Chapter 32
I needed a smoke so badly that my teeth hurt.
Three days had passed since Kiev. Three days of medical exams, debriefs, questions that circled the same drain.
I learned, hour by hour, how to be a father to a daughter who flinched at loud noises and arranged her stuffed animals like sentries on the perimeter of her bed.
Diego moved through the compound with his arm in a sling, making coffee one-handed, teaching Mila chess, checking my bandages when he thought I was asleep.
I climbed the stairs to the roof, already pulling the pack from my pocket. The sun had dropped below the horizon, leaving the sky the color of a fresh bruise. The roof was mine at this hour. Everyone knew it.
Except tonight, Rhadamanthys sat on the edge facing west, his silhouette unmistakable. The black Stetson cast a shadow over his face. He tensed when I stepped onto the gravel but kept his eyes on the horizon.
I almost turned around. But this was my roof and my time, and I'd spent enough years giving ground.
I crossed the rooftop and lit my cigarette. The first drag tasted like coming home.
"Judge," I said.
"Hephaestus."
"It's Jasper now."
"Is it?" He turned his head. "I wonder if names are that easy to shed."
I sat a few feet away from him, legs over the edge. The compound spread out below us. Workers cleared rubble from the east wing. Lights came on in the windows.
"I wasn't expecting company," I said.
"I can leave."
"Free roof."
He gave a small nod and turned back to the horizon. We sat in silence, me smoking, him staring into the darkness swallowing the landscape. Neither of us needed to fill it. The Pantheon beat that out of you early.
"Any news on Hades?" I asked.
Rhadamanthys stared at the horizon. "Nevada thinks he might be back in the states. Maybe Mexico." He looked over at me. "The girl. Eight. She's adjusting?"
"Mila," I corrected. "Her name is Mila."
He inclined his head. "Mila, then."
I took another drag. "She's resilient."
"Zeus trained her well."
"Too well."
"There's no such thing."
I looked at him. "She's nine."
"She's alive." His voice stayed flat. "In our world, that's the only metric."
I blew out a long stream of smoke. "You think Hades is alive?"
Rhadamanthys unscrewed the flask and took a long drink. "I hope so."
“And if he isn’t?”
“Either way, Zeus is a dead man,” he said. “The only difference is how many people I have to kill to get to him.”
He offered the flask. I took it. The whiskey burned down my throat and sat warm in my chest.
"I never thought I'd see it," Rhadamanthys said after a stretch.
"See what?"
"You with a family." He kept his gaze on the last band of color at the horizon.
I exhaled smoke through my nose.
"Is it worth it? The vulnerability."
I thought about Mila's hand in mine this morning when a door slammed too loudly. I thought about Diego's arm thrown across my chest in the dark, heavy even in sleep.
"Yes," I said.
Rhadamanthys stood.
"You going alone?" I asked, flicking ash over the edge.
"Nevada's coming with me." He adjusted his hat. "Take care of your family, Jasper." Then he turned and disappeared down the stairs. His footsteps faded until there was only wind.
The cigarette burned between my fingers.
The door opened again a few minutes later. I knew the footsteps before I turned. Lighter than Rhadamanthys's, with a slight hesitation that meant favoring one side.
"Thought I'd find you up here." Diego's voice was rough with sleep.
"Did I wake you from your nap when I left?"
"No." He sat beside me, his shoulder pressing against mine. "Mila's with my mother. Cookies."
"They'll be baking all night."
"It's how Mamá shows love."
"It's how she copes. She fed me six empanadas when we got back."
"Only six? You got off easy." He leaned into me, careful of his shoulder, and I leaned back.
The stars came out. His breathing settled into a rhythm that matched mine, something we'd been doing since the farmhouse. Since Brussels, maybe.
"Rhadamanthys left," Diego said. "He okay?"
"He thinks Hades is in Mexico." I flicked ash into the dark. "He and Nevada are leaving."
Diego made a low sound in his throat and slid his fingers through mine on the gravel. His skin was rough against mine.
"You okay?" he asked.
I took a drag. "I don't know."
"That's honest, at least."
He traced the inside of my wrist with his thumb. Three days since Kiev, and we'd barely touched beyond bandage changes and the weight of his arm in sleep.
"You're good for her," he said. "You know that."
I looked at the road below us.
"I don't know what the hell I'm doing."
"None of us do." He squeezed my hand. "That's the secret. We're all making it up."
