The Search for Juno

Chapter XXXIV

There were two reasons Alex paced: either because he was excited, his thoughts looping endlessly towards some obscure solution and so much so that his body could hardly contain its own energy, or because those same thoughts were beginning to eat him alive.

    Twenty, nearly twenty-one years hitched at his brother's side had taught Conny how to tell the difference, and the way Alex kept tearing his hand through his hair, pulling his small ponytail loose, was not at all a good sign.

    Not that Conny blamed him in the slightest. Years ago, when they had just entered the syndicate as Dolinski's freshest puppets, Conny had seized Alex by the shirt collar, screaming at him, demanding to know why he'd offered himself up. Conny could not comprehend it then, and he barely did now. Alex was the taller one, the smarter one, the better one—everyone knew it. How could he just throw that away?

    But Alex had just replied, staring at the floor rather than into Conny's harried eyes, "I don't know. There was a voice in my head, and I had no choice but to listen."

    Neither of them could have guessed, however, that that voice could have belonged to Hades.

    Alex's ceaseless marching, through the living room, to the kitchen, and back again, was beginning to make Persephone anxious, too. Conny noticed the goddess fussing at her skirts, her eyes shining with question, almost as if she was worried she shouldn't have said anything.

    Conny exhaled, hoping to roll back some of the tension that knotted every muscle in his body. It did nothing. "Al," he started. "Are you—"

    "Why?" Alex said, and he stopped pacing long enough to look Persephone in the eye, before he propelled himself forward again. "Why would he—it was a dream. I had a dream, and I saw...I saw Conny. He was dying, and...when I woke up I just knew what I had to do. Are you telling me that was Hades?"

    Conny's eyes bored into Alex's for a moment, before he looked instead to Persephone. "Wasn't he the one who was telling us how taboo it was to meddle with mortal affairs, anyway?" he asked. "So why do something like that?"

    "You, your mother—Dolinski probably would have murdered you all if he hadn't, correct?" Persephone said, and when neither brother argued, she shrugged. "So does it truly matter why he did it?"

    "Yes," answered Conny, "because it will make my brain hurt way less."

    A smirk at her bright red lips, Persephone leaned forward, tented hands resting on her crossed knees. Conny had known, of course, that she was a goddess, but it percolated from her now, some sort of inescapable aura that demanded immediate and unconditional respect. This, he thought, not fucking Dolinski, is what a leader looks like. "One of you humans said once, 'Death is not the end of life, but a continuation of life,' right? Well, whoever said it was telling the truth. And if you think of it that way, then being around the dead teaches you an awful lot about what it means to live."

    Conny groaned, hiding his face in his hands. "This is making my brain hurt more."

    "What I'm trying to say," Persephone went on, a small chuckle underneath her breath, "is that, knowing all he knows about the souls here, and where they go, and where they came from, Hades could not let your lives end prematurely. He's not a god known for his premonitions, but he knows a light when he sees one. He couldn't allow you both to be snuffed out."

    Though Alex slowed his pace, he didn't stop entirely. "I still don't get it."

    "Your father," said Persephone, watching Alex carefully, then switching her gaze to Conny. "You lost him when you were just kids, right?"