Chapter Thirty-Seven Hermes #3
“It’s a miracle that I did. When the rescue workers came, they began searching for a body, because they assumed there was no way anyone could have made it.
But they found me asleep, curled up in a small pocket of debris.
I was holding this.” She gestured to her ring, the one she wore on her right hand.
“My mom had given it to me just a few weeks earlier and told me to wear it always. It’s the only thing I have left of her,” Julia added softly.
Hermes felt dizzy, his mind racing with the implications of what she’d said. If he’d guessed right, if he’d put all the pieces together properly, then he finally knew why Hera was so obsessed with Julia.
Julia’s mother had been sleeping with Zeus, and then Hera had killed her.
“Thank you for telling me all of this. I’m honored that you felt like you could share it,” Hermes said earnestly.
Julia nodded. “Thank you for listening. And for not thinking I’m crazy.”
“Crazy?” Hermes repeated. “Why would I think that?”
“It’s what the grief counselor thought, when I told her what I’d seen my mom’s boyfriend doing. She said I had hallucinated false memories, to replace the all real ones that were too painful. She’s probably right,” Julia hurried to add. “I hit my head in the fire, or inhaled too much smoke.”
“I’m sure that’s it. If you’d seen the things I thought I’ve seen at Burning Man, you would know how easy it is to fall for a hallucination.” Hermes tried to sound flippant, to set Julia at ease about the confessions she’d just made.
To his relief, she smiled—a sad smile, but at least it was there. “Would you mind keeping all of this between us, as friends?”
Hermes’s immortal heart snagged on that word. Friends.
He was used to being called a coconspirator, praised for his cleverness or his speed or his biting wit.
But none of the other gods had ever truly considered him a friend.
He’d thought Aphrodite might be a friend, once upon a time, but Hermes saw now that their friendship had been surface-level, based on their love of rosé and drama, their shared sense of being excluded from the inner circle.
Julia listened to him. She sympathized with him, and saw him.
“I meant what I said; my lips are sealed,” Hermes assured her. “Though as your friend, I have to say, you could tell Harry.”
“It just hurts so much to talk about. And it’s not as if he’s told me everything, either,” Julia added softly.
Well, that was an understatement.
They drifted to one side of the beach, closer to the roar of the surf, where the edge of the sandcastle village was marked with great gates made of drip sand.
Julia was quiet, contemplative, and Hermes gave her space, his mind whirling.
If she wasn’t working with another god—which seemed impossible at this point—then why was she immune to magic?
The Aegis was the only object he knew that could shield against enchantments, but it was in the Vault.
With a chunk missing from its side.
The Aegis was even more ancient than the gods, dating back to the murky dawning of the world itself.
Perhaps it wasn’t made of bronze at all, but some celestial element, tossed to earth from the stars in the moment of creation.
Who could know? Zeus, the first of the gods to be born, had seized the Aegis, along with the thunderbolt, for himself, leaving the other great artifacts, the trident and the Helm of Darkness, for Poseidon and Hades.
Hermes’s eyes darted back to Julia. If he were Zeus and wanted to scrape off a piece of his immortal shield to protect a human, how would he do it? He would make an earring, Hermes thought, or perhaps a coin.
Or a ring.
Which Julia had been clutching in her hand when she miraculously, impossibly, survived the fire.
What if Zeus had forged a ring from the Aegis and given it to Julia’s mother, hoping it would protect her? And then Claire had passed it to her daughter instead?
“Look! She’s knocking them down!” Julia gestured across the beach toward Lady Sophie, who was gleefully kicking down the first of her sandcastles. A few photographers surrounded her, snapping pictures.
Lady Sophie laughed. “Join in, everyone!” she called out. “Destruction is the other side of the coin from creation!”
Hermes watched as Julia ran over to the nearest sandcastle and began kicking at it with the wild abandon of a toddler. “Come on!” she exclaimed, looking over her shoulder at Hermes with a gleeful smile. “Get in on the fun!”
No, Hermes thought, there was no subterfuge in Julia.
She was as earnest and guileless as she seemed, all the way down to her core.
He wasn’t fool enough to think she’d appeared among them by accident, but he doubted that she was here to get revenge.
If anything, some other god had brought her here to wreak havoc.
She was an unwitting pawn, one who might easily be destroyed as collateral damage.
Hermes watched Julia kick at the sandcastle. So quickly, all its painstaking details crumbled into nothing. He couldn’t stop thinking of Julia’s mortal home, turning to ash. Destroyed just this easily.
He longed, suddenly, to tell Julia that she was in danger. But you aren’t alone, he wanted to say. You have me. His magic wasn’t much compared to that of the other Olympians, just speed and glib words and a talent for thievery. Still, he would use it to protect her, as best he could.
This woman—his friend—was walking among the gods with a target on her back, and she had no idea.