Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(105)
Her expression impish, Maria wrinkled her nose at him. “If that’s a hint that I talk too much—”
“Never,” he swore dramatically, one hand clapped over his heart as the audience laughed. “I hang on your every utterance, my lady.”
“There’s a word in Swedish that applies here.” Maria propped her elbows on the table in front of her and gazed conspiratorially out at the session’s attendees. “Snicksnack. Nonsense. Total bullshit.”
Carah snickered at that. “I thought I’d be the first person bleeped today.”
“Swedes are a foulmouthed lot, I’ve found,” Peter said very clearly into his microphone, while Maria grinned at him. “I can only conclude that long winters encourage vulgarity.”
Marcus shook his head at them both. By the time he got on Twitter later, that particular exchange would have already gone viral, one of many such exchanges that had become memes and gifs over the last several years. He knew it already.
The closeness and seeming devotion of his two castmates fascinated even people who’d never watched Gods of the Gates. Maria and Peter had never, ever dated each other, as far as anyone—including Marcus—knew, but that only seemed to encourage the speculation, rather than dampen it.
The moderator turned to him then, the last cast member who hadn’t answered a question specifically about his character. “Marcus, can you talk a little bit about Aeneas’s arc over the course of the show? I know you can’t share any spoilers for the final season, but can you tell us more about the state of your character as everyone prepares for the big showdown between Juno and Jupiter?”
Usually, Marcus didn’t get such probing questions.
Here it was. Another moment of decision. Another chance to be brave, or not.
April wasn’t in the audience. He’d looked, hard. Maybe she’d needed to prepare for her session with Summer, which was occurring in less than half an hour, or maybe she hadn’t wanted to share a room with her ex-boyfriend in public.
It didn’t matter. Her bravery might have inspired him, but this wasn’t for her.
It was for himself.
He’d seen the question ahead of time. He knew what he needed to say.
“I think . . .” A sip from his water bottle helped relieve his throat’s dryness. “I think, when we meet Aeneas in the first season, he’s a man who’s lost his home, but not his identity. He may have been sailing for months, sometimes far from land and at the mercy of Neptune, but he has a very clear sense of purpose and self. Pius Aeneas. A warrior and leader dedicated to the will of the gods, whatever that might entail.”
His castmates were staring at him now, all wide eyes and furrowed brows, and no wonder. He didn’t dare look out into the audience, which had gone very quiet.
“But—” More water, and he kept speaking. “But after being ordered to leave Dido, the woman he loves, in such a cruel and damaging way, after standing on the deck of his ship and helplessly watching her burn on a funeral pyre comprised of their life together, he finds himself unable to reconcile his personal sense of honor with his obedience to Venus and Jupiter.”
Another gulp of water. Another deep breath, before he continued to defy his public image so completely, there could be no mistaking his previous artifice.
“By the time he meets Lavinia, he’s wrestled with the contradiction between duty and conscience, and is trying to determine what piety actually means to him. He’s not the same man. Especially after he begins to build a life with his wife, one not defined by battle and bloodshed.” Marcus offered a feeble, thin smile to the room without actually making eye contact with anyone. “How that’ll play out in the final season, I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
The moderator, a reporter from a well-known entertainment magazine, was blinking at him. “Oh—okay. Um, thank you, Marcus, for that—” The older man paused. “Thank you for that very thoughtful answer.”
In the front row, Vika was watching Marcus. When he inadvertently met her gaze, she inclined her head with a faint smile. An acknowledgment. Encouragement, perhaps.
“Well, uh . . .” The moderator still seemed a bit shell-shocked, but he eventually glanced at the papers in front of him and pulled himself together. “I believe we have time for audience questions.”
Several moments of general upheaval ensued before a woman near the back of the room stood, accepted a microphone, and addressed the panel. “This question is for Marcus.”
“No fucking duh,” Carah muttered, and patted his arm comfortingly.
To his surprise, though, the woman didn’t address the obvious dichotomy between his previous public persona and the version of him who’d spoken moments before.
No, what she asked was infinitely worse.
“My boyfriend and I have an ongoing argument,” she said, gesturing toward a guy in a Gates tee who sat slouched and smirking in the seat beside her. “He’s convinced you only dated that fan as a publicity thing, or as some kind of political statement. I told him you’re a great actor, but there’s no way you were faking that expression whenever you looked at her. So who’s right?”
Dimly, Marcus wondered what expression he wore whenever he looked at April. Thunderstruck, probably. Lovesick.
The moderator heaved a sigh and glared at the woman. “Please make sure all future questions involve the show, rather than matters of an entirely personal nature. Let’s go to the next—”