Chapter 40

THE CHASTE ONE

An icy wind whipped against Selene’s face as she exited the subway, but her lips still burned from Flint’s kiss. Theo walked beside her down West Eighty-eighth Street as they headed toward her house. She kept an eye on the buildings and rooftops they passed, watching for possible pursuit—and conveniently avoiding his eyes. She could feel him looking at her, waiting for her to say something. They’d barely spoken since they left Ruth’s apartment.

“I didn’t tell him to kiss me,” she finally snapped.

“That’s an awesome apology.” His lightness sounded forced.

“Why should I apologize? Because I didn’t punch him in the face? Weren’t you the one who told me to stop doing that?”

“Terrible timing on my part, as usual.”

“It was just a kiss, for Kronos’s sake!” Selene looked at him finally, not bothering to hide her anger. “He was probably half-delirious anyway. I’m sure it didn’t mean anything to him.”

Theo stopped in his tracks and stared at her incredulously. “Just a kiss. This from a woman who turned a man into a stag because he dared to spy on her naked. How many men have you kissed before today? Not including some chaste peck from a relative. Huh?”

She scowled for a full thirty seconds before answering. “Two.”

“Exactly. Orion. Me. And I’d like to believe that they meant something to you. So I know Flint’s kiss did, too.”

She gave an exasperated huff that sounded nearly like a scream. “I don’t know what it meant to me, okay?”

Theo’s face darkened. “Why not?”

“Because you’ve had more experience with women in your thirty years than I’ve had with men in my three thousand. I just lost my twin. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to feel anything ever again. And then Flint showed up and … I don’t know what happened. And I don’t want to think about it. So just let it go.”

Theo nodded curtly, then started off down the sidewalk, his shoulders stiff.

Selene followed, her mind still whirring. She had far more important concerns than her feelings for Flint. Yet she couldn’t forget the feel of his mouth. His beard coarse against her chin, his lips rough. He’d tasted like smoke. It hadn’t been pleasant, exactly—not like the way she’d so often melted into Theo—but some spark had coursed through her body nonetheless. She could’ve pulled away sooner. She hadn’t. Flint barely knows me, she reminded herself. We’ve spent more time together in the last few days than we have in the last few millennia. And he’s spent most of the time brooding and growling and tinkering. He’s just attracted to me because I’m out of reach. I’m sure before this week, he’d barely thought of me. She tried to ignore the tap of the heavy gold necklace in her pocket as she walked. He’d made it for her. So he’d been thinking about her before he left his forge. Maybe since their encounter in Orion’s cave earlier that fall.

She caught up to Theo a few doors down from her brownstone. Yellow police tape hung across her stoop, but she didn’t see any unmarked cop cars on the street. The neighbors would’ve reported gunshots, but hopefully they hadn’t seen the flying man. Even if they had, she suspected Gerry would’ve buried the report. That was one advantage to having a secret Mithraist on the force.

“Hansen’s cops probably searched the place,” she said. “Let’s hope they didn’t find our last remaining divine weapon.”

Theo gave a noncommittal grunt of assent.

Suddenly she was furious. “You’re the one always going on about how we should tell each other the truth. How dare you sulk because I finally did!”

Theo’s face flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. You can clam up whenever you want, refuse to meet my goddamn eyes, but the minute I need some time to process the fact that you liked kissing your own stepbrother, you’re offended?” He headed toward the house, muttering, “Let’s just get in there and get out again.”

“Don’t try to force your human standards of morality on me. Flint and I are barely related,” she called after him. When he didn’t turn around, she shouted, “You didn’t have to come, you know!”

He rounded on her. “No. That’s where you’re wrong. I did. Because I don’t want you roaming the streets alone with who knows what sort of asshole chasing you with a trident or a caduceus or your own bow. Because I can’t bear the idea of you trying to fight when you can only use one arm, and I’m not there to help. Because the sight of someone else kissing you feels like being punched in the gut, but the thought of someone hurting you feels like being stabbed right here”—he pounded his heart with a clenched fist—“with a goddamn butcher knife. Because I love you.”

They stood in the middle of the sidewalk in silence. The neon icicles from the neighboring building cast a wavering blue light across Theo’s face. Selene felt as if she were underwater, Theo floating beside her, his hand outstretched. All she had to do was reach for it. All she had to do was tell him she loved him, too.

I do, she realized. I love that he’s willing to do anything for me, that he can’t bear to lose me, that he cares for me despite everything I’ve done to push him away. I love that he’s stronger than he’ll admit, and handsomer than he knows, and just as smart and funny as he thinks he is. But she said none of it. She turned toward her house. She got a single step before Theo put his hand on her arm.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” His voice was hard. “You owe me that at least.”

