As Dionysus and Eris cut to the bar at the back of the box seat, Hermes and Psyche chat easily like old friends. This is what I wanted. This is everything I wanted. I’m Ares. Too bad it feels like I’m missing a limb.
“Hey.” Eros nudges me with his shoulder. He looks as good as always, for all that he’s dressed down in a pair of jeans and a knit sweater. His wife’s influence, no doubt. The obvious way they love each other makes my chest ache.
“Hey.” I try for a smile, but it wobbles around the edges.
He watches Psyche laugh at something Hermes says while Dionysus pours out six drinks. “Hermes told me a wild rumor a few days ago.” He says it so casually, voice pitched low to only carry to me. “She claims you’re hooking up with both Achilles and Patroclus.”
The wobble in my bottom lip gets worse despite myself. “I like them. For real. Maybe more than like.” I don’t know why I’m confessing to him. We’re friends, but some wounds are best kept hidden. I can’t quite seem to manage it in the face of his presence.
“Sometimes love comes at you fast.” His blue eyes warm when Psyche laughs again. She’s a pretty plus-sized white woman with excellent style and one of the savviest minds I’ve ever encountered. She plays it down and pretends she’s just a social-media influencer—all beauty and no brains—but she’s equally as dangerous as her mother, Demeter. I like her quite a bit. She makes my friend happy, and she’s given him a chance for real love for the first time in his life.
“You’ve got rose-tinted glasses on, Eros. What you have is rarer than red diamonds. Not everyone gets that.”
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “You won’t know until you try.”
You won’t know until you try.
Becoming Ares has complicated that. I can’t get to Patroclus and Achilles without stepping on Athena’s toes, and that isn’t an option. Not when it might mean a split Thirteen. My brother’s right; if there’s an outside threat, our petty rivalries shouldn’t stand in the way of an allied Thirteen. Unfortunately, I know too well how should doesn’t mean shit. I can’t threaten that. I can’t.
But Eros isn’t one of the Thirteen.
“Remember that time I banked a favor from you?” I wait for him to nod to continue. “I’d like to call it in now, please.”
“I’m listening.”
I shift closer and lower my voice. “Would you check on Patroclus? He was injured and I want to make sure he’s okay. I can’t do it without stepping on Athena’s toes, and she’ll never forgive me for starting out my time as Ares by fucking with her.”
Eros lifts his brows. “That all?”
Was that all? The cowardly part of me wants to leave it at that, but I’ve come this far. Maybe my feelings for my men will blow up in my face, but if I don’t try, then it definitely will. I drag in a breath. “And tell them…” Gods, why is it so hard to get this out? “Tell them that I still want that pretty future they painted. If they do, that is.”
He waits, but what else is there to say? That I think I might have gone straight past falling in love and into love itself? That I want Achilles’s wonderful and aggravating assurance at my back for whatever comes next, no matter how large or small? That I want Patroclus’s brilliant mind and stern determination to take care of us? Eros wouldn’t understand, and laying myself bare even this much is almost more than I can handle. “That’s all.”
He nods. “Do you want me to go now?”
The longer I have to wait for an answer, the worse it will be. Not just for what happens next. Patroclus has to be okay. He has to be. “Please.”
“Consider it done.” Eros slings an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into a brief hug. He kisses the top of my head. “You did well out there. Kicked a lot of ass.”
“Thanks.” I manage a smile this time, but barely. No matter what we said yesterday, there is no happily-ever-after guaranteed. Achilles believed with his whole heart that he would become Ares. How can he stand next to me when it will feel like he’s standing in my shadow? And Patroclus? No matter how strong our connection and history, he has a foundation-deep love with Achilles. If it becomes a choice between the two of us, it’s no choice at all. I would never ask that of him, either.
I inhale slowly and exhale just as slowly. I’m dirty and sweaty and exhausted, and all I want to do is go home and sleep for three days until this new world settles around me. That might have been an option for Helen, but it’s not an option for Ares.
I square my shoulders, paste a smile on my face, and head to join my sister and friends at the box-seat bar.
30
Achilles
I go straight from the arena to the hospital, following the ambulance they stuffed Patroclus into. He needs surgery, though the nurses keep telling me it isn’t serious, that the doctor is optimistic, that he’ll be just fine. Optimistic. That shit isn’t a sure thing. I pace around the waiting room until they find an empty room to stash me in.
I wait and wait and wait. I’m practically climbing the walls as the minutes tick by without news, two thoughts rolling through my head at regular intervals.
I need him to be okay.
Helen should be here.
Except she’s not Helen anymore, is she? She’s Ares. She got what she always wanted, snatched that shit right out of my hands even if she wasn’t the one to eliminate me. Why would she be worried about me, about Patroclus now? It’s not a fair thought, but it’s clear she has no intention of coming. She would have shown up by now if she wanted to be here.
More than that… I don’t know if I’m ready to see her. The future I had in my head, the one I’d been working toward for years, is gone. No matter what else is true, I will never be Ares now. Without that title…
I drag my hands over my face. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I can’t find my feet, can’t figure out next steps, until I know Patroclus is okay. He’ll figure out the future for both of us.
Unless he doesn’t want me anymore. I’m not the winner he fell in love with. It’s my fault he got hurt. He wouldn’t even have been in the tournament if not for me. He begged me to leave him behind in the second trial and I ignored him.
I curse. Patroclus wouldn’t dump me for not securing the title. That’s not how he operates, no matter what my sudden insecurity is sure of. No, it’s far more likely that things with Patroclus will fall apart if we can’t find a way forward with Helen. He got a taste of how well she balanced the two of us. How can he be satisfied with only me now that he’s had her, too?
A knock on the door has me spinning on my heel, but the person who steps inside isn’t a nurse and it’s sure as fuck not Helen. It’s Eros. I know who he is, know who his mother was to Patroclus’s moms. Enemy. Rival. Danger. Eros and I have never had reason to cross paths. He plays the part of the golden fuckboy, and I’m the soldier. Or at least both those things used to be true. Now Eros has, by all appearances, settled down into domestic life with Psyche Dimitriou.