“You’re lucky, you know?” Agnes smiled up at Griffin as he walked out of Hera’s office. “The queen is in a particularly good mood today.”
That was a good mood? Griffin didn’t want to see her on a bad day.
“Did she get a nice offering or something?” he asked.
“No…” Agnes gave him a conspiratorial look. “She spent all morning finalizing a smoting order. Meting out punishments always cheers her up.”
Griffin tried to smile, but he had a feeling it looked more like a wince.
Of course ordering life-altering punishments put Hera in a good mood. He shouldn’t be surprised. He just had to hope that helping Calix complete his quest would make her happy for a much less panic-inducing reason.
And the sooner he started, the sooner he would see his parents again.
“Do you know where I can find the queen’s son?” he asked.
Agnes beamed. “I sure do.”
When she didn’t move or say anything more, he asked, “Could you tell me?”
“I could,” she agreed.
“Would you?” Griffin flashed her his most charming smile. “Please.”
At that, she winked and then turned to one of several piles of papers stacked high along the edge of her desk. She shuffled through the tower, clearly looking for one paper in particular.
“Now, where did I put that…?”
Griffin shifted from one foot to the other. He was eager to get going. Judging by the state of her desk, Agnes didn’t seem to be the most organized person he’d ever met. That title belonged to the Academy’s librarian, Mrs. Philipoulos—she could find a scroll in the Library of Alexandria archives in two seconds flat.
Agnes, on the other hand, was having trouble finding something on her own desk. The longer she took, the more impatient Griffin grew. Maybe he was better off wandering around the palace until he found the boy.
Just as he was about to call off the search, Agnes yanked a sheet out of the stack.
“Aha!” She waved it over her head. “Found it.”
The great discovery appeared to be a map. Griffin could make out the outlines of several buildings, some rock formations, and what looked like a giant pool.
He would recognize that place blindfolded. It was a map of Mt. Olympus itself.
Agnes set the map down on the desk and started tracing her fingertip over the surface.
“Let’s see…,” she hummed. “Where has that boy gotten to now?”
Griffin stepped closer to get a better view. As he did, he saw the map showed more than shapes and spaces. More than just the buildings and grounds of the Olympic headquarters. There were dozens of small symbols in varying colors scattered across the map. Each had a small label.
He was just leaning in to read one of them when the symbol moved. An owl’s head, labeled Αθηνη, slowly made its way along one of the many hallways in the palace. Athena was in the building.
Before he could identify any other symbols, Agnes stabbed her finger to a spot.
“There he is!” She grinned up at Griffin. “You’ll find Calix in the arcade.”
Griffin blinked. “There’s an arcade on Mt. Olympus?”
“Of course, silly,” Agnes said with a dismissive pshhh as she rolled up the map. “It’s been here for ages.”
In all the years his family had lived here, he never knew that. Maybe if he and Nicole had video games to play, they wouldn’t have been tempted to make up their own adventures—like the one that led to this whole mess in the first place.
“Take a right in the hall.” She gestured to the door. “Then turn left at the dead end. The door will be right in front of you.”
“Thanks,” he told her with a grateful smile.
“Any time.” She waved the rolled-up map at him. “Have fun!”
He nodded and set off on his quest.
Griffin followed the directions Agnes had given him and found himself not in a room full of video game machines, but stepping out into the open air. Into the palace’s manicured central courtyard.
Mt. Olympus was a massive complex. So, of course, the main courtyard was huge. Probably almost as big as the entire quad at the Academy.
From where he stood, Griffin could see groves of fruit and nut trees with flower-lined paths winding through them. The sound of flowing water suggested there was a stream or a fountain—or both—somewhere within.
Griffin turned at the clop-clop sound of hooves. A silver-winged pegasus emerged out of a grove, chomping on a freshly plucked apple. It startled when it saw Griffin. In a flurry of wings and hooves, it dropped the apple and leapt, flapping its wings to take off into the sky.
When his family lived on the mountain, Griffin used to come out here to play all the time. No corner had been left unexplored. He’d been gone for so long that he forgot many of the magical things that lived and happened on Olympus.
But he wasn’t here to spot an elusive rainbow-horned monocerata. Or to wander down memory lane. He had a mission.
“In the arcade, huh?” Griffin mused to himself.
A memory surfaced of a lesson on architecture in his Greek history class. An arcade wasn’t just a place to play video games. It was also a kind of hallway made of arches and columns.
Which pretty much described the colonnade that lined the courtyard on all sides.
Trusting Agnes’s map—and her directions—Griffin made his way along the perimeter, searching for Hera’s son.
Halfway around the arcade, he turned a corner and spotted blond curls peeking out from behind a column. Darker blond than he remembered, but they could belong to none other than Hera’s son.
His heart pounded into his throat.
He hadn’t expected this feeling. Guilt. Definitely guilt.
It was bad enough to face Hera. Her anger, he could almost deal with.
Now he had to look into the eyes of the boy whose immortality he’d snatched away. Griffin had been dealing with the consequences of his actions for more than a decade, but never quite as face-to-face as this.
Hopefully, the fact that he was there to help make things right would count for something.
Part of him wanted to stand there forever, frozen in an in-between moment. Between the past and the future, the cause and the effect. Between the half-life he’d been living and the one he never even dared to hope for.
But a bigger, stronger, more desperate part of him was willing to risk anything—his life, his freedom, and certainly his comfort—to get his parents back. So, with a deep breath for courage, Griffin stepped out of the shadows and confronted the original victim of his childhood mistake.
