Page 37 of Edge of Stars

“Hey, sometimes the toga follows,” the older man offers. “But once I get into this lunatic contraption, all bets are off.”

Poseidon bristles. “You don’t have to take the ride. You know that—”

“Yeah, yeah. I do know.” Proteus scowls. “As you remind me every trip.”

“If fish were meant to travel at a bazillion miles a minute—”

“They would be stars and not fish.” The sea king rolls out a weary nod. “As I do hear and acknowledge, my friend. But you know how to get out of here as well as in, so—”

“Out? And miss the main briefing?” Proteus moves his head to convey the opposite sentiment. Adamantly. “Not when this outcome is key.”

“Briefing?”

“Outcome?”

Maximus blurts the first while I demand the second.

“What are you talking about?”

My charge is clipped and confident. This time, my instincts aren’t off. They’re the same spikes that poke me when someone’s only being a friend for the social media clout or an endorsement contract has a clause with too many murky words.

“Don’t you think we have a right to know?” I emphasize. “What are you two not telling us?”

Maximus tightens his hand around my waist while exerting the same scrutiny at Poseidon’s lieutenant. “Come on, man,” he wheedles from deep places in his chest. “Do you think we’ll pretend you’re just chatting about the latest kelp-patch gossip when you’re the Nostradamus of Olympus?”

I wiggle far enough away to confront a corner of his stare. It’s at its most intense now, a blue rivaling the ocean depths in which we’re submerged and speeding through.

“And that means…what?”

“That he sees the whole thing,” Maximus explains. “Past, present—”

“And future?” I cut in, wishing there were more excitement than fear behind it. Also wishing my gut didn’t clench in on itself along with Maximus’s short nod.

“But not predictions,” he says, lips terse. “It’s visions, right?” he prompts Proteus. “Actually seeing. The sea speaks the world’s secrets to you.”

Proteus pulls in heavy air. “That isn’t the subject of this conversation, young man.”

Maximus copies the action. “So now it’s a conversation, not a briefing? Or maybe your powers aren’t all they’re made out to be, since your bead on the present is damn sideways off the bubble. No way I’m a young man anymore, either. Not after the last two months of my life.”

Oh, Maximus.

I send him the sadness and regret from all that’s left of my soul. He’s right, and I hate myself for it. If we’d resisted this—if I’d been thinking and realized what would happen if he didn’t resist me—he’d be at his dining room table with Jesse right now, eating good pizza and grading bad term papers. Not standing here, subjected to the shifty approach of a harsh old man with harsher flares in his eyes, wondering if the god is planning to hug or shiv him.

Proteus chooses neither, and my mind jumps to both sides of the gratitude spectrum. But not for long. The god still has words for my husband.

“Okay dokey, then. You’re so sure about all that, Classical Literature Professor Extraordinaire? Then you know that you don’t learn the secrets unless I’m captured and caged properly. So let the games begin, yes?”

“No.”

The interjection hits such a perfect pitch between snarl and dictate, it’s more than a moment before my mind discerns its source.

It’s not Maximus, as I first assumed. It’s his uncompromising uncle.

“Games are luxuries for those who have time,” he states. “The sooner we clear the trench and get them completely under the veil, the sooner we all get to consider a little luxury again.”

I swallow hard. “The…trench?” And battle to recall Poseidon’s exact reaction to Maximus’s mention of the trench a few minutes ago. Are we actually headed toward the Mariana—and what lies beyond it? Or under it?

I lean harder into my husband and close my eyes against a wave of dizziness but fail in fighting it off. It doesn’t even help to remind myself that Poseidon provided the original lifeline when he and Nancy fled their persecution in Olympus or that nothing’s changed about his intentions now. Regardless of his bold actions at the church, slaughtering his standing with Hecate and likely jeopardizing his relationship with his own brother, I can feel the god’s overall mindset. He truly wants to help us. To hide us under some kind of veil.