Furious

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Assurances were made, soothing words that were not registered in my conscious mind. Hector promised that Ares was weakened without the Nectar. Jasper refused to look at me at all.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the blood on the floor, the shock in Jasper's face, the hesitation in Hector's voice. The flesh on my right hand tingled where it had connected with Ares' skull.

The image frightened me too much to sleep, despite Hector's insistence that I rest. I studied his history book instead for hours. I like to think I was the sort of person who enjoyed a good thriller.

It helped to reimagine the past I had forgotten. A forgotten lifetime was just what the doctor ordered: if I was busy figuring out who I was, I didn't think about Ares or his blood or the way that nobody wanted to talk about it.

What must they all think of me now?

However, the book was a distraction from the threat of war coming down on us at any second. What I found were diverting questions; had his world and mine coexisted all this time? What caused the Greek myths to die out and become obsolete if they are still so alive right under our noses? And who stole the Nectar of the gods?

And to think, just days ago—I'd lost track—I tried to tell myself that this was all a vivid dream. Smell the coffee, Autumn, because this is real, honest to gods. Even your imagination isn't this good.

As I read I munched on another of Jasper's wrapped granolas. I wasn't hungry; it was just something to keep me busy. I did a lot to keep busy in the hours immediately following the Incident; avoiding Alex, Gregory, and Lindsay, studying the book, showering. I showered twice already, scouring my skin until I hated myself a little less.

The book said lots of things that were helpfully distracting: reading about war in a book and preparing to be part of one are vastly different situations.

It sat heavily in my lap. I read stories about Zeus and Hera, Aphrodite and some king named Minos, and Poseidon. There were tales about the gods mating with humans—hello, Hercules, Perseus, Achilles, and that guy Minos, again. The Titans turned out to be ruthless killers and a battle ensued between the gods and their parents.

Gods are not birthed like humans: they come out of odd body parts, sometimes the head or the thigh, or were conceived through strange wooing. Zeus turned into a bird to gain Hera's affections. The fact that all of the gods seemed to be related by blood as well as marriage didn't escape me. Maybe deities played by different rules. I found stories that involved humans mating with animals that I didn't much care for.

Added almost as an afterthought to a page dedicated to Hades was a brief paragraph about Persephone that made my insides turn just a little. In comparison to his brothers though, Hades had been tame when it came to his one and only love.

The Hades from the book was not my Hades, and Hector had never mentioned Persephone so I moved on.

I purposefully skipped over all of the parts about Ares. He may have been the god of war but without the Nectar he was just as mortal as any human. It was exactly the thing I didn't want to dwell on.

The book had sections on the Nectar, too—also called ambrosia. This never-ending juice that kept the gods of days past alive without human knowledge had been around since the creation of the gods themselves. An entry about the Nectar was vague on where it came from or why it was necessary. The little information that was written about it told me that the Nectar was the one thing keeping the gods a part of our world. A second page on the subject reminded me that the Nectar was traditionally consumed yearly by each of the gods. For thousands of years, the gods drank at the beginning of the Olympic ceremonies. It was a big deal, grand and formal and ironically hosted one time during each cycle of the mortal calendar; a ceremonial renewal of their strength and power and immortality.