“Mytikas,” the Greeks called Olympus’s peak—the Nose. But from the crest of the plateau, it looked more like a crown.
An oval slope rose before Selene, surrounded by great jagged spires of rock like a diadem’s points. The center looked carved by an ice-cream scoop, smooth and steep and impossible to climb.
From where she stood at the plateau’s edge, the Mytikas peak seemed to float in space two hundred yards away. But when she moved closer to the lip, a knife’s edge of rock appeared, connecting the plateau to the peak. One wrong step across that bridge would spell certain death, even for an Athanatos. Carrying Zeus’s stretcher across would prove extremely difficult—getting it up the slope to the summit itself would be nearly impossible.
Standing beside her, Theo gave a nervous smile. “Please tell me you smuggled a divine jet pack up here, because I don’t see a path.”
Selene pointed to the rock face. “There are red dots painted on the stone to show you where to put your hands and feet.”
Theo squinted, but clearly his mortal eyes weren’t up to the task. “Hands? You mean we’ve got to climb?”
“Yes, although you won’t need ropes. You might want them, but you don’t need them. And it’s your choice—you don’t have to come,” she couldn’t help saying.
“Please—and miss all the fun? I’m like Dennis; undergrads are getting boring.” He laughed shortly. “Teaching them, that is, not … you know.”
“I figured.”
He gazed at her, suddenly sober. “I’m coming. Not just to bear witness or for the thrill of meeting Poseidon and Demeter and the others—although, I have to admit, that’s pretty cool. But because you—you guys—might need me.”
She didn’t miss his stumble. He was coming for her, even if he wanted to pretend otherwise.
“So, great Hawk-Eyed One,” he went on. “Do you see the rest of the pantheon up there?”
Selene smiled at the made-up epithet. His teasing is a good sign. “Not from this angle. But I can see the storm clouds. The weather’s bad up there, and it’s only going to get worse. We’ve got to hurry.”
Philippe rubbed at the blisters on his hands. “We can’t hurry if we’re carrying this stretcher.”
Selene knew he was right. “Maybe we go up first without Father,” she ventured. “Rig a pulley system—”
Maryam interrupted. “It will take us at least forty-five minutes to get to the top, then another twenty to jury-rig a pulley for the stretcher and haul Father up. We have to take him with us the first time. Otherwise, the probability of success becomes vanishingly slim.”
“But how do we get—?” Philippe began.
“I’ll carry him.” Selene bent down and lifted her father carefully off the litter.
“Even She Who Dwells on the Heights needs to use her hands to climb that slope,” Theo protested.
Maryam had already reached into her pack for a long length of nylon rope. With a speed and ingenuity that put Flint’s to shame, she fashioned a quick harness and slung it over Selene’s shoulders. With Theo’s help, Maryam maneuvered Zeus’s limp form into the ropes, his legs dangling around Selene’s hips and his arms over her shoulders. His head rested against her neck.
Theo stepped back to admire Maryam’s handiwork. “Not exactly Luke and Yoda, but not bad.”
Despite the weight of her father’s limp form on her back, Selene found herself chuckling.
Theo gave her a puzzled smile as he helped secure the gold bow to Selene’s hip so it’d be within easy reach. “What are you laughing at? You don’t even know what it means.”
“Sure I do. I watched The Empire Strikes Back while I was in Rome.”
“Without me?” He seemed more disappointed than angry.
She hesitated. “I can watch it again.”
He stared at her as if contemplating the offer.
I’m proposing a future together, she realized, and he hasn’t rejected it. She waited for him to say something more. When he didn’t, a wave of regret rushed through her. I should’ve said more to him in the Pantheon. I should’ve apologized for lying to him. I should’ve admitted how much I’d missed him. How much I love him. Instead, she said aloud, “It’s taking all my willpower not to throw you over my shoulder and carry you off this mountain to somewhere where you can’t tumble to your death or be eaten by giants from Tartarus. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded, a smile hovering on his lips. “But you haven’t.”
She took a deep breath, finally understanding why it seemed to matter so much to him that she allow him to throw himself into danger. Despite her near immortality and his humanity, it made them, somehow, equals.
“I would keep you safe if I could,” she said. “Not just today. But every day.”
