Poseidon’s Refuge
Poseidon’s Refuge
Andie
For a body falling thousands of feet through the air, the ocean surface was the equivalent of concrete. Or at least, it should have been. In the realm of House Poseidon, something as plebeian as concrete didn’t exist.
The moment I jumped from the plane, I knew what I was doing.
I could feel it, the power in that storm.
It was the same power I’d touched the day I’d tried to swim away from Samos, the same pull I’d felt in the current when the dolphins had carried me to shore.
“I can free you,” it said, and against my better judgment, I believed it.
I wasn’t wrong. I’d barely fallen a hundred feet when the water roared up and caught me. It cradled me close, almost gentle, more honest than Alexander had ever been. Salt filled my mouth, and the shriek of the wind vanished, replaced by a rhythmic pulse that settled into my bones.
And down below, I sensed it. The source of the storm.
“House Poseidon was born in the Strait of Messina,” my mother had told me once. “In the jaws of Charybdis itself.”
The words had been just words then—a piece of Olympian history no different from the dozens of other stories Helena had tried to teach me. I hadn’t understood it. I hadn’t known I would one day.
The Strait of Messina had once been the home of the monster Charybdis. Odysseus was said to have become the first Alpha of House Poseidon after an encounter with the legendary beast.
But the presence beneath me wasn’t a creature.
It was a remnant, a vast residual energy woven into the Strait’s every current.
It was old enough to have forgotten its own hunger.
It pressed against my mind with something that felt almost like curiosity.
I felt the moment it found what it was looking for.
Some thread in my blood. Some connection I hadn’t known I carried.
No doubt, the blood of Penelope. Of House Hera.
The energy shifted. The curiosity became recognition, and the recognition became something warmer. The current tightened around me, not crushing but cradling, the way you’d hold something you’d been waiting a long time to touch.
I should have been afraid. I should have been thrashing and fighting for air, the way any rational person would after jumping from an aircraft into open water.
But the Strait didn’t want me to struggle.
The current guided my body in a slow, spiraling arc, upward and sideways, toward a dark shape above me.
The ocean pushed me up and through the surface. I broke the surface gasping, and the boarding platform of a yacht was right there, wide and solid. The water placed me onto it the way you’d set down a child you’d caught mid-fall.
I lay on my back, coughing. Salt water streamed from my hair and pooled beneath me on the teak planking. My lungs burned. Every muscle in my body was shaking with the deep, uncontrollable tremor that comes after the adrenaline crashes.
“Don’t move. I’ve got you.”
A set of hands landed on my arms. They didn’t actually touch my skin, only the towel that was suddenly being wrapped around me.
Orion Maris was on the platform beside me, already kneeling, already working.
He lifted my head and slid a folded cloth beneath it, giving me something to rest against that wasn’t the wet wood.
“Breathe,” he said. “Slowly. You swallowed a lot of water.”
I coughed again, hard enough that my ribs ached.
Salt water came up in a thin, burning stream.
Orion turned me onto my side so I wouldn’t choke on it.
One hand braced my shoulder through the towel, while the other keeping my hair clear of my face.
His movements were quick and certain, displaying the practiced efficiency of someone who had pulled people from the water before.
“That storm.” My breathing was steadying, but my voice sounded like I’d swallowed gravel. “That was you. You used the Strait’s power to attack the plane.” I didn’t blame him for it, not really, but a part of me was curious about what he had to say.
He didn’t flinch. “I used it to create an opportunity. What you did with it was your choice.”
My choice. It was exactly as I’d thought, then. This man, at least, had allowed me to decide for myself. But it had still been dangerous.
“You could have killed everyone on that aircraft.”
“No.” He met my eyes, and there was no evasion in them. “I could feel Stormwright fighting me through the fuselage. He’s powerful enough to keep a plane in the air against a Poseidon storm. I was counting on it.”
“You were counting on Alexander protecting the plane while you stole me.”
“I was counting on Alexander protecting the plane while you freed yourself.” He said it without heat, as a correction rather than an argument. “There is a difference, Andromeda.”
My teeth were chattering badly enough to make speaking difficult. Orion noticed immediately. He shrugged off his own shirt and laid it over me on top of the towel, adding another layer of warmth without touching my skin.
“I need to get you inside. Can I carry you?”
I nodded. I didn’t trust my legs to hold me, and we both knew it.
He gathered me up through the layers of towel and shirt, one arm beneath my knees and the other behind my back.
The cotton barrier between his body and mine held.
