“They can’t do this.” They can’t, because I won’t live through it. The rest of the men in the room hang back in a loose circle, weapons at their sides. Is this what Andromache felt like, watching Hector go out to fight Achilles? Did she have the same sick dread teasing at the back of her throat. Hades and Zeus would be evenly matched except Hades is already disheveled.
“No need to get other people involved.” Zeus undoes the buttons of his jacket, shrugs it off, and steps over several bodies to put it on one of the work tables. He makes sure it’s neatly folded. Then he glances back at the bodies. “Not more than they already are.”
Hades swipes at his mouth and the back of his hand comes away bloody. “If you wanted to see me you could have just said so.”
“But isn’t a surprise visit so much better?”
Hades blinks, but I see it. On him it’s as telling as a flinch. He shifts forward slightly so that he’s standing more in front of Conor. “Following in father’s footsteps, then? Honestly, it suits you. You were always his favorite.”
Zeus's jaw tightens, and I take the opportunity to try and push my way out of Oliver’s grip. It does nothing. If I could just get myself between them, then maybe I could do something. I could do anything. “Oh, I disagree,” Zeus says mildly. “If anyone was his favorite, it was Demeter.” He tips his head back and scans the lights. “But we don’t have to get into old wounds, do we? Not when we’ve got new ones to tear open.”
“It doesn’t have to happen this way,” I tell Oliver, hoping he’ll finally hear me and let me go.
“It does. It’s that, or Zeus's people go after everyone in the mountain. And his people won’t stop with the guards.”
He means the people hiding upstairs. The ones who signed up to work here. The ones who are looking to Hades, of all people, to protect them. I can’t look at any more bodies on the floor.
Hades sighs, his face impassive while Zeus unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt and rolls up his sleeves. The waiting is killing me. Zeus must know that. He’s making everybody else wait because our hearts are going to explode and all the dirty work will be done for him. I go completely still then throw myself against Oliver’s arm. Nothing.
“So impatient,” muses Zeus. “We’re not doing this here.”
“There’s nowhere else.”
“Liar.” Zeus grins at Hades, a familiar, taunting thing. “It’s not polite to kill each other indoors. Outside is best.”
My stomach hits the floor and falls farther. Oliver’s arm goes tight around my waist and he curses under his breath. Outside is a death sentence and Zeus knows that. Why did I imagine him as somehow softer than his brother? Is it because of all his stupid parties? Those are only meant to hide what he is.
Hades flicks his eyes toward the ceiling. “Hurry up then.”
The two of them go past, shoulder to shoulder, and nobody in the room moves to stop them. Why would they? They’re the most powerful men on the mountain and on the planet. Everybody here answers to them. A frustrated scream chokes itself off in my throat. Oliver and I have a brief scuffle, which ends in us both following after the two brothers down a series of hallways. I don’t take a breath the whole time. At any moment, Zeus could decide to go after him, and then they’d be in this small, enclosed space.
What’s worse is the valley outside. Hades throws open the door and green floods in along with new sunlight. For a split second they’re both silhouetted against the blue sky, and then they’re outside.
Outside, outside, outside.
The rest of us file out like spectators at the colosseum, and I can’t breathe. I can’t. At the other side of the valley Eleanor’s cottage door opens and she comes out. Even from here, horror is written in the way she stands. Horror and resignation.
Zeus laughs.
The sound bounces off the ravine and it might as well be a starting gun. I’m going to be sick on the ground. Why isn’t anyone doing anything? Conor takes off like a shot, a black blur, and lets out a choked whine. Oliver’s tackled him to the ground and pins him. I drop to my knees and get my fingers around his collar, both of us struggling to hold him down, and tears streak down my face. Damn it. Damn it. This can’t be happening, but it is happening.
Zeus goes for Hades with all the precision of a soldier but the precision doesn’t last. I can’t make sense of their bodies. Fists fly through the air almost too fast for me to see. Zeus's head snaps back so hard I think it’s over, it must be over but he recovers like it’s nothing. He drives an elbow into Hades's stomach but Hades takes him down to the ground too. Nobody’s clean anymore. I’m losing seconds, trying to keep Conor from joining the fray, so I don’t see how they stand up and I don’t see how they go back down again, falling toward a rock. Hades gets a hand on the side of Zeus's head and skull meets rock. Dizzy. I’m getting dizzy, sick with how horrible it is.
But Hades hasn’t killed his brother. Zeus spits blood onto the grass and gets to his feet at the same moment the sun comes out from behind the mountain’s peak and lets its full force down into the valley. It’s warm on my face and on my shoulders. A sweet relief.
Only it’s not. It’s not, because it’s going to kill the man I love.
Someone is screaming again and that someone is me, but I can’t stop it. My mother was dangerous—is dangerous—but these men were raised in such a rough home that they’re past the point where stopping is an option. And they have to stop. They have to.
Conor snaps at Oliver, howling, his tail a frantic beat on the ground, and his collar tears loose from my fingernails. “Fuck,” Oliver says. “I can’t—”
They’re both upright and Zeus takes a big step toward Hades.
And Hades doesn’t react.
My nerves fray, splitting, ripping. And I know, with a horrible certainty, that this is it. This is the moment when I watch Hades die. Because he can’t see.
It doesn’t show on his face. He would never let it. But Zeus takes another step and he does nothing, he just stands there, his hands at his sides. It’s killing him already and his brother will finish the job. Zeus wears a lopsided smile, teeth red with his own blood. A fresh breeze ripples through the wildflowers at their feet. Conor pants, digging his nails into the grass. I feel every wretched heartbeat.
Zeus raises his hands.
I don’t know what comes out of my mouth. My chest is too tight and too flooded with fear and screams to tell one word from another. It’s a thousand prayers. Make me a human sacrifice, I don’t care.
Hades turns his head, only an inch, to face me, and there is no color left in his eyes. Nothing. But whatever I’m saying must get through to him because he draws back one of his huge fists and snaps it neatly into Zeus's face.
Zeus falls to his knees, hands against his nose, and this time he struggles to get back up. And then he does. It’s so horrible and lurching that I get up off the ground, tasting metal in my mouth, and cross the field, holding out one hand to each of them.
“Just—just wait.” My voice is thick with tears and terror. “Just stop.”
“You need a little girl to protect you now?” Zeus grins again, his face a landscape of bruises. “Come on, brother. Finish it.”