He didn’t reply, but she heard the sharpness of his breathing, as if her words had tightened his chest.
“But that’s not my job, is it?” she asked.
“Not if it means locking me away in a box, like Eos did to Tithonus.”
Selene remembered how Eos, Goddess of the Dawn, had fallen in love with the mortal Tithonus and begged Zeus to grant him immortality. Zeus had complied, but Eos forgot to ask that her lover be given eternal youth as well. Tithonus grew so aged, so weak, that eventually he shrank into a grasshopper. Eos had placed her tiny lover in a box to carry with her everywhere.
I can’t decide what’s best for Theo. I can’t make him immortal. One day, he will grow old. He will die, while I’ll barely look middle-aged. I’ll have to be okay with that.
She nodded at him, a silent assent to his demand.
Theo’s gaze warmed, but he didn’t reply.
Esme’s throaty giggle broke the sudden silence between them. “Enough flirting, you two.”
“Not everyone’s thinking about sex all the time,” Selene shot back, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks.
Philippe jumped in. “Oui, Mama, leave them alone.” He put a restraining hand on Esme’s elbow to protect Selene from his mother—or vice versa. He cast a worried glance at his stepfather farther down the slope.
Flint shouted up to him, “Do you feel the electricity in the air?”
“Um …” Philippe’s eyes darted between Theo and Selene.
“He means from the storm,” Selene said quickly. Flint was right; the air seemed to hum as the clouds overhead darkened like a new bruise. “We need to move.”
She hitched Zeus a little higher onto her shoulders and started toward the slender ridge that led to Mytikas. The others followed. Flint, she noticed, had donned a rock-climbing harness—not around his waist, but his chest. He carried a long coil of rope over his shoulder, along with a variety of carabiners, ratchets, and a handlebar. He handed another coil of rope to Philippe, who stayed close beside him as they stepped onto the ridge.
“He’ll be slow,” Maryam stated. “We must keep going.”
Selene felt guilty, but she knew her sister was right. Zeus had to get to the summit.
The ridge stretched before her like a catwalk. A low cloud disguised the drop on either side—she wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than seeing the valley three thousand meters below. She took a deep breath and focused on the painted red circles marking the path.
Theo’s voice sounded strained. “I feel like Pac-Man. Just follow the dots, right?”
“Not sure what you mean this time, but yes.” She stepped forward. Normally, the journey would’ve been simple for someone with her agility and strength, but her concern for her father stiffened her movements, and the combination of his awkward weight and the bow hanging off her body made her balance tenuous.
“Let me take the bow,” Theo said.
Selene shook her head. She needed her weapon within reach.
“Or I could carry your dad,” he offered, sounding far less confident.
Selene snorted. “You’d topple off the ridge like a drunk bacchant. Besides, this is my responsibility.” I’m the one who knew he was rotting away in that cave for decades and never bothered to go to him until it was too late. “I’ll be fine.” She walked quickly forward to prove her point—and almost twisted her ankle on a loose rock. It skittered over the side and plummeted soundlessly into the cloud.
Theo swore softly then turned to Maryam. “You got another line in that pack of yours?” She handed him a length of red climbing rope.
He started to tie one end around his own waist and the other around Selene, but Maryam stopped him. “You tie terrible knots, has anyone ever told you that?”
Theo quirked a smile at Selene. “Yes, actually.”
Maryam refastened the rope to both their waists. “You realize that if one of you falls, there’s a very good chance you’re just going to take the other down with you.”
Selene held her breath, waiting for Theo to untie the rope. Yet when he looked up, he held her eyes and said solemnly, “Yeah, that’s the idea.”
Selene swallowed hard and nodded. She wanted desperately to rip the rope from his body, but that’s exactly what she’d just promised not to do. If we’re truly equals, then he can share my risk, she knew. And he wants to share it. I never thought he’d feel that way again.
The red rope stretched between them now, a physical reminder of the link they’d forged, through life and death and back again. Suddenly, she didn’t want to free him from its pull; she wanted to reel him in instead. To yank him, hard and fast, into her arms. To say with her embrace what she still couldn’t find the words to say aloud. There will be time for that, she thought, unable to repress a shudder of anticipation. When we get off the mountain, we can finally pick up where we left off on that night above New York Harbor.
