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Icarus

It feels like I’ve been kneeling on the dock for days, weeks, months, years. Maybe I’ve always been here, watching the people I care about walk away—or sail away, in this case. The ship Ariadne and the Minotaur stole disappeared in the storm that rose when the barrier fell, the sea surging violently enough to make me sick even safe on land.

Every time her ship was swept into a gully between waves, my heart lodged itself behind my teeth. And every time it appeared again, a white smear against the whitecaps, farther and farther from us each time, I exhaled shakily.

And through it all, Poseidon stands at my back, a threat I cannot escape. So be it. I don’t have to escape. My sister will be okay. The monster who loves her will ensure it.

It was supposed to be me. I was supposed to be the one who defied all expectations and saved the day—for once. The son and brother who was no longer the disappointment but the hero. At least to Ariadne.

Maybe it’s better this way. I would have fucked that escape up—I did fuck that escape up. Better to be left behind to occupy the Olympians. It will keep them from searching too hard for my sister.

That and the squadron currently taking up residence across the mouth of the bay. First three giant warships and then five. They’re too far away yet to see their names, but they’ll be familiar. The most powerful in Aeaea have come to conquer Olympus. The wall coming down now wasn’t part of Circe’s plan and yet somehow she managed to stay one step ahead, creating a net that only Ariadne and the Minotaur managed to slip through before it closed.

“Up. We’re done here.”

I follow the rough voice to my captor. Poseidon. A large white man with a broad chest, a thick gut, and thighs as big as my waist. He’s handsome in a salt-of-the-earth way—or whatever the sailing version of that is. He’s also the one Olympian my father didn’t have much information on.

Poseidon, one of the three legacy members of the ruling body—the Thirteen—whose title moves from parent to child like the monarchs of old. This particular Poseidon isn’t from the direct line, though. He was brought into the role something like fifteen years ago when a sickness wiped out his cousins, clearing the way to the title for him. But since then, he’s kept his head down, and the most illicit thing my father could find about him was an alleged affair with Demeter, which ended ages ago and without a whisper of drama.

In short, he’s a stick-in-the-mud.

Said stick-in-the-mud grabs my upper arm and hauls me to my feet with no apparent effort. We’re nearly the same height, but all that does is give me another glimpse of his freckles. Fucking freckles .

I should say something as he muscles me down the dock and through the marina to the parking lot. I mean to. Truly, I do. But exhaustion hits me like a freight train, bowing my shoulders and making my feet drag. It’s been a long and terrifying day in a string of long and terrifying days, and I don’t have any fight left in me.

His people watch us closely as he steers me to a large SUV and yanks open the door. “Inside.”

“I’m going to get the seats wet.” It’s such a silly thing to say. He’s the enemy. I should be gleeful at the idea of ruining his fancy Olympian car with salt water.

“I don’t care.” Poseidon pushes me roughly into the back seat and slams the door before I can dredge up some response.

I stare through the tinted windows as he speaks with two of his people—a short, petite Black person with box braids and a giant of a white person with an eye patch. It should make them appear ridiculous, but their fists look big enough to beat my skull to pieces, so I’ll keep my mouth shut for now.

I slump back against the seat. My wet clothes are really closer to damp by now, and they’re starting to stiffen up from the salt water. Pure misery. I shift restlessly, but that only makes it worse. I’m in the middle of contemplating the intelligence of stripping naked when the driver’s door opens up and Poseidon himself slides behind the wheel. He’s just as damp as I am, courtesy of my ill-advised attempt to take him hostage. How the tables have turned.

“What are you doing?”

He doesn’t look back at me. “Driving.”

I blink. From anyone else, that word would have been coated in sarcasm, but from him it’s merely a statement of fact. I shake my head. “No shit, you’re driving. Why are you driving? And where are your people? I could choke you to death with your seat belt.”

His gaze lifts to meet mine in the rearview. He has whiskey-colored eyes, a deep amber that someone more foolish than me could lose themselves in. Someone who isn’t the fucking captive of a man who stares at me with something like pity.

Poseidon puts the car into drive. “Trying that is a bad idea. You won’t be successful; you’ll just end up getting hurt.” He says the words with a tense confidence that makes me believe him.

“You mean you’ll hurt me.”

“I would prefer not to.”

I huff out a choked laugh. “Yeah, that’s what they all say.” If there’s one thing I’ve learned about living in Olympus these past few months, it’s that the ruling class here is just as corrupt and fucked up as the one in Aeaea. They murder, cheat, and steal and people applaud them because it’s entertaining . Poseidon might not appear to enjoy it, but he’s obviously just as willing to get his hands dirty as the rest. At least back home, the general public has the good sense to fear their leaders. Here, they’re a strange form of celebrity.

My father loves it.

Loved it.

Just like that, the events of the night come rushing back. He’s gone. The man who cast a long shadow over my entire life, moving goalposts I could never reach, constantly reinforcing the fact that I’m a disappointment of a son… Gone, felled by a single bullet.

To save my life.

I shudder and wrap my arms around myself. “Whatever. Take me wherever you want. A dungeon? Maybe Olympus has stocks you can lock me in and let the public toss tomatoes at my head.”

“Stocks are for your feet. You’re thinking of a pillory.” Poseidon huffs out a breath, but he doesn’t continue. He just drives. Later, I’ll worry about looking for an angle to leverage this shitty situation into one I can use to my advantage. Later, I’ll start crafting an escape route. Later…

It feels like between one blink and the next, the car is rolling through an impressive-looking wrought-iron fence and up to a startlingly massive Victorian-looking home…and then we drive past it, looping around the curved driveway to a much smaller building tucked into the trees behind the main house. It looks like an in-law setup, or maybe somewhere for the staff to live if the family didn’t want them in the house proper.

So this is where I’ll be held.

But when Poseidon hauls me inside, it’s hardly the cold, dank cell that I expect. The glimpse I get of the space as he drags me down the hall is startlingly cozy—low light, deep colors, sturdy furniture. This looks like a place that’s lived in. Cared for. Loved.

The hall ends in a staircase so narrow, Poseidon’s shoulders nearly brush the walls. I’m so bloody tired, more tired than I’ve ever been. My head feels like it’s floating a foot above my body. Everything hurts.

So when Poseidon opens a door and shoves me inside, I barely manage to turn to face him before he slams it shut. The click of a lock snapping into place feels very loud in my ears. “Locked in,” I murmur. “Of course.”

I turn and dredge up the energy to survey my new prison. It’s nice, as prisons go. The bed is large and looks comfortable enough that I have to fight against the urge to drop onto it and let unconsciousness take me. There are a sturdy-looking dresser and nightstand, both probably too heavy for me to move on my own. A TV mounted on the wall. Two gaming consoles situated on the shelf below it. Past that is a door into a decent-sized bathroom with a shower and tub, fully stocked with high-end products.

Stranger and stranger.

My immediate priority is to get these clothes off and scrub the salt from my skin. The bed looks inviting, but I know better. I haven’t slept properly in weeks, haven’t slept at all in days. I’m destined to lie there and watch the minutes tick by until dawn comes and it’s time to go through the motions all over again.

But thirty minutes later, when I’m clean, wearing someone else’s lounge pants I found in the bathroom, and between the sheets…I’m out like a light.

Apparently all I needed for a good night’s sleep is to be captive to an enemy who wants me dead.