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Thalia
She had to get away from him before she did something foolish. That was all there was to it. She could still feel his hand on her wrist. The warmth of his fingers, the roughness of his skin. The sword he’d worn must not have been ornamental. She’d just been so fixated on the fit of the clothes she hadn’t realized—
But he had. Of course he had. Pirithous was clearly the kind of person who took even the barest glance in his direction as encouragement. But that hadn’t been her intention at all, until he caught her hand and looked at her like he wanted to make love to her on the carpet.
It was the damn zipper, she thought, shoving hangers aside as she searched for another pair of pants in his size. If the obnoxious thing hadn’t been so broken, and she hadn’t been trying to see what was wrong with it, she never would have entered the danger zone, and he never would have grabbed her by the wrist, and all of this confusion could have been avoided. She didn’t want to want him. She didn’t want to want anyone who went around abducting women for sport! Even if he said he didn’t force them beyond that.
Ugh. And then his comment earlier, on top of it all. The fact that he stood there and had the nerve to act as though her wanting him was some kind of inevitability just made it all even worse. Well, he wasn’t going to be right. She could control herself. Nikki would help keep her in line. After that kiss this morning, Nikki would be watching them like a hawk when she was home.
Just two weeks. Two weeks, and then she was leaving all of this behind, and Pirithous would be on his own anyway. She just had to make it that long, and if she was lucky, she’d never see him again. This internship at the National Gallery was going to get her hired full time, and then she was done with her family, done with this podunk back of beyond, done with letting Alex oversee her life. And Pirithous could go back to kidnapping women, for all she cared.
Maybe he was exaggerating. Even a king couldn’t kidnap and pillage indiscriminately. That would have made the tabloids at least. She frowned, grabbing the right size off the rack, and thought it over. Exactly what he meant by king, she wasn’t sure, either. The more he talked about it, the more he sounded like he’d been the equivalent of a village chief. And to be overthrown the way he was—well. So what if he wasn’t really a king? So what if he was just a chief, thrown out of his own village? He’d still lost everything.
Thalia shook her head and went back to the changing room. She’d see him settled and then leave for Virginia. And in the meantime, if he decided he wanted to go live in the woods, she wouldn’t fight with him about it. But she’d at least make sure he had a solid pair of shoes for winter.
“Here,” she said, tossing the pants over the stall door. “Try these.”
Pirithous grunted in response and Thalia sighed. What kind of people didn’t use zippers, anyway?
***
SHE PUT THE CLOTHES on her brother’s credit card. As long as she didn’t start charging beer and wine, he wouldn’t notice whether she bought menswear or women’s clothing, and he’d probably just assume she was putting together her wardrobe for the internship. Besides, if he insisted on acting like her father figure, he was going to pay for the privilege.
Pirithous watched her charge the clothing with his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Just as he’d said nothing since she’d brought him the pants and showed him how to use a zipper. Then again, if she’d waited for him to ask for help or explanations, he’d still be in the dressing room, staring at the pants with the same baffled expression that had crossed his face when they’d walked into the store to begin with.
“You weren’t kidding when you said your country was small, were you?”
He pressed his lips together, the tension in his shoulders becoming even more pronounced. And that was another thing. She could have sworn his eyes turned brilliant white for a moment, the gray-blue of his irises hazing over, but he looked away, his jaw tightening, and she couldn’t be certain. Maybe it was just some trick of the light.
“I’m not criticizing or anything. It’s just that you’re staring at me like you’ve never seen someone use a credit card.”
He glanced back at her face, a slow smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Would you prefer it if I stared as if I had not had a woman in years?”
She flushed, taking the bags from the saleswoman and slapping them against his chest. “You can carry your own things.”
He chuckled, taking the bags without argument. The girl behind the desk giggled and Thalia shot her a glare. Pirithous thanked the girl, and Thalia didn’t miss the way he grinned. It was arrogance and invitation and promise, and Thalia hated that he’d turned it on some salesgirl. She probably wasn’t even out of high school.
Thalia grabbed him by the arm and shoved him toward the exit, even more irritated with the knowledge that he wouldn’t have moved if he hadn’t wanted to. From what she’d seen of his body, he didn’t have an ounce of weight that wasn’t muscle.
“You just don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?” he asked.
“You can’t hit on high school girls. Or are you a pervert as well as a rapist?”
