Chapter 27
The smell of something warm hit as we came through the door, and for one stupid half-second my body responded before my brain could stop it. Garlic, bread, the kind of heat that meant an oven had been running for hours. It smelled like someone's kitchen on a Sunday afternoon.
Then Jasper moved past me, katana ready, and the half-second died.
A child laughed in the next room. The sound punched through my chest and stuck there. Mila laughed like she meant it, unguarded, nothing like the careful sounds from the farmhouse.
We moved through a kitchen that belonged in a suburban house. Someone had wiped the counters clean, pinned drawings to the refrigerator, and left toys on the floor. An oven timer ticked. The calendar on the wall had tomorrow's date circled in red: Eight's Birthday Party.
This was the kitchen I'd described to her at the farmhouse. The home I'd told her she deserved. Zeus had built it instead of me.
The living room had a fireplace, bookshelves, and a couch with blankets thrown over it.
Mila stood in the center of the room with a wooden sword, facing away from us.
Zeus knelt on the floor in front of her. He wore slacks and a cardigan. He held no weapons, just his hands spread wide like a man surrendering.
"The dragon falls!" Mila shouted, and she drove her wooden sword forward in a perfect thrust.
Zeus redirected the strike with his palm. "Good form. But the princess must remember: the dragon is never truly defeated."
"I know." Mila reset her stance, weight balanced, wooden sword held properly. "The dragon always comes back."
"The strongest princesses know this," Zeus said. "So what does she do?"
"She stays ready." Mila adjusted her grip on the sword. "She trains."
"She saves herself," Zeus agreed.
He lunged forward, and Mila pivoted, bringing her sword around in a defensive arc that would have worked against a real threat. Zeus caught the wooden blade in his palm and smiled.
"Better. Your footwork is improving."
My hands had gone numb on the pistol grip. Beside me, Jasper held the katana two-handed. The sutured shoulder had to be screaming, but he stood rigid, every tendon pulled taut, staring at Mila like the floor had opened under him.
Zeus looked up at us over Mila's shoulder. "Ah," he said. "We have guests."
Mila spun around, raising the wooden sword. She stilled as she looked from Jasper's blade to the blood on both of us to the pistol in my hand.
Then she looked at my face.
The wooden sword clattered to the floor.
"Diego!"
She ran straight at me and I barely had time to shove my pistol into my waistband before she hit me. She locked her arms around my waist and pressed her face into my stomach, and held on.
I hovered over her, hands suspended above her head. She'd dropped her weapon and run to me. After a week with Zeus, after everything, she'd run to me.
Jasper's breath caught behind me, something low that he swallowed before it became anything. I'd slept beside this man for weeks. I knew every noise he made in the dark.
"Pequena," I managed. The word scraped out wrecked.
She pulled back just enough to look up at me. She studied the blood on my side, the torn fabric, the bandage taped across my ribs. "You're hurt."
"I'm okay."
"You're bleeding." She turned to Jasper and ran the same assessment, top to bottom, the way she'd scanned threats at the farmhouse. "You're both bleeding."
"We had a rough trip," I said. I settled my torn-up hands on her shoulders. She was solid under my palms. She was here. "But we're okay."
She stiffened against me and turned back toward Zeus.
Zeus stood slowly and brushed off his knees. "It's alright, Eight. They're not here to hurt you." He looked at me. "Are you, Diego?"
"No," I said. I held her tighter. "Never."
"Patéras said you'd come," Mila said. She twisted her fingers in my shirt. "He said you'd think I needed rescuing."
The word Patéras hit me like a fist to the sternum. She'd never called me anything. No tío Diego, no warmth when she said my name. But she called Zeus Patéras like it came naturally. Like it had always been true.
I glanced at Jasper. The color had drained out of his face. He stood rigid with the katana, and I could read the hit in every locked joint, every white knuckle. She called someone else father, and he stood there and took it.
"Do you?" I asked her. "Need rescuing?"
She opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked at Zeus, then back at me. "I don't know."
The honest answer would have broken her. So I just held on and kept my mouth shut.
Zeus moved to stand beside her. He rested his hand on her shoulder, and she leaned into the contact, a reflex she carried in her body without knowing it.
"Why don't we all sit down?" Zeus said. "You're both bleeding. We should tend to those wounds before we continue this conversation."
Jasper hadn't moved. The katana hung at his side, and Mila stood close enough to touch, but he kept still, like one wrong step would send her running. She kept her fingers in my shirt.
