“Is this the point where you tell me that it meant nothing?” I said waspishly.
He paused, as if he were choosing his words carefully.
“No, it isn’t. While it was happening, it did mean something.”
I clutched the sticks so tightly that a few of them snapped.
“You really need to learn when it’s better to lie instead of tell the truth.”
“Don’t see why,” he said. “Then you’d be mad I wasn’t honest.”
He was right, of course, but that didn’t make me feel any better. “So what happened?” I said. “What is so appeal-ing about that self ish cow that she had half of the council wrapped around her little f inger?”
We walked across the f ield, neither of us saying a word as the tinny sound of carnival music f loated through the breeze. Ava and Persephone’s shrieks of outrage and indignation faded into the background until I could almost pretend it was only the three of us: me, James and the giant elephant that followed us.
“We were friends before she married Henry,” he said at last, after several minutes passed. “She and I were the youngest members of the council at the time, and we got along well. We were close enough in age that neither one of us had been through the rites of passage the rest of them had experienced, and…” He shrugged. “It was easy, that was all.”
I spotted what looked like a broken tree branch, and I knelt down to pick up the pieces. He joined me, his eyes focused on the ground.
“When her marriage to Henry started to fall apart, I was there for her,” he said. “I spent a lot of time in the Underworld guiding the dead to the right place, and when she needed a shoulder to cry on, she came to me.” He hesitated. “When Henry offered to let her leave for six months of the year, she jumped at the chance, and we started to spend time together above, as well. One thing turned into another…” He trailed off, and he didn’t need to f inish.
“How long did it last?” I said as nausea f illed the pit of my stomach. James had been the f irst person to cheat with her. He was closer to Henry than any other member of the council, and he must’ve known what it would do to him, but he’d done it anyway. He’d let Persephone use him like that. He’d done more than let her hurt Henry; he’d helped.
“A few hundred years,” he said, and he must have seen the look on my face, because he added hastily, “On and off, and only during the spring and summer. Eventually she met Adonis, and that whole mess happened, and I was left in the dust.”
“Poor you,” I muttered.
He smiled faintly. I found the last stick in the immediate area, and together we stood. “No, not poor me,” he said.
“We were always better as friends anyway. Besides, it made working with Henry awkward.”
It was one thing to sneak around behind Henry’s back, but it was another to have a relationship with his wife when he was fully aware of it. “He knew, and he didn’t try to kill you?”
“Of course not,” said James, chuckling. I didn’t see what was so funny about it. “Everything’s an open secret with us, Kate. You’ll see eventually.”
I wasn’t so sure I wanted to anymore, if I managed to make it out of this alive, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. I decided right then and there that if I stayed, if Henry still wanted me here after this mess was cleaned up, I would never cheat on him, not even during the summer. And especially not with James.
Yet I’d spent my entire six months away with James, hadn’t I? What had for me been a break from the mayhem with a friend could have easily been construed as a romantic vacation by Henry. If he really hadn’t checked in on me the entire time I’d been in Greece with James—
Oh, god.
The things Henry must have imagined—my mind reeled, and every emotion I’d started to develop for James vanished.
“You knew what Greece would look like to him, and you didn’t warn me?”
James winced. “It didn’t matter. You and I both knew it wasn’t anything more than friends, and if that was what Henry wanted to assume—”
“Of course it was what he’d assume!” Without thinking, I hurled one of the sticks at James. It glanced harmlessly off his chest, but for once I didn’t care about hurting him. He was a god. He’d get over it, and it was nothing compared to the horror and guilt and shame churning inside me. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you? What is it, James? Do you want him to be alone? Do you want him to fade? Do you want to rule the Underworld after all?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said, bending to pick up the stick I’d thrown. “And I don’t want to hurt Henry, but more than that, I don’t want anyone to hurt you, either.
You have a choice. A choice, Kate, that no one else is pointing out to you because they don’t see what Henry’s doing to you. He’s hurting you, and there’s no guarantee it’s ever going to get better.”
His words were a slap in the face, and I choked on my reply. He was saying everything I didn’t want to hear. Everything I was trying so desperately to ignore.
“It will get better,” I said shakily, fury rising up inside of me until I could taste it. “As soon as he understands that I have no interest in ever being with you, I’m sure he’ll come around.”
To my immense satisfaction, James winced. “Believe what you want, but your deal with Henry is clear. He has you for six months, no more. You can do whatever you want during the summer, and he has no say in it.”