His skin was warm where my cheek rested near his shoulder, and his scent surrounded me.
It carried none of the sharp electrical charge that accompanied Alexander’s proximity.
Orion climbed the ladder one-handed and carried me across the deck. Tonight, the floating palace I remembered from the night everything had started felt almost… barren. There were no crowds, no music. Just clean lines and dark wood and the smell of the open sea.
“Why?” I asked. “Why do you care? You don’t know me. You have no obligation to House Hera or to whatever mess I’ve dragged into your waters.”
He carried me through a hatch and into a corridor paneled in dark teak. The warmth of the interior hit my frozen skin, and the shivering worsened before it began to ease.
“How could I not?” he asked simply. “You’re special, Andromeda. I knew it that night on the Odyssey, and I grew more certain of it on Samos.”
“I’m cursed.” The word tasted bitter and familiar. “Not special. The curse isn’t gone just because Alexander is far away.”
“Perhaps not.” He turned sideways to fit through a narrow doorway. “But here, the power of Poseidon will be your refuge. It blocks Hera’s Gaze. The Strait is the oldest ward in the Mediterranean, older than the Heraion, older than Samos. It will protect you.”
I stared at him. The shivering was making it hard to think, but the words cut through the fog with a clarity that made my chest ache. “You’re telling me the curse can’t touch me here?”
“I’m telling you that in the Strait of Messina, you are beyond its reach.” He met my eyes, and there was no bravado in them, no Alpha posturing. Just a steady, quiet certainty. “For as long as you choose to stay.”
Could it be true? Could it possibly be that simple, after everything? I wanted to believe it so badly that the wanting itself frightened me. Hope had been my cruelest companion for some time now, the thing that kept cutting me open every time I reached for it.
I thought about Alexander, about the way he held me, the way he felt inside me. A pang of longing erupted within me. But… Was the anger less fierce? I couldn’t tell.
Orion carried me through the warm corridor toward a cabin at the end of the passage. Inside, I was greeted with the sight of a wide bed dressed in white linen. A small writing desk was on the other side of the room.
Orion set me down on the mattress. The moment my weight was settled, he released me and stepped back. He pulled a wool blanket from a shelf above the bed and laid it over the towel.
“I’m going to send down my ship’s medic,” he said. “She’ll check your lungs and make sure you didn’t inhale too much water. She’s House Hestia–trained. Not the real thing, but she’s competent.”
“My mother was on the plane,” I said. “Helena. She’ll be—”
“I expect she’s landed in Sicily by now. Stormwright will have brought the aircraft down after the storm passed.” His tone was neutral, offering information rather than reassurance. “She knows you’re alive. The Strait doesn’t keep secrets from the people who live on its shores.”
He moved around the cabin with the focused efficiency of someone performing triage.
He filled a glass from the carafe on the desk and brought it to me, wrapping my shaking fingers around it.
He adjusted the blanket where it had slipped.
He found a change of clothes in the wardrobe and set them on the bed beside me.
“These are dry clothes for when you’re ready for them,” he said. “Nothing elegant. The head is through that door.” He crossed the cabin to a narrow door beside the desk and opened it. The warm air from a heated bathroom spilled into the room. “Take as long as you need.”
“Am I a prisoner?”
He stopped and turned to face me. For the first time since I’d landed on the yacht, something in his composure shifted. Not anger. Something closer to insult, quiet and personal.
“No. The cabin door doesn’t lock from the outside. There’s a satellite phone in the desk drawer if you need to contact anyone.” He held my gaze. “When you’re ready to leave, the tender on the boarding platform is fueled and provisioned. Say the word, and I’ll have it ready within the hour.”
I searched his face for the lie. I looked for the invisible walls that every offer of freedom had carried since the curse had activated.
Helena’s protection had come with Samos.
The collar had come with Argos’s power fused into the metal.
Every solution had been a cage dressed in a different material.
Orion met my scrutiny and held still beneath it.
“You’re safe on the Odyssey, Andromeda,” he said. He moved to the door. “But more importantly, you are free. I’ll be on deck.”
The door closed behind him. The latch clicked, and I was alone.
I sat propped against the headboard with the glass of water in my shaking hands. The yacht rocked gently beneath me. Through the portholes, the deep blue of the Strait stretched toward the Sicilian coastline. The last of the storm was already dissolving, taking Alexander away with it.
I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders and closed my eyes. For now, I was content to let the stillness hold me. Against all odds, I had escaped. Whether Orion would keep his word or not was not a question I’d answer today.