"Eight," Zeus started.
"Mila," Jasper said, low and rough.
Zeus raised an eyebrow.
"My daughter's name is Mila." Jasper's jaw was tight. "Not Eight."
Zeus looked at her. "What would you like to be called?"
She looked between them, tightening her fingers in my shirt.
"Both," she said quietly. "I'm both."
Zeus smiled. "Then both it is." He looked back at us. "Could you get the first aid kit from the bathroom, Mila? Please."
She looked at me, not Zeus.
"Go ahead, pequena," I said.
Mila let go of my shirt slowly, like she needed to memorize where I stood before she left. Then she ran down the hallway.
Zeus clasped his hands behind his back. "Please sit. There's no need for weapons here." He nodded at Jasper's katana. "We're civilized people having a conversation."
"Civilized," Jasper repeated, hollow.
"I've been honest with her from the beginning," Zeus said. "About Nadia. About you. About what I trained you to do. She knows you didn't know she existed. She knows I kept it from you." He spread his hands. "I haven't hidden my role in this."
"Stop talking," Jasper said.
Mila came back with the white plastic kit. She set it on the coffee table and came straight to me, stood close enough that the heat of her body pressed through my shirt.
"Thank you, sweetheart," Zeus said. Then to us: "Sit. Let me tend to your wounds before we go further."
I wrapped my hand around the pistol grip. Jasper's knuckles went white on the katana.
"Or don't," Zeus said, level as ever. "You can stand there bleeding while she watches. Show her exactly what I've been protecting her from."
Guards stepped out of alcoves I'd clocked on the way in and dismissed as empty. Armed, covering every angle. I'd caught the architecture and missed the men inside. That stung worse than the wound in my side.
Rage crawled up my spine with nowhere to go. We had wounds, no numbers, and no advantage. And Mila stood right there, watching us prove Zeus right.
Jasper locked his jaw. He vibrated with it, but the math was simple.
He set the katana on the coffee table. I put my pistol beside it.
"Excellent," Zeus said. "Now we can talk like adults."
One of the guards collected our weapons. Another patted us down and found the backup knife in Jasper's boot, the second pistol at my ankle. They took everything except the comm unit I'd wrapped in my boot lining. The guard passed right over it.
Zeus gestured to the chairs across from the couch. We sat because armed guards and a nine-year-old left us no choice.
Mila stayed standing. She held her wooden sword loosely but ready. She'd positioned herself where she could see all of us, exactly between Zeus and us.
Zeus settled onto the couch and picked up a stuffed rabbit that had slipped between the cushions. He set it on the armrest like everything in this room had a spot he'd assigned it. "I know this isn't what you expected."
"From the man who trained children to be weapons?" Jasper's voice could have cut glass.
"From the man who's kept her alive for nine years.
" Zeus's tone held steady. "I could have terminated the pregnancy.
Nadia was already dying. The extraction was risky.
I chose to save the child. And I've spent every year since making sure she has the skills to survive in a world that would kill her the moment it discovered whose daughter she is. "
Mila looked at Jasper. He held her gaze, and I could read the effort in the set of his mouth, the flat line of his shoulders. He pressed his hands flat against his thighs, fingers spread, the way he held himself when every instinct told him to move and the guns in the room told him to stay still.
I pulled toward him. I needed to touch him, to put my hand on the back of his neck the way he let me do when we were alone. I kept my hands on my knees.
"She's not a weapon," Jasper said.
"No," Zeus agreed. "She's a child who needed protection, training, and the truth about the dangers she faces." He reached over and straightened the first aid kit on the coffee table, aligning it with the edge. "I've never lied to you, have I?" he said to Mila.
She shook her head. Then she took a step closer to Zeus. A small step, but anyone paying attention would read where her center of gravity fell.
"You're twisting it," I said.
"I'm providing context." Zeus picked a piece of lint off his cardigan sleeve. "You think I'm the villain. But from her perspective, you're the armed strangers who broke into her home covered in blood." He paused. "Who's the threat in this scenario, Diego?"
He was right. We'd come through the door as exactly what Zeus had warned her about.
"She has a family," I said. "My mother. My people. A whole clan who'd take her in and love her and never ask her to be a weapon in exchange."
"Your people live in a tunnel," Zeus said, "and they were attacked. How many did you lose?"
I curled my hands into fists on my knees. “Too damn many.”