Hex on the Beach by Kelley Armstrong

Chapter Five

I’d hoped Ani might misunderstand the current status of my relationship with Marius and put us in the same bed. No such luck. As the consummate hostess, she shows us the spare room, which has a single bed and a futon, and then she says we can take this one or the master bedroom. I must, of course, murmur “This one is fine,” and tell myself that it’s better than sharing a bed and sleeping on our separate sides, reminded of the gulf between us.

Marius takes the futon, and I take the bed. We talk into the night, as we did when we were children, Marius sneaking into my room to lie on the floor, half to talk to me and half to protect me from the interest of his older brothers—and his father.

Marius’s family. The Olympians. Zeus and Hera and their children. In some stories, I am Zeus’s daughter. In others, I rose from the surf after Cronus threw his father’s genitals in it. The truth is far more mundane. I was born to a family with immortals in their bloodline, one that had not birthed an actual immortal in generations.

I was an uncommonly attractive child, which my family prayed was a sign they’d finally been blessed with an immortal. When I was ten, I drowned. The story is that I slipped off a rock. The truth is that my father held me under the water while my mother watched, so that they might test my immortality.

While immortals can die, we are not as frail as mortals, and so I recovered from the drowning, and my father promptly took me to the Olympians. He sold me to Zeus, who bought me as a brood mare. Marius wasn’t joking about interbreeding. While there’s less than the myths would have one believe, it did exist. In myths, Hera and Zeus are full siblings. In truth, they are first cousins. As an immortal with no known blood tie, I was prime breeding material.

The stories cast Zeus as the philandering scoundrel of a husband, and Hera as the vengeful harpy of a wife. The stories are lies. Oh, Zeus fooled around, every damned chance he got, and consent was not required. There’s no “charming scoundrel” there. He’s a bastard in the first degree.

With a husband like that, Hera devoted herself to hearth and home. I became one of her children, and I was treated as such, by her and most of their children.

The oldest of their brood was Hector—Hephaestus—an already legendary craftsman whom I avoided, because his stares made me uncomfortable even from the moment I arrived. Next was Athene, the intimidating eldest sister who made it her duty to teach me everything her younger siblings refused to learn. Then Paulo as a kind but distant older brother, already a man when I arrived. His twin, Artie—Artemis—was the athlete of the family, who despaired of ever making a hunter of me, but let me tag along anyway. Denny was the teen brother who’d swoop in with presents—usually stolen—and tease me mercilessly before vanishing again to his own pursuits. Marius came next, and then Mercy, the wild child, the only one younger than me, and as adorably annoying as Hope is to Kennedy.

With the exception of Hector, I loved all my foster siblings. Yet Marius was different. The day I arrived, I put on a brave face. Mercy had hugged me and said we were going to be “such friends” before bouncing off to bed. At night I was left alone in my room, crying into my pillow, in this strange place amidst all these strangers whose names I couldn’t even keep straight. Then someone scratched at my window. I’d dried my tears and looked out to see eleven-year-old Marius in the courtyard with a bowl of figs.

I knew I’d been sold as a future wife, and it made me wary of Zeus’s sons, even this child, a mere year older than me. Marius didn’t try to lead me anywhere, though. We sat in the central courtyard, lit by moonlight, and we ate figs in silence. At the time, I thought I’d fooled him with my dried eyes. Now I know better. He realized I’d been crying. He’d heard me, and that’s why he brought the figs. It’s also why he didn’t talk, not until I broke the silence by thanking him.

“You must miss your parents,” he said. “Your mother, at least.”

I had to stop and consider that. Then I shook my head. I did not miss them. Nor was I glad to escape them. I just missed my home, the certainty of it.

“Do you have sisters and brothers?” he asked.

I shook my head.

A quirk of a smile. “Now you have lots. That must be quite frightening. Would you like to know more about them?”

I nodded, and he gave me a rundown of his siblings—their interests and their powers and what to expect from them.

“I like Hermes,” I said—that being Mercy’s name at the time.

Marius rolled his eyes. “Everybody likes her, for the first couple of hours, until she drives you up a wall with her incessant chatter and pranks. She loves pranks.” His face softened. “She’s all right, though. She’ll enjoy having another sister.”

“What about you?” I asked carefully. “Do you mind another sister?”

He tilted his head, a gesture I came to know well. Marius would never be considered the “thinker” of the family. The opposite, according to myth. But then the myths also paint him as a violent and blood-thirsty warrior who is a coward at heart, and he is none of those things either. That night, he considered my words with great care before answering.

“I don’t really need another sister,” he said. “A friend, though? I would welcome a friend.”

And so it began. The defining relationship of my life, the strongest and the most treasured. We grew up together. When it came time to marry me to one of Zeus’s sons, I prayed it would be Marius, but he wasn’t considered among the possibilities. He was but a child, a boy of fifteen. Little matter that I was fourteen myself. That was different. I was a woman, and in need of a husband. I went to Hector, and the less said about that, the better. If Marius is the defining positive relationship in my life, Hector is the defining negative one.

The myths all say that Aphrodite cheated on Hephaestus with Ares. There, the myths are correct, and I may have regrets in my life, but that is not one of them. The opposite, in fact. I cannot imagine how I would have survived without Marius.

For years, I tried to be a “proper” wife to Hector. As loyal and devoted as any husband could want. But Hector never wanted a wife. He wanted a possession—the most beautiful woman in Greece, on his arm and in his bed, and gods forbid I should want or be anything more.

