Zeus Thunderheart's Arc

Chapter 5 of 9

Elena's hand was warm in Zeus's palm. Outside, the mist was gone. On Olympus, Hera stirred toward waking. Hypnos's hour was almost spent. When Hera opened her eyes, she would know where Zeus stood. She would come for the child before it drew breath. Zeus let go of Elena's hand. "My wife is waking," he said. "She kills what I make with mortals. I have little time." Elena did not flinch. "Then use it." The chapel door opened. Father Elias stepped back in, holding a branch cut from the grove outside. Small olives hung along it, green and dark. A faint gold light wound through the leaves. The priest had never looked afraid of Zeus, and he did not now. "I sealed the grove this morning," Elias said. "Something old sleeps under these roots. I bless the branches that grow above it. This one carries that blessing." He held it out to Zeus. "Hera sees godhood. She will not see through this." Zeus took the branch. The light did not burn his hand. He understood. A blessing grown from the ground, not from Olympus, was a thing Hera did not track. He pressed it to Elena's chest, over where the child would grow. The gold light sank into her and vanished. "Now she cannot find him by his blood," Zeus said. "But she can find him through you. She will look for a woman a god visited." Elena crossed the room and took a grey shawl from a peg. She wrapped it over her shoulders. The soft cloth swallowed her, plain as any widow's in any village. "I have hidden before," she said. "I slept in doorways for three years. No one looked twice." Air stirred behind Zeus. A young woman stood by the altar, brown-haired, an owl worked into her belt. Athena, his daughter, the one he sent ahead to watch for trouble. Her face was tight. "She's awake," Athena said. "Callista can't hold her long. You have minutes." She looked at Elena, then at the shawl, then at the branch. "Good. Keep her plain. Keep her moving." She turned to Zeus. "Go back before Hera reaches your rooms. Be in the bathing pavilion when she finds you. Wet hair. Lie well." Zeus did not argue. His daughter had built her own worth grinding through work he never had to do. He trusted the plan because she made it. He looked at Elena one last time. "Raise him well. He is yours." "He always was," Elena said. Zeus rose into the light and was gone. Athena followed. Moments later he stood dripping in the pavilion on Olympus, water sheeting off his shoulders, when Hera swept in searching his face. She found nothing. No mist, no scent of the valley, no god who had just left his rooms. Zeus had won the night. The child was hidden and safe. But Hera's eyes moved to the grey feather caught on his wet sandal, and her mouth thinned.