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He pauses. “Hera didn’t call her right back?”
“Apparently not.”
He sobers by notable degrees.
“Figured you might want to know that a Fury had posted up at the Alameda University’s president’s house, out in Pasadena. And that she definitely wasn’t there to sell solar energy panels.” I turn my head into the wind, welcoming the strong gusts from the direction of the ocean. Essential mind-clearing stuff. “She’s obviously trying to involve herself in matters here for a reason.”
“Why?”
The grooves are so deep in Z’s forehead, I already know he isn’t feigning confusion.
“She’s still probably acting on Hera’s orders, right? So the end goal could be to stay in the thick of things with the mortals and report back on their reactions and plans. Two, sticking close to McCarthy means she might grab a new pin on Kara and me.”
“Or door number three,” he mutters. “That she wants both.”
I scrape the light sea salt out of my beard. “You must have some clue as to what Hera is up to. She’s your wife.” I wait through the better part of a minute, enduring a first-row view of the deepening brackets at the corners of his terse lips, before I can’t take it any longer. “Z? You know something. Don’t you think it’s the right time to say something?”
His head shakes as if another force has given it a strong jolt. But he’s the top of the Olympian food chain. What could be more formidable than that?
“I have no more of a clue than you, son. I wish I did. ButifI did—”
“Don’t you dare feed me some fancy line about having to protect me from all this garbage.” I drop my hand. Ball my fingers up. “You weren’t concerned about my safety when dragging me to an extradimensional bar for our first pop-and-son outing. And youreallyweren’t after Kara was abducted and I had to—”
“Stop.” He jabs out a finger. “Donotgo there. None of that stupidity is on me.Youtook that idiotic dive without my knowledge or—”
“What?Consent?Are you really going to pull insulted and incensed with me? Kara got kidnapped to hell because you wouldn’t go toe-to-toe with Hades. If you’d even tried halfway—”
“Then I’d have arrived with a million hell-bound souls in tow too!” he bellows. “Is that what you had in mind? Think about your mortal world nightmare of an internet scandal gone viral, only a lotworse. I’d be obligated to hear out every single one of those pleas, from all Hades’s souls who feel they were wrongly doomed, since the beginning of time. That includes swindlers, abusers, murderers, rapists… You want me to go on?”
I let him gloat about his point for a few seconds longer. The silence between us is marred only by the cruel slices of wind still dueling for control of the canyon. I murmur into the conflicting air with deliberate calm.
“What Iwantis for you to level with me,” I bite out. “For once, for me to regard you as a father instead of an untouchable myth. That kind of connection starts with honesty, and right now I need it in the form of you telling me what’s going on with my…stepmother.” I release a harsh breath, fully processing that tidbit of surreal information. I square up my stance and confront his unwavering stare. “What’s Hera up to? You’ve got to know something. Why hasn’t she called Megaera back to Olympus?”
Z pushes out his lower lip.
A seethe begins in my belly and presses at my rib cage. Though I can count our face-to-face meetings on one hand, I already know his haughty obstinance—and the uselessness of butting up to it. It makes me furious.
“Damn it, son. Do you honestly think she’s told me? That she’s revealed her plan of sending secret operatives to the mortal plane for some kind of…advanced reconnaissance?”
I jerk my brows. “Is that what you think it is?”
He shakes his head again, clearly frazzled. “I have no idea. But I promise you, I’m going to try my hardest to find out. When I do, I promise that you’ll be briefed too.”
I rear back by an inch, more than happy to expose my onset of astonishment.
“What? Isn’t that the promise you’re after?”
“Yes. But—”
“What?”
“What about your golden rule? About not getting involved?”
A new blast of wind cuts across his face, seeming to carve new lines into it. It takes me a second to realize it’s not the offshore and onshore flows battling each other. The gusts are all him.
“Don’t the humans have some quote about listening to the lessons of your children?”
I park a hip against the front bumper while a small smirk breaks free. “Probably. I mean, that sounds like a good one.”
