AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You were the one who wanted to be…” He motions in a circle with his spoon in a painfully accurate imitation of me. “Brothers.”
“I never said I wanted you to call me champ.”
“Too bad, champ.”
“Fucking crickets.” I get up off the couch. Hercules gets up, too. “No, no. Don’t trouble yourself.”
“I’m not,” he says, and grins at me. “I’m just coming with you. Brotherly shit.”
“Ares isn’t even here. Doesn’t that count as brotherly, too?”
“When in Rome.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Hercules follows me through the house for several minutes.
“Who are you looking for?” he asks, finally.
“Dad.”
“He’s outside.”
“How long were you going to watch me look for him?”
Hercules shrugs with another brotherly grin. I might hate it on him if I didn’t see him on the edge of a nervous breakdown last year, ripping an exercise bar out of the studs of Hades’s wall. This—the teasing and the brotherly shit—is harder for him than being sullen and withdrawn and angry.
“You’re the worst,” I tell him.
He follows me outside anyway, where we come upon another brotherly scene.
My dad and my Uncle Poseidon have set up a target in a stretch of grass between our pool and Aunt Persphone’s garden. Blades flash through the air and thunk into the target.
Our Uncle Hades—soon to be Hercules’s father-in-law—is not throwing knives. He’s sitting on the ground, his back to us, one hand lifted to shade his eyes. With his free hand, he pats his dog, Conor, who is curled up as close as the enormous dog can get to Hades’s leg. Aunt Persephone sits at his side, surrounded by a circle of flowers.
“What’s going on with him?” I ask Hercules.
We must be within earshot, because Hades answers without turning around. Conor’s tail wags against the blanket they’re sitting on, but he doesn’t get to his feet. “I got tired of breaking their knives.”
Poseidon throws another knife into the target. “Fuck off, Hades. You know you love it.”
“It’s boring after the first thousand times.”
Persephone looks over her shoulder and smiles at us. “Apollo! Did you take the day off?”
“Part of it.” I glow at Persephone just a little, out of habit, though I don’t think it has any effect on her. It’s like extra sunshine on a flower. She’s already used to it. “Decided to head out early.”
“Good for you.”
She turns back to Hades and readjusts her left hand, which rests on his knee. With her right hand, she traces a pattern just above the grass.
Flowers spring up under her fingertips, the petals bursting out of the top of the stems and opening wide, fully grown.
Hades lifts his other hand to shade his eyes even more. “Fuck this.”
“What, do you hate flowers?” Hercules asks, sounding astonished.
“No. I hate magnetic storms.”