He shook his head, the humor leaving his eyes. “You’re still angry.”
“I’m supposed to just forget that you steal girls from their beds?”
“It was long ago.”
“That doesn’t make it excusable.”
“Do men never take brides, here? Or are you all Amazon in your reasoning?”
“Amazon?” She realized he had her hand in his and jerked it free now that they were in the parking lot. “What is that even supposed to mean?”
His lips twitched. “The Amazons took men only to breed, uninterested in love or marriage.”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“You live alone, with no men, no interest in marriage or children, and the thought that I might persuade you to marry me infuriated you. I simply wonder if that is how all women are, here.”
“You really don’t get it.” She popped the trunk and gestured for Pirithous to drop the bags inside. “I was angry because you think you’re some kind of god among men, absolutely irresistible to women. Maybe some people get off on that, but I don’t like anyone telling me what I do or don’t want. Confidence is one thing, but you...” She slammed the trunk shut. “You’re a whole different world of arrogant.”
“Does it not cross your mind, even for a moment, that I have reason to be?”
She snorted, unlocking the car doors. “Nobody has reason to be as full of himself as you are.”
“Not even a king?” He was smiling again, and there was laughter in his eyes.
“Not even a king.” She got in the car.
He joined her, and even when he was awkwardly getting in and out of the car, he was still graceful. It was the hesitation that gave him away, more than the movements, and the way his gaze lingered on the door, the seat, his fingers tracing the lines as if trying to understand each piece by its shape alone.
“What about a hero?” he asked. “A man with the courage to battle centaurs and conquer cities? A man brave enough even to fight against the gods?”
“That’s bullshit. You can’t fight God. There’s nothing to fight, unless you plan to terrorize priests, or go after the Pope. And then you just make martyrs, anyway.”
She could feel him staring, but she didn’t let herself look away from the parking lot. Some asshole had clipped her front end once, in high school, cutting across the parking spaces, and she’d been extra careful driving through this particular lot since. But his gaze was making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
“What?” she asked.
“What god do you worship here?”
She risked a glance at him to be sure he was serious. “The God. What other god is there?”
“Not Zeus?”
She laughed. “Zeus?” He wasn’t smiling. She cleared her throat, swallowing her amusement. “I thought your part of the world was all Orthodox.”
“The Olympians are no longer worshipped?”
“No.” She glanced at him again at the stoplight. His forehead was creased, the lines making him look closer to thirty than twenty. “Are those the gods of your people?”
His mouth had become a grim line again. A car behind her honked. Green light. Of course. She made the turn into the grocery store lot and found a place to park. Pirithous still hadn’t answered her, scowling out the window instead.
She unbuckled her seatbelt. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve never actually met anyone who believed that stuff, you know? I mean. People say they’re pagan, and whatever, but I didn’t think... I shouldn’t have laughed at you.”
His jaw tightened, a muscle twitching once, then going still. His whole body was still, the only movement the rise and fall of his chest, but his hands were fists again in his lap, the knuckles white.
“Pirithous?” She touched the back of his hand, worried now. “I really am sorry.”
He opened his hand, exhaling slowly. “Perhaps you’d better show me that atlas, Thalia.”
“I don’t have a big one here but—” She twisted around, reaching into the pocket behind her seat. “I have this road atlas at least. There should be a map of the world in the back, with the time zones.”
She flipped the book open, resting it against the steering wheel while she paged through the index at the back until she found what she was looking for. She wasn’t even certain Pirithous was breathing anymore, and when she shoved the book into his lap, he studied it as if he didn’t know what he was supposed to be seeing.
“There.” She pointed. “That’s Greece. Sorry it’s so small. I’m not sure where Thessaly is. But see, here’s Egypt. You mentioned Egypt earlier, didn’t you?”
He nodded, his face gray.
“And this is the United States of America. You’re here, kind of.” She pointed to New York. “A long way from home.”
He murmured something in his not-quite-Greek, his hand spreading over the page. Then he laughed, the sound bitter and hollow. “We thought we knew the extent of the world, and what we had seen is no larger than my thumb.”
“I don’t care how backwater your people are, you must have had maps and globes.”
“There were maps of a sort.” The way he said it, she thought they must have been incredibly poor. “But how could we know there was so much...”
“You speak English. How could you learn English and not know what the world looked like?”
He shook his head. “It is not a simple answer.”
