes and the pain—Does it hurt? Like a motherfucker.—in a level tone that was starting to sound less cold and more…solid. Steady.
They drove us out to the farmhouse where they grew up and told us about that, too.
And then Zeus took us back to his massive, sprawling house, where his whole family was gathered for Christmas. He gave us clothes. He gave us bedrooms.
Before Zeus’s wife, Brigit, could even introduce us to everyone, her daughter, Artemis, popped up from behind a couch and shot a toy arrow at me with a toy bow.
Most of what I remember about that moment is her eyes. Golden and bright, just like Zeus. I knew from the glint in those eyes that the arrow wouldn’t miss. And I knew, without really knowing, that I wouldn’t let it touch me. Couldn’t.
So I put my hand up and caught it before it could. Artemis smiled at me, and there was a pull at my ribs, and I smiled back. Smiled, because I wanted to, and smiled to cover up that my heart was racing and my vision had gone dim at the edges and I felt my heart beat and beat and beat like a clock ticking down.
When we woke up the next morning, there were presents for us under the tree. The adoption was official before the new year.
Then it was just a matter of school, which took a different kind of flattery than the brothel had. There was college, which took the opposite of flattery. I spent more time fending people off than I did glowing at them. I knew long before Ares decided to go to college in the city, and I decided to follow him, that I wouldn’t go anywhere out of state. I couldn’t.
And so, when my extremely wealthy adoptive father held charity galas and surrounded himself with people from the government and charmed them and made them feel safe—because he can, never mind how, nobody really knows the mechanics behind the power—I stood at his elbow and let him put his hand on my shoulder and ignored the shame that bubbled up into the back of my throat when he said my son, Apollo.
I smiled.
I glowed.
And now I’m on thirty-under-thirty lists, raising obscene amounts of funding, and stopping wars. I spend my days glowing to make up for the ruined rot of me in the hopes that someday it’ll all balance out and I’ll die without anyone knowing the truth.
Easy.
My office door opens with a coinciding strum of a guitar, followed by my CEO, Delphi, singing trembling earth and ashen skies.
I don’t open my eyes.
She strums a different chord on the guitar. “Trembling earth, ashen skies…”
Her footsteps are soft as she moves from one side of my office to the other, picking out a melody as she goes. “I saw it catch you by surprise?—”
“This feels personal.” I met Delphi when she stood up out of her seat to argue with me in our freshman U.S. foreign affairs class. She never cared about the glowing and was happy to remain in my orbit so long as I adopted a possessive stance whenever guys tried to hit on her. Our friendship—and working relationship—has always been one of mutual platonic benefits.
“But it shouldn’t have.” She strums more forcefully on the guitar. “The signs were there before your eyes, standing on their own two feet in a patch of sun that glowed like?—”
“Lava?”
