My Life From Hell (The Blooming Goddess #3)

Picking Fights With Gods (Part 4)

"Enough." I motioned Festos closer. "Bring me the frosted confection."

He scooted in, cake outstretched to me like an offering to a god. Smart boy.

It was really fabulous. One of those super sugary chocolate sheet cakes with red icing flowers that hurt my teeth to even think about eating. I grinned in anticipation.

"Make a wish already and blow these puppies out," Festos said, tilting his head at the eighteen lit candles blazing away on top. "The heat is opening my pores and that is not a good look for me."

Sitting here, with these two guys who so totally had my back, who so completely loved me, gave me the strength to keep going. No matter what went down when I finally faced Zeus and Hades, I was going to bring my A-game and not let anything get in my way.

I closed my eyes, wished for victory, and blew.

Every single candle went out. The seventeen for my birthday and the one for good luck. I took it as a sign. Today was going to be a damn fine day.

I flung off the covers.

Festos winced. "There's only one reason to ever be wearing last night's clothes, honeybunch, and you are far too young to be doing the walk of shame."

Theo winced. "Can we not ever put that image in my head?"

I scrambled into a pair of clean leggings. "Festos, bring cake. Theo, it's time for you to know everything."

"Hallelujah," Theo muttered.

I padded out to the living room, moved the books onto the floor and motioned for Festos to set the cake down. "Get three forks," I instructed.

Theo looked appalled.

I patted his arm. "Consider getting to eat directly from the cake my birthday present from you. I've never gotten to do that. Combined with the fact that I will also be spared Felicia's birthday call of thinly veiled contempt and disappointment, this year I'm the luckiest girl ever."

Well, not really. Which is why I got serious and started talking.

I brought Theo up to date. Where things were with Kai, the visions, the visit to Jennifer, everything that I'd been keeping bottled up inside me. By the time I was finished, it was afternoon. Surprisingly, and more than a tad sickeningly, there wasn't much cake left.

I was exhausted at the end of my tale. Physically, psychologically, psychically—you name it, it had tired me out. Plus I felt slightly queasy from all the fat, sugar, and lack of actual nutrients.

Anxious for Theo's reaction, I nudged his leg under the table with my foot. "Say something."

"Yeah," Festos echoed. Theo hadn't been happy to find out that Festos had known about things between me and Kai.

Theo shook his head at Festos. "You. Don't keep stuff from me," he said with a swat to his boyfriend's shoulder. He turned back to me. "With the exception of you and asshat needing to get past, well, the past, I don't see that we're in any worse a place than we've been since you became a goddess again. In fact, even with all this, we're still better off."

I startled. Didn't expect that. "How so?"

Theo carved off a sliver of dessert and popped it in his mouth, proving that even he wasn't immune to cake. "First, you have all of Persephone's memories back now." He pointed toward the whiteboard containing the words of the ritual. "Second, we know what the ritual is."

He was right about that. Loosely translated, I would say the first line: "I am above." Kai would take the next: "I am below." Except in the Ancient Greek that we had to speak it in, it was more like "I go down," referring to me as the heavenly Persephone descending from Olympus. Kai's line was reversed: "I go up." Then we would link hands and together we would say, "Through our love, are we power. Through our love, are we strength." As if strength came into being because of our love. That kind of thing.

It sounded much better in Ancient Greek. And was fraught with all kinds of meaning.

katabaino / anabaino / di'erota, sthenos gignetai / di'erota, menos gignetai

The language part wasn't even a big deal. Theo, Festos, and Kai all spoke Ancient Greek. Even I had gotten that knowledge once I'd regained Persephone's memories. Sadly, I couldn't trot it out much. It's a good thing that I'd remembered what the ritual entailed, though, because with Kai not in a sharing mood, the details of the ceremony certainly hadn't come from him.

Theo continued. "Third, we know that you have to speak it on the spring equinox. Which this year happens this Thursday, March twentieth at 6:57PM Athens time. Six days from now."

I picked up the fat blue mug in front of me and took a sip of English Breakfast tea, heavy milk, heavy sugar. It had gone cold but I drank it anyway. "We also know that Zeus and Hades are going to throw all their minions at us. Seeing how their supply is inexhaustible and we're not, that means timing our arrival on the location in Eleusis to within seconds of having to perform the ritual."

I didn't want to have to hold off the minions a millisecond longer than I had to.

Theo shook his head. "Not quite." He patted a slim volume that remained on the table. "There's a bit of a snag. Because of the wards."

A few months ago, Zeus had kidnapped me and held me as his hostage up in Olympus. He drugged me with truth serum and tried to learn the location of the ritual in order to destroy the place. Luckily, I didn't have Persephone's memories back at that point and couldn't tell him anything.

Not that I would have, but he had ways of making me talk.