“I can’t,” she managed.

Impulsively, she reached for his face and pulled him into a kiss. She’d intended simply to stop his further questions. Instead, she kissed him long and hard, her lips full of everything she couldn’t allow herself to say. Full of the song Theo stitched across her heart, the one that Apollo had known the words to, but that she couldn’t yet bear to sing aloud.

When she finally relaxed her grip, she looked Theo straight in the eye. “That’s also the truth,” she admitted softly. “In the only way I can tell you.”

He nodded, and lifted a finger to wipe away a tear she hadn’t realized she’d shed. He kissed her again, gently this time. She kissed him back, lingering over his touch just long enough to let him know she didn’t want it to end. When they parted, a smile quirked his lips, bringing a dimple to his right cheek. “Then let’s go break into your house.”

His green eyes glowed, a reminder of spring amid the winter cold. A sudden fear drained the answering smile from her lips—the moment was too perfect. Too easy. She expected an arrow to fly through the night and take him away.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, their plan went off without a hitch. With no sign of Mithraic pursuers or police surveillance, they hopped over the yellow tape and Selene jimmied open the deadbolts on her front door. They slipped inside the darkened house and locked the door behind them. She pulled out a flashlight borrowed from Ruth—she didn’t need the light, but she knew Theo did—and led the way up the stairs and into her bedroom. Her meager possessions lay strewn about—whether by the Corvus who’d attacked her or the police who’d answered the neighbors’ calls, she couldn’t be sure. Cotton underwear and overlarge shirts, cargo pants and flannels. A few books Theo’d left behind, along with several piles of his clothes. Splintered wooden arrows lay like kindling across the floor.

On the far wall, the only piece of art in her house hung askew. Theo had given it to her—a photo of the ancient bell-krater once stolen by Orion from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The red-figure painting on the vessel’s side showed Artemis, Apollo, and Leto. It was the closest thing she had to a photo of her mother and brother. She lifted it carefully from the wall and laid it facedown on the bed. She couldn’t bear to look at it. Not yet.

The wall behind the photo showed no sign of disturbance. She picked a broken arrow from the ground and jammed its point into a nearly imperceptible divot in the plaster. The arrowhead went right through into the hollow wall behind. She twisted it like a key in a lock then wrenched it out: a large chunk of plaster came with it. She reached down into the hole—and pulled out a sword.

In the darkness of the room, the leaf-shaped bronze blade looked black. A dent marked the place she’d shot an arrow into it during her last fight with Orion. The simple, leather-wrapped grip was soft to the touch. Like other Greek swords, a small semicircle studded with rivets served as the cross guard. A practical blade. A weapon for a hunter who preferred a bow or a javelin, but carried the sword as a sign of his nobility. Only the pommel hinted at the sword’s provenance and its bearer’s lineage: a twisting conch shell of yellow gold, a fitting emblem for a sword given to Orion by his father, the sea god Poseidon. She’d hidden it deep, where she could forget it existed, buried behind a photo that reminded her that, even without Orion, she had still been loved. By her mother, by her twin, and now, she knew, by the man who’d given her the photo in the first place.

She moved the sword into the light of Theo’s flashlight beam.

He whistled. “No oxidation, no nicks.” He reached to touch the edge with his finger, leaving behind a bright drop of blood. “Could’ve predicted that,” he said ruefully, sucking the wound.

“Divine weapons don’t rust the way normal ones do,” she explained. “This wasn’t made by the Smith, but by Poseidon himself. Forged in the heat of an underwater volcano, or so Orion told me once.”

“Awesome. But you’re the Bearer of the Bow and the Hurler of Javelins. Wielder of Swords, not so much. And without Prometheus around to breathe his special divine-weapon-pixie-dust on me, I’ll look like a blindfolded toddler whacking at a piñata if I try to use it. So what are we going to do with it? You going to just toss it, javelin-style?”

“You clearly know nothing about javelins … or swords,” she said with a sigh. “I’m not exactly sure what we’ll do. But any divine weapon is better than no divine weapon. A normal blade would never hold up in a fight against Mars’s spear or Poseidon’s trident.”

She shoved the sword into a heavy canvas tote bag. Next, she added an old quiver and the few unbroken arrows from the cache on the floor. No gold ones left, and no bow to shoot them, but they were weapons nonetheless.

Theo watched her skeptically. “And how are you going to use the sword, or the arrows, with only one arm?”

“That, my friend, is the one problem I know how to solve.”