Red dot to red dot, she moved carefully across the ridge, Theo’s footsteps echoing her own. She could hear his heart tripping in double time.
The ridge wasn’t flat; that was part of the problem. It sloped steeply to the right, forcing her to shimmy along, one foot sliding before the other, while trying to prevent Zeus’s skinny limbs from scraping against the sharp slabs of rock.
Every time the wind blew, the clouds shifted. She caught a glimpse of clear sky, a brilliant, hot blue heating the valley below, where the temperature would soar into the nineties by noon. Beyond the wooded mountain gorge and rocky slopes, the land flattened until it reached a narrow beach along the Aegean. The sea itself lay beyond, a flat, gleaming expanse that seemed to fill half the world.
“I’ve never seen the ocean look so vast,” Theo marveled.
“I remember this view. We’re so high up that we’re looking down on the sea instead of out at it.”
“But let me guess—the death-defying rock scramble isn’t how you guys used to get up to Olympus.”
“No. I suspect we flew there in our chariots, although I don’t remember exactly.”
“Oh, man. I’d give my Harvard doctorate for a flying chariot right about now.”
They kept climbing, and Theo kept talking, his voice another rope, stronger than any braided nylon, tying them together. “When we get up top, do I get my own marble palace with a soaking tub and a bowl of ambrosia? Or is that too much to ask?”
Selene laughed. “More like a spiny summit with a Greek flag, from what I can see. Our palaces were never exactly on the summit. It’s too small for that. They were”—she struggled for the words—“above it. Or … not of it at all.”
“You mean they were on a different plane?”
“Sort of. It’s hard to explain.”
“Huh.”
Selene knew that if he’d had any more breath to spare, he would’ve continued to ply her with questions. Once, she would’ve been grateful for the respite from his curiosity, but now she didn’t want the conversation to end. It stopped her from panicking about her father’s ragged breaths against her neck. Besides, she’d missed this.
“You know I don’t remember everything from my godhood,” she said. “Olympus is a little foggy.”
“Hah. That’s an understatement,” Theo said as another bank of vapor rolled past, blocking the view.
Selene surprised herself by laughing.
“Keep talking,” he urged. “It’s helping keep my mind off the whole tumbling-to-my-death thing.”
“Well, I didn’t really have my own home on Olympus—I preferred the forests. But my mother lived here in a marble palace my father built for her, as far away from his wife’s as possible. I remember her sitting in the sun in the courtyard, weaving, spinning. But whenever Apollo or I would visit, she’d put down her work and listen to our woes. It was … peaceful there.”
“I wish I’d had a chance to meet Leto,” Theo said gently. “She sounds like a good mom.”
“She was the Goddess of Motherhood. I was lucky.”
“Do you ever … think about having kids?”
Selene had to stop herself from rounding on him. It wasn’t a question she’d ever allowed a man to ask. But the rope that tied them together reminded her she wasn’t allowed to push him away again. If she did, she’d only tumble after him.
“After you and I …” she managed. The image of his naked body beneath hers on the riverbank came rushing back to her. Had sex? Slept together? What do I call it?
“After we made love?” he prompted, pronouncing the words with careful emphasis.
She cleared her throat and kept her eyes fixed on the rocks as she went on. “After we made love, I didn’t get pregnant, in case you’re wondering. And since then, I learned that I can’t. No goddess can anymore.” When Theo said nothing, she wondered if she’d just put a quick end to their nascent reconciliation. Does he want kids? It was, she realized, a question—like so many others—she’d never bothered to ask.
Theo stayed quiet for a long while. The end of the ridge was in sight now, and Selene was suddenly sure that if he didn’t respond before they got there, he never would.
“I’m not sorry,” she said, unable to stand the silence. “Motherhood isn’t for me. I’ve been given all the world’s children to protect, just not my own. To me, that’s a fair trade.” She paused and finally looked back at Theo. She’d been honest. Now it was his turn.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Esme, who’d already made it across the ridge, interrupted with a shout. “Stop dawdling! And tell my lumbering husband to get a move on, too!”
The wind picked up around them, tossing the shreds of cloud like ribbons in a maiden’s hair. Selene’s conversation with Theo would have to wait.
The storm would not.