When we finally broke apart, his forehead dropped against mine. We stood there, swaying with the deck, breathing each other’s air.
“Alexander,” I whispered.
“Mm.”
“I can’t feel it.”
He pulled back just enough to search my face. His brows drew together. “Can’t feel what?”
“The curse.” I reached for the place inside me where Alexander’s presence had always triggered a storm of its own. I found nothing there. Only silence, clean and ordinary. Or rather, a deep sense of peace.
“It’s gone.” My eyes burned with an emotion I couldn’t even begin to process. “Alexander, it’s gone. I can’t feel it anymore.”
Alexander’s eyes widened. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” I took a deep breath, waiting for the scent to overwhelm me like it had in the past. But I no longer saw him as my enemy. “I don’t know when it broke. I don’t know if it was the severance, or Penelope, or this. But it’s not there anymore.”
His eyes closed. His arms folded around me, and he buried his face in my hair. He said nothing more. No more words were needed.
As I held him, the ocean finally started to calm. Behind us, Orion breathed against the foremast, unconscious and diminished, his chest rising and falling with the slow cadence of deep sleep.
For the first time in months, my mind was quiet.
For the first time in my life, I was not afraid of what I was.
Epilogue
Alexander & Andie
Two weeks later
The apple orchard spread out below the terrace in orderly rows, the fruit heavy and late-season red. The altar of Hera stood at the far end beneath a canopy of white linen that the priestesses had raised at dawn. The morning sun hit the stone and turned it the color of warm honey. House Hera’s insignia had been carved into the lintel centuries before I was born, and the purple-gold paint in its grooves was fresh.
It was strange to be back here, after everything that had happened. But against all odds, we were on Samos, and this time, not because Andie was ill.
Nikos stood beside me, adjusting his cufflinks for the fourth time. My brother was uncomfortable in formal clothes. Hepreferred the operational anonymity of dark suits and earpieces. The white linen shirt Helena had insisted on made him look like a man attending someone else’s wedding by accident.
“Stop fidgeting,” I told him, straightening my own collar.
“Stop watching me fidget.” He gave up on the cufflinks and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’d think after everything we’ve been through, a bonding ceremony would be the easy part.”
It should have been. But the Heraion carried its own weight now. Every corridor held a memory I would rather have burned. Andie screaming when the collar failed. Cassandra’s fire forcing her into unconsciousness while my father dragged me backward by the shoulders. The orchard where I’d pinned her down in the grass while the curse twisted everything between us into poison. The flight I’d put her on, only for her to jump out at thirty thousand feet.
This island had been a prison for both of us. Today it was supposed to become something else.
Elias and Robert were already seated near the altar. They still didn’t like me. Two weeks hadn’t changed that. But Robert had shaken my hand when he arrived, and he’d held my gaze for three full seconds before letting go. Elias no longer seemed inclined to tear my throat out or sic House Hermes onto me, which was always a plus.
Danae Wayland sat by their side, looking a little nervous but determined. Andie told me Helena threw her off Samos when she tried to fight our decision to accept Damon Blackwood’s offer. I was grateful to her for standing up for Andie to the end.
My father had come. That surprised me more than anything else about this day. Argos Stormwright leaned against the far wall of the terrace with his arms crossed. He was watching the preparations with the detached interest of a man evaluating a military exercise. He hadn’t spoken to me since he’d arrived. He didn’t need to. His presence was the statement.
I’d spent my entire life wanting his approval and resenting myself for wanting it. Today I’d settle for his attendance.
Helena emerged from the interior of the Heraion.
She wore the full ceremonial regalia of a House Hera matriarch, her deep purple robes edged in gold thread. Her silver-streaked dark hair was pinned beneath a crown of woven metal engraved with peacocks. She cradled a bonding chalice in her hands, carrying it with a sternness that for once didn’t feel like a threat.
She stopped in front of me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but her hands on the chalice were steady. “Alexander. I want you to know that I am glad you’re here. Despite everything.”