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For you.

Lukas made a sound low in his throat, like a hum. “You were. Everyone loves you. Respects you. I couldn’t do it without you.” His tone made it clear that he barely had in the year that I’d been gone.

Guilt threatened to steal my focus, but I shoved it away.

I placed my hand on his. “They love you too, you know. I know Nikolas abdicating wasn’t ideal, but I can’t help but think it was meant to happen.Youare the god they need.”

Lukas gripped my hand and picked it up, turning his mouth into my open palm and planting a kiss in the center. “Eat, Daph.”

I would be eating flies, my mouth was so far agape. I wasn’t sure I could even pick up the food, my arm was tingling so intensely. But the mention of his brother got me thinking. “How are you? I never asked how your visit with Nikolas was.”

Lukas’s jaw clenched. “It wasn’t great. I can’t tell if he’s just doing this because he doesn’t care or if he has a problem. He just shuns all his responsibility. I’ll never understand that. And he—”

“What?” I prodded.

Lukas shook his head, chomping down angrily on a piece of bread. “Nothing you want to hear.”

My eyebrows pinched. “But you’d tell me if I asked?”

“Of course.”

The sheer ferocity with which Lukas responded made me say, “Then I don’t need to know.”

Lukas nodded, returning to his food. He always piled way more meat on than I thought was necessary. I loved that hadn’t changed.

“What was the last thing you looked at from your dig?” Lukas asked. Neither of us wanted to confront what happened earlier.

A little seed of doubt told me to take a deep breath before I answered him, to make sure I wasn’t talking too fast or excitedly. But Lukas had never once made me feel bad for my interests or my power. “There was this amazing set of pottery that we found all gathered in one location.” When Lukas settled back into his chair, watching me intently as I talked, I had to pause and take a sip of wine to clear my throat. “We didn’t think that area of the peninsula was populated enough to have markets but there was no other explanation to havethatmuch pottery in one spot like that.”

I wasn’t sure how long it took me to finish the explanation. It could have been seconds or an hour. But Lukas’s face never faltered from a rapt expression. He asked questions, hummed in agreement, and generally made me feel giddy and weightless.

I sank back to reality as the evening light faded to black, responsibility pulling me back down. “We should talk about it.”

Lukas frowned like a child pushing away a plate of vegetables. “I don’t want to.”

“I don’t either. But sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to.”

Lukas barked a laugh. “Don’t I know it.”

My brain was screaming at me to find deeper meaning in that sentence. I mentally snapped the neck on that little devil. Because dammit, I was having a good night.

“Claudia and Lorenzo are going to be a real problem,” Lukas said, practically spitting the words out.

“The imagery matches up perfectly,” I said, still somewhat in disbelief. It felt a little too perfect. “Juno is one thing, I wouldn’t be that surprised if she still held a grudge against Jupiter, but I didn’t know Lorenzo had that much animosity toward us.”

“He doesn’t,” Lukas said, his hand coming down to the table to grip mine, his thumb making passes over the inside of my wrist. “That’s the only thing I can’t shake. He’s a pompous ass at times but he benefits from us. Half his wealth comes from industries we support.”

My stomach plummeted. “Luke, he has a fishing business. What if I—”

“Hey, no.” Lukas gripped my hand harder and pulled a little, forcing me to look at him. “You aresick, Daphne. That’s the only explanation I accept.”

“But I might have—”

“I would normally let you speak just to hear your voice, but not now.Ifthey are conspiring against us, this started long before…longer than a year ago. You didn’t do this.” Lukas looked at me with such conviction, I had no choice but to believe him.

I looked down at my plate and fiddled with the end of my hair. “I don’t know how to fix it,” I admitted. Not an easy thing for me to do.

Lukas pulled on my hand again, like he wished my entire body would follow and move closer to him. “You’re doing everything you can. Sebastian is making you a tonic. You’re training. You’re doing research.”