She slung the tote bag over her shoulder and retrieved her WNBA New York Liberty cap from the floor where it’d fallen during her fight with the flying Corvus. She pulled the brim low over her eyes. It felt like a warrior’s helm—far better than any crescent moon diadem. She was ready for battle.

Selene led Theo down to the bank of the Hudson. Riverside Park lay nearly empty. Most of the city’s denizens were either home for a Christmas Eve meal, out-of-town visiting relatives, or lounging on a beach in Florida for the week. No one felt the need to go for a walk in the darkened park, especially on a night when the temperature hovered in the teens. The cold whipped through Selene’s leather jacket, surprising her with its bite. Her exhaustion made her more susceptible to such mortal annoyances. She could only hope her ability to heal wouldn’t be affected as well.

Theo’d retrieved his parka from her house to replace the borrowed wool greatcoat. She’d been keenly aware of his presence since kissing him on the sidewalk. It felt like the first week they’d met, when she noticed every step he took, every time he caught her eye. For all the uncertainty about their future, she knew now, without a doubt, that he loved her. His simple declaration—devoid of Flint’s brooding or her own angst—felt like a life jacket in the midst of a storm, something that could keep her afloat even as the rest of the world roared into chaos.

They reached the water’s edge, and Selene hopped down onto the boulders. Ice chunks floated in the river. This is not going to be pleasant, she realized. But she didn’t have a choice. She dropped her bag and shrugged off her jacket. She reached to pull off her flannel shirt, but couldn’t get it unbuttoned with one hand.

“Here.” Theo took off his gloves. She let him unfasten the shirt, starting at the bottom and working his way to the top. His knuckles brushed against the sides of her breasts, and she knew that he felt it too, this heightened connection. Despite the cold, she could feel the heat radiating from beneath his coat. He let his fingers linger at her collarbone before he lifted the shirt free of her arms. She stood in only a sleeveless undershirt, the cold sending tremors across her flesh.

Apollo’s words came back to her, so clear she wondered if he watched her now from another world, whispering memories in her ear. I try to give her every part of myself, he’d said of poor dead Sophie. Body and soul. That was the love that had kept him together before the Host had ripped him apart.

Selene glanced up and down the path—no one was coming.

“Take the undershirt off, too,” she said softly.

Theo smiled. “Is this an early Christmas present?”

“This is the only way I know to get my arm healed quickly.” She tried to sound stern.

Theo pulled the shirt over her head, careful not to tug at the bandage on her back. With her left hand, she reached behind for the clasp to her bra, but Theo beat her to it. Next, the zipper of her pants.

She sat down on the rock and lifted a foot so he could pull off her boots. Removing her pants presented more of a problem—she rolled onto her shoulders, wincing as her wound scraped against the rock, and Theo slipped them down her hips and over her feet. She stood once more, hooked her left thumb into the waistband of her underwear, and kept her eyes on Theo. He slipped his hand along her other hip, pushing the fabric clear until she could step free. She’d never been helpless to undress herself before—she was surprised to find she didn’t mind. Lastly, she took off her baseball cap. She didn’t need to—in fact, she could use the meager warmth it provided—but she wanted him to see all of her.

“Is this some new form of torture?” he asked, his voice low, his gaze roaming her body before latching on to her eyes. “Because this is more painful than a branding iron.”

He took a step forward as if to fold her into his arms.

“Hold on,” she said. She turned her face to the moon, which had once moved at her command. It hung in the eastern sky, a full orb of icy light. Listen to me now, she prayed. I summon you, Moon and Stars. Forest and River. Lend your strength to the Goddess of the Wild, the Mistress of the Moon, the Lady of Trees. Her body tingled in the moon’s rays, and when she looked down at her bare flesh, it glowed. Still, she couldn’t move her right arm more than a few centimeters.

She stepped down into the water, chunks of ice knocking against her bare shins.

Theo gave a worried hum, but she kept going, submerging herself to the shoulders. Her trembling increased until she shook like an epileptic. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the numbing pain. River that protects my island, she begged silently. Border of my realm, inexorable flow from mountain stream to broad expanse, let your pure waters heal me. Suddenly, the shivering stopped, and a sudden flush of heat warmed the skin of her back and arms.

“Come out,” Theo said with a groan. “If I have to watch this much longer, I’m going to come in there with you, and you’ll feel awful when I freeze solid.”

Her eyes snapped open. She spoke without thinking. “You can come join me if you want to.”

“I have a better idea.” He grabbed her left hand and pulled her back onto the rocks. She stood dripping like a siren. Then she raised her healed right arm and used it to grab the front of his parka. Theo crushed her against his chest, his hands running across her back, through her hair, his mouth hungry on hers.

