My mouth dropped open. “Did he just say—?”
“Yes,” Nitsa replied.
“Doesn’t that mean—?”
“Yes, it does.”
I dropped my head in disbelief. Sisyphean. That was the word for a task that was hard and thankless, but in the end, futile. It was a battle that couldn’t be won. It was a labor that would never be completed.
It was another word for useless.
One after the other, novices stepped up and revealed their powers. One after the other, those powers were deemed vital, or pointless.
“Sebastian Barba.”
A hush fell over the stadium—so sudden, I looked this way and that for the source. Did something happen?
“Oh my gods,” Nitsa whispered. “TheSebastian Barba? Is he really here?”
“Look.” Theron pointed to the right of us. “That must be him. He’s here.”
“He had to come, didn’t he?” Tycho said. “Either that or be hunted as a deserter.”
I stuck my head in the huddle. “What are you guys talking about? Who is he?”
They shushed me.
TheSebastian Barba walked onto the platform and faced me. I swallowed through a suddenly parched, aching throat.
“Son of Adonis,” I whispered.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you,” Nitsa said, eyes glazing over as fast as mine. “How could anyone who looks like him not be?”
No one could ever say the gods’ choice of host was random. There had to be a method to their madness, and you knew when you saw that every child of Adonis was as unnaturally gorgeous as the god of beauty himself.
As the person standing before me.
Long flaxen hair swept down his back, constrained with a single band. The sun drenched his gypsum skin as though he denied her touch for years, and now she would bronze every inch of him with abandon. He rolled his neck—flexing wide, muscled shoulders—and I watched his bottom-heavy lips pucker as he blew out a bored breath.
Yes, he was bored. It was obvious in the dull sheen in his azure eyes and the displeasure wrinkling his broad, Roman nose. A short time ago, I would’ve said he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen, but that damn blasted Alexander put paid to that. Just as he ruined that moment by invading my thoughts.
Scowling, I shoved that silly, lust-addled nonsense out of my head. Like Alexander taught me all too well, pretty paper merely disguised the rotting pile on the inside. Sebastian Barba would drop my jaw and collect my swoons when he proved he only had the looks of Adonis—not the personality.
“He’s even more rare than a child of Adonis,” Theron said. “He’s a son of Hades.”
“Okay?” I drew out. “Cool?”
“That’s all you have to say?” Tycho goggled at me. “When he says they’re rare, he’s not kidding. There’s only like three in all of Olympia, and they don’t live in Trono. This is the first I’ve ever seen one in person.”
“Very cool?”
“It is,” Nitsa said. “Hades is generous with his children by far. Every one of his children throughout Olympian history has been granted powers that could topple kings. Like Midas with the gold touch. And Phedora who could douse her enemies with a deadly venom just by brushing their skin.”
“I heard he’s more powerful than both of them,” Tycho added. “My father said he can summon an army of the dead.”
Theron put in, “My mother said he can travel in and out of Hades itself. That’s how he evades the spies the council sends after him.”
“Imagine,” Nitsa breathed. “There are treasures, and horrors, in the depths of Hades that only he can get to. No wonder they keep sending spies to watch him.”