The boy—now almost a young man of thirteen—didn’t notice Griffin’s approach. With his face buried in a book, he seemed too preoccupied with his reading to notice anything.
Griffin cleared his throat.
Calix startled so severely that he dropped his book and fell off the balustrade he’d been sitting on.
“Omigoddess!” the boy exclaimed as he scrambled to his feet. “I didn’t hear you walk up.”
“Clearly,” Griffin said with a smile. He picked up the book and noted the title. “The Lost Poems of Sappho, huh? Any good?”
Calix’s face positively lit up. “They are amazing!”
“Better than Meleager?”
“Pfft!” Calix waved his hand dismissively. “Meleager is a hack. Sappho is the master.”
Griffin smiled as he handed the book back to Calix. He liked the boy immediately. “Too bad the nothos world can’t read her complete works.”
“Right?!” he replied with a wide-eyed grin. Calix clutched the book to his chest as if it were his most precious possession. “I’m Calix. I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“I haven’t lived here for a while now.” He hesitated, letting his courage build up just a little more, before saying, “I’m Griffin.”
He held his breath, waiting for recognition to dawn in Calix’s bright green eyes. Waiting for the delight to be replaced by anger. Surely the name of the thief who stole his immortality had been burned into his mind like the sear of Hephaestus’s forge.
But instead of lashing out, Calix smiled and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Griffin.”
Griffin stared at the outstretched hand. Maybe the boy hadn’t heard him right. Maybe there were too many other Griffin’s in his life.
“Blake,” he said. “I’m Griffin Blake.”
“Okay…” Calix gave him a mischievous look. “I’m Calix Aigophagos.”
Griffin was so thrown by the boy’s response that he forgot what he was so nervous about.
“Aigophagos?” Griffin echoed. “Goat-eater?”
Calix beamed. “One of my mom’s epithets. She hates when I use it. So, of course, I use it all the time.”
Griffin laughed. He had to admire the boy’s irreverence.
Maybe it was selfish, but he was relieved that Calix didn’t seem to know who he was. Didn’t know that Griffin was responsible for his mortality.
Had Hera never told him how it happened? Or maybe she’d just neglected to mention the identity of the thieves. Knowing her, she’d probably forbidden anyone on Olympus from ever speaking their names.
Griffin could explain the situation to the boy. He should, probably. He didn’t want to.
That made him pretty much the opposite of heroic, but some days it was too hard to live up to that legacy. Some days called for making the cowardly choice.
Especially when that made it easier to get what he needed.
“So, speaking of your mom…,” Griffin said, bringing the conversation around to his mission. “She asked me to help you.”
Calix frowned. “With what?”
“Your quest.”
“My what?” The boy stepped back, colliding with the balustrade. “What quest?”
Griffin’s stomach sank. Not only did Calix not know about Griffin, he clearly didn’t know about Hera’s intention to restore his immortality. This was probably part of her plan—to send Griffin in blind, to make everything harder on him. It was no more than he deserved.
For my parents, he reminded himself. A little discomfort was a small price.
He walked over to the balustrade and sat down next to Calix.
“Now that you’re thirteen,” he began, “Hera thinks you’re old enough to seek a quest from the Oracle of Delphi.”
Calix’s dark blond brows drew into an ever-deeper frown. “For what?”
“To get your immortality back.”
Calix went pale as a ghost.
“I didn’t….” Calix shook his head.
The boy looked stunned.
Oh no. Did Calix not even know he was mortal? Had it not crossed Hera’s mind that her son would want to know he’d lost his immortality? Or had she decided not to tell him for some inscrutable reason?
No wonder he didn’t know who Griffin was.
But then Calix said, “I didn’t think that was even possible.”
Thank Hera! Literally. At least he wouldn’t have to explain that.
Griffin hid his relief with a shrug.
“Me neither,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t been on the verge of a heart attack. “But your mom seems to think so.”
Calix stared blankly at his own feet. Griffin could practically see the thoughts racing through the boy’s mind. He could only imagine what it felt like to grow up believing you were mortal and then, in an instant, learn that you might be able to regain your stolen immortality. And from a stranger, no less.
As much as the details of Hera’s deal had shocked Griffin, it must be blowing Calix’s mind even more.
They stayed lost in their thoughts for several minutes. Calix clearly processing the situation. Griffin giving the boy all the processing time he needed. It was the literal least he could do.
The clip-clop of hooves on pavement finally shook Calix out of his thoughts.
“I just….” He looked up at Griffin with the most confused expression. “I never thought….”
“Crazy, right?”
Griffin pushed to his feet. He felt bad for the boy, but he was also eager to get going. The sooner they started, the sooner he got his parents back.
A decade ago wasn’t soon enough.
“What do you say?” he asked. “Ready to do this thing?”
Calix made a weird, mixed-up gesture. Like a cross between a shake, a nod, and a shrug.
Griffin could empathize with the confusion.
“Are you ready?” Calix asked.
Griffin forced a reassuring smile. “As I’ll ever be.”
Calix held the book he’d been reading out in front of him, staring at it like he was trying to ask the great poet herself for answers.
In the end, he nodded—maybe at Sappho, maybe at himself—and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
Griffin smiled and clapped the boy on the shoulder. His heart raced. He was about to take the first step to getting his parents back. He was both excited by the possibility of success and terrified by the possibility of failure.
But he couldn’t let himself think like that. He had to think positive. Just like when he was at the starting line for a race. He had to picture himself winning. He had to believe he and Calix would succeed.
Anything less was not an option.
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