My last hope was Danae. Even after Andie’s outburst, she hadn’t given up. If anything, she was even more determined. I should have known better than to think the solution would be so straightforward.
“I’m sorry, Alexander,” she told me, one week after she’d started her work. “Your aura just doesn’t work for the collar. It’ll only make her worse, not better.”
The workshop smelled of a week’s worth of failure — burnt circuitry, overworked crystals, the acrid residue of Hephaestus-craft driven repeatedly past its limits. Three shattered crystals were already in the corner container. Danae stood with her back to me, both hands braced against the edge of her main bench.
“The frequency.” I wanted the full shape of the problem. “Explain it.”
She pulled a readout from the data-sphere and slid it across the bench toward the edge nearest me. Two waveforms overlapped on the display — one running flat and clean, one spiking in jagged peaks. She kept her eyes on her instruments. “The collar works by introducing the stabilizing frequency of House Zeus into Andie’s brain. But it carries too much charge. In every simulation, it doesn’t stabilize the interference pattern. It amplifies it.”
It made so much sense it hurt. “The curse interprets my aura as a mating claim. If we did this, Andie—”
“Would be in agony.” Danae cut me off. “I’ve run it forty-seven times.”
The number sat between us. Forty-seven runs over seven days, and she’d said nothing until she had no remaining argument against the result. That was Danae’s particular form of loyalty — not comfort, but absolute refusal to present a conclusion before the data demanded it.
I forced my errant emotions back and struggled to find a solution. The concept was sound. House Zeus could help her. But the problem was me. I was still Andie’s mate and still the cause of the curse.
What the collar needed was a different House Zeus signature. One that could contain something as old and powerful as House Hera’s curse.
I had felt it. I knew exactly what that signature should be like because I had experienced its power.
In Maracaibo, my father’s aura filled every cubic inch of that lake. I had been completely unable to move, not because the force was aggressive but because it was total. It simply occupied the space I was in. There had been no seam to find, no angle to push against.
That was the frequency Danae needed.
I let out a slow breath. “If the source signature were different,” I said. “Same House, another person. Would the imprint hold?”
Danae turned from her instruments and studied me with narrowed eyes. “In theory, yes. I’d have to double-check, of course, to make sure the volatility is contained. But I’d say it would hold.”
It was the only thing I needed to hear. Turning on my heel, I walked out of the workshop and reached for my phone.
My father answered before the second ring finished.
“Alexander,” he drawled. “I was wondering when you’d call.”
He sounded completely calm, the exact same way he had when we’d first met in Venezuela. His concern, whether it had been real or fake, seemed to have completely vanished.
“I need you on Samos,” I told him without preamble. “Danae Wayland is calibrating a device for Andie. It requires a House Zeus aura signature. Mine generates the wrong frequency. Yours won’t.”
For a few seconds, my father said nothing. I wasn’t fooled. Argos Stormwright processed things at the speed of someone who’d been reading rooms since before I was born. The pause was an instrument.
“You’re asking me to come to Helena’s sanctuary,” he finally offered.
“Yes.”
The second pause was longer. I stood in the corridor and waited. Somewhere far inside the Heraion, one of the peacocks called once and went silent.
“Your own aura is inadequate,” my father said at last.
The word ‘inadequate’ landed exactly the way he’d aimed it. “That’s what I said.”
Argos released a low, humorless laugh. “The priestesses will hate this.”
“Yes.”
“Helena will be overjoyed.”
“She’ll survive it.”