I already knew that. This wasn’t really a problem the Olympian Council could help me fix.
“Then what was the point of coming here, Julian?” I snarled. “To tell me my hands are tied?”
“To tell you the rules.” His voice hardened. “If you act against Orion independently, you do so without Council protection or sanction. If you enter his waters and fail, no one comes for you. If you damage his holdings on land, you face sanctions and embargoes from every House in his network.”
“And if I succeed?”
“If Andromeda leaves Poseidon’s territory of her own will, the Council has no standing to intervene on his behalf. His sovereignty protects him only as long as she remains voluntarily.”
“Of her own will.” I tasted the words. “That’s what it comes down to.”
“That’s what it has always come down to,” Julian replied. For the first time, I could see past his perfect composure. Underneath it was the Alpha, the head of House Apollo, and the man whoalways seemed to find the best path. “You cannot take her, Alexander. That is what every Alpha in her life has tried to do. The only way Andromeda comes back to you is if she chooses to.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
He held my gaze without flinching. “Then you learn to live without her.”
The vines above us shuddered as the lightning pulsed through the railing. Somewhere inside the house, glass shattered.
“Get out,” I said.
Julian held my stare for one more heartbeat. Then he nodded and walked back through the archway. His footsteps faded down the corridor, measured and unhurried.
I stood alone on the terrace and stared at the Strait.
Julian was wrong about one thing. I would not learn to live without her. The bond, incipient and cursed as it was, had woven itself through me in ways I hadn’t understood until the ocean had taken her from my sight. Living without her was not an option. It had never been an option.
But Julian was right about the rest. I couldn’t take her. I couldn’t fight my way across Poseidon’s waters. And I couldn’t sit on this terrace drinking Dionysus wine and waiting for someone else to solve the problem.
Orion Maris didn’t live exclusively in the ocean. House Poseidon had holdings on every coast in the Mediterranean. Shipping contracts, port authorities, commercial real estate, import licenses. Their wealth flowed through land-based channels that required banks and lawyers and permits.
Julian acted like this was an advantage for House Poseidon. But it was not. On the water, Orion was untouchable. On dry ground, he was as vulnerable as any other House. House Zeus could crush him with ease.
It wouldn’t be a rescue. It would be a siege. If I couldn’t reach Andromeda through the water, I would make the water the only thing Orion had left. I’d fight the way only a House Zeus Alpha ever could. And then I would wait for Andromeda to decide.
The railing was scorched where my hands had been. Two blackened imprints on volcanic stone. I looked at them for a long moment, and then I turned and went inside to find Helena.
22
The First Battle
Andie & Alexander
One week later
For an Alpha, Orion Maris was a strange man. I’d expected him to show some sign of breaking his promise. But on the first morning here, I’d emerged from the cabin… only to find him standing outside my door with two cups in his hands.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Black,”I’d said.
He’d held out the cup on the left.“Good. So do I.”
It had been that simple. A cup of coffee and an Alpha who didn’t try to explain my own situation to me. After months of containment strategies, the simplicity of it had cracked something open in my chest that I hadn’t been able to close since.
By the third day, I was eating dinner with him on the aft deck. The galley crew had prepared grilled fish and a salad dressed with oil from the Sicilian coast. Orion served the plates himself, dismissing the steward with a nod. He talked while we ate, about the currents that mapped the seabed like roads, about the fishermen who still sang to the Strait before casting their nets. He didn’t ask me about Alexander. He simply… let me think.
“This is good,” I’d told him.