He pressed his forehead against my shoulder and stayed there. Then he turned his head and put his lips to the side of my neck, just below my ear, and held them there. He pulled back before I could lean into it.
He stood and held his hand out.
"Come with me," he said.
"Where?"
"Trust me."
I let him pull me up. The world tilted. He caught my arm, steadied me, and we crossed the rooftop together toward the stairs. He went first, guiding me down in the dark. The stairwell smelled like concrete and the jasmine that grew wild along the south wall.
He led me out a side door and down a gravel path that wound behind the base into the hillside. He kept tracing circles on the inside of my wrist as we walked, and my skin lit up under the repetition. The air thickened. A mineral smell sharpened as the path curved between low scrub and rock.
"Where are we going?"
"Patience."
"I don't have any. You know this."
He laughed and kept walking. The path opened into a shallow depression where steam rose from dark water.
A natural pool, maybe ten meters across, fed by a crack in the rock where hot water seeped up from below the Atlas foothills.
Someone had built a rough stone edge around the lip.
A single lamp hung from a post, casting yellow light across the surface.
"Lorenzo found it during the rebuild," Diego said. "Sulfur spring. The water comes up hot enough to scald, but it cools by the time it reaches the pool." He pulled his shirt over his head one-armed, careful of the bandage. "Best-kept secret on the compound."
The steam curled off the water in the cool air. The smell was sharp and mineral, nothing like the antiseptic and smoke we'd been breathing for days.
Diego kicked off his boots and stripped to nothing. The lamplight caught his shoulders, the dark trail of hair below his navel, the white dressing taped below his collarbone. He stepped in and hissed through his teeth.
"Hot?"
"Perfect." He sank until the water hit his chest and tipped his head back. His jaw unclenched for what looked like the first time in days. "Get in here."
I undressed slower because the concussion made bending over an adventure in equilibrium. Diego opened one eye and tracked me as I pulled my shirt off, his gaze moving over the bruises on my ribs, the bandage on my temple, and the cuts across my knuckles.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what?"
"Whatever you're about to say."
"I was going to say you look good naked."
"Liar."
"I never lie about naked men." He grinned. "Especially ones I'm in love with."
"You love a man who can't bend over without falling down. Congratulations."
"I've always had terrible taste." He splashed water at me. "Get in."
The water burned when I stepped in. The heat sank through skin and into muscle and bone, into places that had held tension so long I'd forgotten what they held. I lowered myself to my shoulders, and the world went soft at the edges.
"Blyad," I breathed.
"Good blyad or bad blyad?"
"Good." I let my head fall back against the stone rim. Steam blurred the stars. "Very good."
Diego moved through the water and settled beside me, back against the stone. Our shoulders pressed together beneath the surface. The knot between my shoulder blades unclenched, muscle by muscle.
"My babushka would have called this a banya," I said. "She believed hot water could fix anything. Broken bones, broken hearts, bad luck."
"Smart woman."
"Terrifying woman."
Diego laughed, and the sound bounced off the rocks.
I turned my head. The water beaded on his shoulders.
His dark hair clung slick to his skull. The scar on his collarbone, the old one from before I knew him, sat just above the waterline.
He'd worn that same crooked grin when we met, when he'd pulled a gun on me and told me to put the sword down.
I reached for him under the water. He came easily, turning into me, and I pulled him against my chest with his back to my front. He settled between my legs and let his weight rest against me. He tipped his head back onto my shoulder.
I pressed my lips to his temple, and his pulse beat under my lips. "You know the story of Koschei the Deathless?"
"The Russian fairy tale?" He shifted against me. "The sorcerer who hid his soul?"
"Da." The Russian slipped out. "My babushka told me that story when I was small. Before the Pantheon."
I stopped, the rest of what I wanted to say jammed somewhere between my chest and my teeth.
"After Nadia," I said. "I thought I'd done that. Become Koschei." I tightened my arms around him. "Hidden whatever part of me could be hurt. Put it somewhere no one would find it."
"And?" Diego asked quietly.
"And then you showed up." I tightened my grip on him.
Diego turned his head and kissed the underside of my jaw. "In the story, doesn't a prince come along and slay the sorcerer?"
"That's how it ends."
"Not very romantic."
"Russian fairy tales aren't romantic. Everyone dies or turns into a swan."
He laughed against my throat. "So what happened to your version? Did the prince slay the sorcerer?"
"The prince was a smuggler with a bad poker face." I pressed my forehead against his temple. "He just kept showing up. And the thing I'd hidden started coming back."