I was more. Marius saw it, and I saw him, when he became a man, and by then, marriage was a nightmare cage for both my body and my soul. I loved and respected Hera, but I would not be her, content to subsume my own self playing wife to an abusive bastard, focusing all my love on my children. I adore my children, but I would never put that pressure on them.

All that is in the past, at least as much as it can be. There are hiccups, such as this one with Marius, but I will take what he can give for now. This rift will mend when it is ready to be mended, and I have learned not to rush it. We have, quite literally, all the time in the world.

Others do not have that time, and so I will focus my attention there this weekend. Set this little mystery in motion, and give Kennedy and Aiden a push toward each other, maybe Ani and Jonathan, too, if I can manage it. Also keep Hope away from Rian.

Two pairs of seedlings to nourish and coax closer to one another. One pair to separate, gently, encouraging them to flourish in their own rows. I am Aphrodite, goddess of love, and if I cannot tend to my own garden right now, I will tend to others.

While I goto sleep alone, I do not wake that way. Marius is beside me, which would be so much sexier if he wasn’t fully dressed, lying atop the covers, staring at the ceiling.

“Good morning,” he says, without glancing over.

I want to comment about the bed not being big enough for both of us, but there are only two ways that can go. I can seriously grumble, and he’ll get up, which I don’t want. Or I can tease and make some ribald comment, and things will get uncomfortable quickly.

It reminds me of when we were in our late teens, coming into adulthood and the realization that we were not children together anymore. Coming into the awareness of the attraction smouldering between us. In the days before we were ready to act on it. The days when we weren’t sure what to make of it and whether the other felt it and if so, what to do about it. This feels the same. There is a wall here, as much as there had been when I was married to Hector. Only this wall is of our own making, and we are even less certain how to tear it down.

No, let me be honest. I am less certain Marius wants it torn down. I am utterly confident in his love for me. I haven’t always been, but I no longer doubt, for one moment, that he loves me, that I am as important to him as he is to me.

Loving me is not the same as wanting to be my lover again, and this is what I truly fear. That someday he will have had enough. That he may already have had enough. That I am, quite simply put, more work than I am worth.

What do I have to offer him, beyond what we currently have? Sex. No matter how good that may be, it’s hardly something he can’t get elsewhere. We’ve always had the understanding between us that sexual fidelity is not the true measure of our devotion. Sex is a physical act we enjoy together very much, and when we are not together, we do not begrudge the other finding it elsewhere, no more than we’d expect them to starve if we were not there to dine with them.

Yet there’s more to sex than the act. There is intimacy between those who love each other, and that is what I miss most of all. That is what I fear he has decided—that he can do without sex and intimacy when it drags along all the complications of being my lover.

I am difficult. I am demanding and fickle, at one moment wanting to be left alone and the next, desperately needy. He has never complained. He rolls his eyes if I joke that I am “high maintenance.” Yet I am not truly joking, and so I am afraid that this is the thing wedged between us. He wants nothing that brings heartache and pain and strife. Marius is happier in a life that runs smoothly. The god of war is, ironically, not fond of confrontation, having faced too much of that in his professional life to want it in his personal one.

So when I wake to him beside me, I only say, “Good morning,” and I don’t comment on the narrowness of the bed. Don’t grumble or tease. I just wriggle over to lay my head on his shoulder, as I would when we were teenagers, lying together and staring up at the stars.

“Is everything okay?” I ask softly.

“Everything’s fine. I just wanted to ask what you need me to do today.”

I lift my head and lean over his face, my hair tumbling down. He makes a show of spitting it out of his mouth. Before I can tuck my hair back, he does it for me.

“I am saying, Vess, that I agree to assist with your scheme. To help you pull off this mystery tableau.”

“Really?”

He chuckles. “Yes, really.”

My eyes narrow. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. I just decided that this is important to you, and while I disagree in principle, I don’t see the harm. I know that whatever you have planned, it’s intended to be fun, rather than deceptive. So I’m in.”

“You’re tossing me a bone.”

He sighs. “Vess . . .”

I push up until I’m sitting. “You’re worried that I’m still recovering from earlier this month, from what happened with Hector. You think I need a distraction and want to help me get it.”

“No, Vess.”

“Then you’re humoring me. You don’t think I should do this, but there’s no harm, so you’re going to give it to me.”

“Yes, I believe I just said that. It is not, however, a cookie. If I’m humoring you, it is in the most well-meaning of ways. Like you going to that technology show with me in Vegas last year.”

I open my mouth to ask whether he feels obligated to do this because I went to that show with him. Or because he feels bad about what happened earlier this month and his role in it.

Instead I zip my lips because I had, only moments ago, been fretting about how difficult I can be. Fretting that he’s had enough of it . . . and then jumping straight into defensive and difficult mode when he offers me something I want.

“I’m being a bitch about this,” I say. “Sorry.”

He tenses, and then takes my face between his hands. “No, Vess. You are not being a bitch. I wish you wouldn’t—” He bites the rest off and kisses my forehead before levering up. “It’s agreed then. I am your willing assistant in this endeavor. Now, you take the first shower, and I will start coffee.”

“You shower. I’ll make coffee.” When he tries to protest, I wave it off. “I wasn’t planning on showering anyway. Or wearing deodorant. If I can’t duck attention with an ill-advised outfit, I shall do it with my natural body odor.”

“Mmm, sexy.”

I swat him and reach for my wrapper as he heads from the room.