He slid his hands lower, beneath her hips, and lifted her off her feet. Her legs wrapped around his waist, squeezing so tight he moaned with something between pain and desire.

She moved her mouth from his and whispered into his ear. “With what we’re going up against … this may be our last chance.” Leave with no regrets. Apollo’s words sang though her mind. No regrets. She raised a hand to his lips before he could protest. “It’s now or never, Theodore.”

He pressed a kiss against her palm then put her down. He ripped off his parka and laid it on the frigid granite beneath them. They knelt together on the ground, and Selene fumbled off his layers of clothing, anticipation and urgency making her awkward. But not fear, she marveled. Not nervousness. She’d lost her twin. Losing her virginity seemed paltry in comparison.

When she dragged the shirt from his torso, she saw the Mercury brand on his chest, its edges red and angry. A permanent reminder of all he’d endured for her.

For now, for this one moment, she could show him how much his sacrifices meant. She could allow him into her heart, her body—not for the sake of gratitude, but for joy. An emotion she’d thought she’d never feel again. Yet now it lay just within reach, shining in Theo’s eyes.

She pulled his naked body down on top of hers, and he ran his mouth across the pulse of her throat, the slope of her breast, the plane of her stomach. With her body thrumming, he lifted her from the ground and slipped beneath her, so his own back pressed against the stone and she lay above him. “Easier for you this way,” he murmured, shifting her hips into place above his.

She leaned her hands on his shoulders and stared down at him. He reached to tuck the black curtain of her hair behind her ear. His face was grave, intense, tight with need. “This is how I always imagined you,” he whispered, “making love to me in a moonbeam.” Then, suddenly, he was grinning. “But you know … I always thought it’d be a little warmer.” She threw back her head and laughed, and at that moment, she joined herself to him. The pain was sharp, but fleeting. The bliss lasted far longer.

Theo didn’t feel the cold. At least, not at first. Then, as their body heat receded and the wind picked up, his teeth started chattering next to Selene’s ear. She laughed and rolled off him. In a night of terrors and wonders, her honking laughter was perhaps the most sublime thing of all.

They struggled back into their clothes. Selene retrieved her bag with the sword and arrows, jammed her New York Liberty cap back on her head, then glanced up at the moon. “Styx,” she muttered. “Only a few hours left before midnight. The sword’s not going to do us much good if we don’t figure out where we’re going.”

Theo zipped up his parka and pulled on his gloves, slapping his hands together until the feeling returned. His mind wheeled joyfully from one imagined future to another—Selene beside him as they visited the ancient sites of Rome … as they sat curled together beside the turquoise waters of the Aegean … as they walked down an aisle with their friends looking on, her hair garlanded with flowers. They hadn’t used a condom, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to worry. If she gets pregnant, he mused, would that be so awful? A little DiSilva-Schultz hemitheos running around?

“Theo?” she prompted.

“Hm? Oh, right, find out where we’re going …” Even the reminder of the confrontation ahead couldn’t wipe the grin from his face. “No problem.” Tonight, he felt there was no enemy he couldn’t defeat, no mystery he couldn’t solve. “We need another New York landmark. One that has something to do with the ascension of Mithras in the Sun’s chariot. And a place that relates to whichever god they’re going to sacrifice tonight.”

“The Pater won’t choose Dash or Philippe for the ceremony. He’ll kill them anyway—just to have them out of the way—but they can’t be the real sacrifice. It would take too much time to break them, although I’m sure he’s trying—I haven’t had any hallucinations since we left the planetarium, so he must be using the poppy crown on his new captives. But for tonight, he’ll just use the Fire-Bringer. The ultimate willing sacrifice.”

“What better place to kill Prometheus than beneath his own statue in the Rock Center skating rink?” he offered as they trotted toward the park exit.

She shook her head. “Christmas Eve? The rink’s open until midnight and everyone wants to skate beneath that damn tree. I don’t think so. And the statue has nothing to do with the Sun.”

“Maybe we need a site with a more direct Jesus connection. A church perhaps.”

“Possibly, but their Jesus isn’t exactly the one we’re used to from the crucifixes. I saw him through Gerry’s eyes when I touched her mind. He wore a cloak of stars and the seven-rayed crown of Sol Invictus.”

Theo suddenly grabbed her arm and spun her toward him. He was staring above her head.

“What?” she asked.

“New York landmark. Seven-rayed crown of the Sun. The Fire-Bringer who grants hope and free will to mankind. A place closed and unguarded only one day a year—Christmas.” He pulled off her hat and held it before her face. “We know where to find them, Selene.” She followed his finger to stare at the logo on the cap—the Statue of Liberty stared back.