“You’re not a king, are you? Not really. Just some tribal chief, or some backwoods European trying to pass himself off for something he’s not.”
“I was a king.” He dragged his gaze from the map, meeting her eyes. “A great king, of a small people. But no less honored than Peleus or Tyndareus or Nestor, and certainly more than Agamemnon, for I had the love of my people and many allies besides.”
“Agamemnon.” She tried to keep her voice level, reasonable, but a shiver of unease slithered down her spine. “From the Trojan War.”
He smiled faintly. “I do not blame you for your disbelief. You do not know my gods, do not know my people. And the world has changed. That much is more than clear. It has grown beyond anything I could have imagined.”
She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t even sure what she was supposed to be disbelieving, for that matter. Agamemnon. That was the last thing she had understood. “I thought you didn’t know the story of the Trojan War.”
“Only what you’ve told me, and the little Helen shared with us in warning.”
“But you keep talking about it. Or the people, anyway. The Myrmidons. Agamemnon. Helen.”
“I knew Helen and Agamemnon before the war. And Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, was my neighbor and rival in Thessaly.”
She blinked, hoping when she opened her eyes again Pirithous wouldn’t be a study in earnestness, that there would be some twitch of his lips to indicate a smile. A joke. Goosebumps rose on her arms when she met his eyes and they were still so serious.
“I don’t understand.”
“Is the story of Troy the only one you know from that time?”
“No. I mean. Kind of. I saw Clash of the Titans. About Perseus? I know a little bit about the gods, from school, at least in regard to art, and everyone knows Hercules.”
“Hercules?”
“The son of Zeus, who Hera tortured for a living. Strongest man alive. He had his own television show, live action, way back. And then that Disney movie, but Nikki says it was really, extremely wrong, even if Hercules did marry Megara.”
“Heracles.”
She shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”
“Heracles came to the Underworld. Hades let me wake enough to see him free Theseus, but when he tried to argue for my freedom, Hades forbade it. I hoped they would come back for me, that Theseus would find a way. But it was Persephone who freed me, and I stumbled upon you when I found my way out of the Underworld, at last. You tell me it has been three thousand years since this Trojan War, and I was taken hostage by Hades before it came.”
He couldn’t actually expect her to swallow that. Even with all the rest of his weird. “Pirithous—”
“I can feel your disbelief, Thalia. You need not waste your breath speaking of it.” He half-smiled then, his gaze filled with sympathy. “You do not believe in my gods, but I tell you I am the son of Zeus. Heracles was my half-brother. As was Perseus, though he lived even before my time. You say I have no right to my arrogance, but I am the son of the king of all the gods of my people.”
She shook her head, her mind racing. From the way he looked at her, she knew he was serious but it didn’t make it any less ridiculous, and if he was serious then Nikki was right. He was delusional, at best. And not just that, but a delusional man who’d already admitted that he’d kidnapped women. Her stomach twisted into a knot of queasy bile. Unless the kidnapping was part of the delusion? She wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.
“I can take you to the hospital,” she said gently. “Maybe when you were wandering around in the woods, you got hit on the head or something. I’m sure the doctors will be able to help you, one way or another.”
“I can give you proof, Thalia.”
“How?” She pressed her hands between her thighs so he wouldn’t see them shaking the way her voice already had. “How can you prove any of this?”
“My father and I have not always been on good terms with one another, but his blood came with certain gifts. Immense strength, youth and vigor long beyond that of a common man, and in fury, the hum of lightning in my veins.”
Her palms were sweating. The hospital. If she could just get him to the hospital without a fight. If he fought, she didn’t have a hope of winning, even without whatever immense strength he supposedly possessed.
“Eternal youth and buzzing in your ears isn’t exactly something you can prove.”
“Then let me show you my strength.”
She closed her eyes, trying to control her breathing. If she pretended he was being reasonable, pretended to go along with it, maybe it would be enough. She could call 911 once she had a moment alone. Then let him do whatever he wanted to do. The police would arrive and he could be their problem. He wouldn’t have time to hurt her much, even if he decided to rape her. She swallowed. If he decided to rape her—oh, God. Could she keep him off her long enough for the police to arrive? If she went along with this, maybe.
“All right,” she agreed. How far could she run before he caught her? Not far enough. She’d been such a fool, trusting him, and Nikki was never going to let her forget it. “Then we’ll get out of the car, and you can show me what you can do.”