“Right. And for some reason, you decided not to kill her. You could have. You still can. But you haven’t.”
I fisted my hands. I bet I could reach right over Paris’s shoulder and send Orestes down the stairs. He’d heal. We all do.
“And you won’t,” Paris added. “You’re not going to hurt her. And you’re up here, what, checking in on her work? Hanging out until she gets back?”
“She was making out with Pollux in the living room about—” I pretended I had a watch and looked at my wrist, “Oh, four hours ago. Besides, I don’t fall in love. You do.”
Paris blanched, but then his face flushed with color. His blue eyes flashed. “Who said anything about love?”
Dammit.I was done with these word games. As a general, I was the strategist and I hated being outmaneuvered. It was time to retreat. If Paris would get out of my way. “Move.”
“Achilles.” There were times I forgot that Paris was a soldier in his own right and had been raised a prince. Millennia of moping tended to make me forget. But right now, standing just a little shorter than me, but drawn up like royalty, Paris commanded my attention. “She’s on our side, and she knows who we are. It’s the first time since we’ve been reborn that we can be honest with someone.”
“With a woman,” Orestes added, like I hadn’t fucking noticed Leo’s lush form, and rosy cheeks. Her lips that begged to be kissed, and that fire that made her eyes spark.
“I know she’s a woman.” But my tone wasn’t as sharp as I wanted it to be. Spinning away from Paris, I put distance between us. I gazed out the window. Leo and Pollux were little spots way off in the distance. “And she’s with him.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because he’s the only one of us who made a move.” Was this Paris? Where was the maudlin wanker I knew and loved? Peering over at him, I only saw a man who stood straight and tall, and seemed to know fucking exactly what he wanted.
I’d never seen him with Helen, but I bet this was what he looked like then, too. Confident.
Pausing, I had to ask, “What’s changed?” Would he even answer me?
His gaze flicked to the window. “If he’s giving it a chance, I can. We’ve all lost someone, Achilles. We’re all at fault, but like you said, I can stay pathetic, slip my hood over my head, and wallow, or I could try something different.”
That wasn’t exactly what I said, but it was close. What shocked the fuck out of me was that he was even listening. I looked at him,reallylooked at him. For the first time in memory, his gaze was clear. Not haunted.
I glanced at Orestes. So was his. There could only be one reason. “The Furies?”
“Nothing.” He let out a breath like he’d been holding it since they’d first appeared to torture him for what the gods had forced him to do. “Not since her.”
There was something magical about the human girl outside. Or maybe it was us who were changing.
But she was the spark. Without her, we would have remained stagnant, unchanging, cold and immortal.
We had another problem now. The reason we were here at all was because of a woman. No. That wasn’t fair. Helen hadn’t done anything except choose to love Paris. It was everything that came after: the pride of kings and princes, the interference of the gods, and an inability to call a truce when it was the only thing that could save the world.
So what did we do? I wasn’t going to fight my friends over a woman, and I wasn’t going to forget my duty to them, or to the mortal realm.
Pollux and Leo were headed back. The wind died down and Leo laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile in response. Her lightness and amusement spilling into me and the heart that hadn’t beaten in memory.
I didn’t know what would happen, but I’d be damned if I didn’t find out.
Leo
The soggy ground sucked at my boots. There was a trail through the hills, as if it was trod regularly, but all the rain had turned it into a bog.
Thrown off balance, I windmilled crazily, but Pollux caught me.
He caught me. So this is what it’s like. “You have the strangest look on your face.”
“I thought you said you could read me like a book,” I countered. I couldn’t stand this lightness. It made no sense in the face of everything else—trapped gods, the possible end of my career—but it made all those other things not as scary. Pollux would catch me.
“I did read it. You feel strange.”
I loved the way he spoke. The way words rolled off his tongue in an accent that wasn’t Greek, but wasn’t British. It was the voice of a man who’d had to learn and speak more languages than maybe I knew even existed.
The wind was bitingly cold, and the sunlight weak through the heavy cloud cover. Every so often there’d be a break in the clouds, revealing the brilliant blue that was hidden, and turn the hills from green to emerald. A few times, Pollux would tip his face to the sun, closing his eyes as if to absorb the heat.