Complete Nothing (True Love #2)(50)

“Good luck tomorrow, Peter,” she said.

And just like that, I was dismissed. My worst fear had come true months before I’d ever imagined it would. Claudia had moved on with someone else.





CHAPTER THIRTY


True


When Lauren dropped me off in front of my house, I practically skipped up the flower-lined walk. Tonight could not have gone more perfectly. It was obvious that Peter was green with envy, realizing what he’d thrown away, coming to the conclusion that he had to have it back. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he showed up at Claudia’s door tonight and begged her to forgive him. Plus, we had just dropped off Orion’s spirit basket on his front porch, and even though he hadn’t been there when I pressed the bell, I knew he was going to get it and I knew he was going to love it. If the way to a man’s heart really was through his stomach, those raspberry cheesecake bars I’d been up half the night baking were going to make him mine.

Things were good.

Until I saw Hephaestus sitting in the foyer, waiting for me.

“The shit has officially hit the fan,” he said darkly.

I closed the door with a final-sounding click. “What shit are we talking about?”

“Artemis and Apollo,” he said, earning my full attention. “They found a way to bust through Zeus’s cloak, and they know where Orion is. Where you and Aphrodite are.”

He turned around and wheeled himself into the parlor, a small, octagonal room stuffed with velvet couches and settees, carved wooden tables, and a stone fireplace. If he expected me to get comfortable for this discussion, he’d severely miscalculated.

“How do you know this?” I asked, so dizzy I had to lean against the doorway.

“Harmonia. How else?” he said, his hands gripping his wheels. “They’re on Mount Olympus right now, doing everything they can to piss off the upper gods so that one of them will banish them here. She says she hasn’t seen this much chaos since the fall of Troy. This is not good, Eros.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I demanded, pacing to the fireplace and back again.

I had lived on Mount Olympus with these gods throughout my existence. We knew how these things worked. Every last one of us had some ancient quarrel or another with everyone else. Every last one of us harbored feelings of resentment, competitiveness, jealousy, guilt, anger, unrequited love. If Artemis and Apollo truly wished to be banished to Earth, they simply needed to anger the right god, someone who had a bone to pick with Zeus and therefore felt the need to flout his authority. Some of them would have banished Artemis and Apollo to Earth just for entertainment, to see how it would all play out, to place bets on which one of us would win. A cage match between gods and goddesses.

My elders could be so childish.

“How close are they to getting here?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, are the upper gods committed to Zeus’s decree that they not send them?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he repeated.

“Well, what do you know?” I shouted, frustrated tears filling my eyes. “That’s it. I want to talk to Harmonia myself. How are you communicating with her?”

He looked me dead in the eye. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?” I thundered.

“Because Harmonia and I swore we’d keep it a secret,” he replied through his teeth.

“You and your secrets,” I spat. “I’m sick to death of you and your secrets.”

“What does that mean?” he demanded.

“I know about you and Aphrodite!” I blurted. “I know you were married to her, that you loved her, that you probably love her still. Tell me I’m wrong!”

Hephaestus’s visage hardened. His eyes seemed to flatten. He curled his fingers around the wheels of his chair, clinging to them until his knuckles turned white. “Ares told you.”

“Yes, Ares told me. He was worried about me,” I cried, feeling disloyal even as I said it. I didn’t want to take Ares’s word over Hephaestus’s, but it was true that one of them had been honest with me and one hadn’t, so what was I supposed to do?

“Worried about you?” Hephaestus repeated. “Seriously?”

I took a deep breath, bracing one hand against the intricate wood frame of the settee closest to the window. “Why are you here, Hephaestus?” I asked quietly. “Does Harmonia know about you and our mother?”

There was no way she knew. She would have told me. We told each other everything.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “She’s known for generations.”

I felt as if I’d been slapped. It wasn’t possible. It simply was not possible.

“And as for why I’m here, it’s because I care about your sister and she cares about you,” he said, his voice growing louder and more vehement with every word. “I’m here to help you.”

I turned to fully face him. I thought of his sudden departure from school the other day when he had to “work.” I thought of the conversation I’d overheard in his room two nights ago and how, again, he’d brushed it off as work. But worst of all, he wouldn’t tell me how to get in touch with Harmonia. He was keeping my sister from me, the one person who could soothe my fears, the one person who could convince me that everything was going to be okay.