Discord's Apple

He looked up, glaring. His breath came hard, hissing through clenched teeth. He scrambled to put himself back between Evie and Hera.

Evie watched, awe-filled and trembling. She—her family—weren’t supposed to be part of the stories. They were keepers of the stories. But that world was gone now, wasn’t it? Magic was real, all the sparking, hand-waving, spell-weaving magic of the stories was real.

Hera raised her hand, and with the motion Alex levitated. Hovering a foot off the ground, he struggled in an invisible grip, cutting with his sword, kicking with his feet. She flattened her hand, and he slammed back against the stone and stayed there. His arms wrenched back, wrists against the stone, riveted as if held by chains. He grimaced with the pressure and dropped the sword.

They’d escaped. They’d earned a happy ending—as happy as the situation allowed. But Hera had found them. It wasn’t fair.

Evie hesitated, part of her wanting to run away, take what was left of the Storeroom and try to escape, to protect it.

But she couldn’t leave Alex.

“Let him go,” she said. Fear made her voice soft. “Leave him alone.”

He decided he wanted to die when he heard of the Great Alexander’s death. There’d never again be anyone worth following, worth dying for. He fought in the army that had conquered every corner of the world his people knew at that time. He gladly followed the general who reminded him so much of the heroes of his youth, the legends who occupied so many songs and stories. He’d thought perhaps another age of legends was upon them. But history had replaced mythology, Herodotus instead of Homer, and Alexander died. Sinon took his name as a memorial and began to look for a way to die himself. Because it was the only work he knew, he fought as a mercenary in a hundred armies over the next thousand years. He never found another hero to follow.

But he would follow Evie.

After all this time, Sinon—Alex—found he was afraid. He didn’t want to die after all. Evie stood nearby. She seemed waiflike in her jeans and sweater, her brown hair tangled in the breeze, her skin pale, chilled. He wanted to tell her to run. But where could she go? Hera would find her. He had to protect her.

Fine job of that he was doing, pinned to a slab of rock. He hadn’t dealt with the gods on their terms in a long time. He’d forgotten what they were like—children, pulling the wings off flies. How could the fly fight back?

Hera turned her hand, and he slid to the ground, his back scraping on the stone. His feet touched earth again, but he remained immobilized. Step by easy step she approached, and he realized she could kill him. All that remained was to see how she did it.

“Leave him alone,” Evie said. She tensed, like she might dash forward and take Hera on herself. Alex started to tell her to stop, but Hera turned to her first.

“Wait,” she said, holding out a manicured hand. “I wish to speak with him, that’s all. I’ve no wish to harm you.”

“Like you harmed my father.”

Hera gave Evie a long-suffering glance, then paid her no more attention than if she had disappeared.

The goddess turned the full charm of her smile on Alex.

“I know what you want, more than anything else.”

Wool and fog, that was the old trick to keep them from knowing what he thought. It didn’t work this time, because all his thoughts turned to Evie. Apollo would have laughed at him.

Hera touched his neck, sending gooseflesh rising on his skin. He couldn’t flinch away.

Die. He wanted to die more than anything.

No, before that, what had he wanted? On the shores of Troy, during the years of the war, what had they wanted, what had Odysseus spoken of with the light of a distant hearth fire in his eyes? A home, a family. Impossible now.

Hera lay her fingers on the chain around his neck.

“How much a part of you is this? Will you crumble to dust without it? If I take it away, will you die, or will it leave you as you were when Apollo captured you? Say the word, Sinon of Ithaca, and I will remove it. I have that power now.”

It was a part of him. Its power sustained him. Without it . . . He looked sideways, at Evie, caught her gaze.

If he died now, he wouldn’t have to watch her grow old and die without him.

“Why would you do this?” he said harshly. He didn’t trust her. He hated being trapped. He had thought he was done with the gods.

“Curiosity. I want to see what happens.?

??

That was an answer he’d expect from one of the lords of Olympus. His jaw was tense, his whole body painfully tense. “All right. Take it off.”