Page 96 of Edge of Stars

Though the word is a verbal gavel, Arden pivots to her like a tender barrister. The move and its aura, though fleeting, are more terrifying for me than every moment we spent on the beach. If Arden’s being that overtly sweet, then nothing of the news he brings can be.

“Zeus is dead,” he declares with stunning neutrality—though his gaze on my sister is a determined blend of strength and encouragement. It’s so forceful, turning his mild grays into fierce charcoal, that even my trembling form is girded a little more. “As applicable as the term may be in these circumstances.”

“Applicable?” Kell blurts, her own stare a dark whirlwind. “Applicable…how? In what circumstances?”

My husband steps forward, nostrils pinched and forehead furrowed. But his nod is full of comprehension. “Nothing’s as clinical for the pantheon as it is for carbon-based creatures. Life has a thousand different meanings for them, which probably also applies to death.”

“All right, then.” Reg nods too. “Pretty much simplifies that one.”

Kell throws her fisted hands up, and I’m sure something’s going to actually get punched. She doesn’t even notice the glowing red sparks that escape from between her fingers.

“Not a fucking thing is simple here yet,” she seethes. “Can someone just tell me—”

“He just has.” Regina jogs her head toward Arden. “And he’s not bending it, love. We knew it as soon as Zeus was rematerialized in Olympus.” She stops, breathing in and out with heavy intention. “He was there…but he wasn’t.”

I shoot to my own feet, ready to join my sister in demanding a hacksaw through the explanations. Just as quickly, Arden arcs a finger, dictating my silence.

“You blew him up, Kell,” he says, again so placid and lawyerly. He cups an equally gentle hand to her shoulder, but she smacks it down with a hiss.

“I’m more than aware, Arden.”

He ignores the rebuff, though tucks his hand into his pocket. “So, he’s in pieces,” he explains with enunciated care. “And though all those pieces are, technically, still alive, they can’t be put back together again. Zeus is existing, but not alive.”

Kell rocks back with a grimace. “I…didn’t mean it.”

Arden’s chest fills with a visible breath, even from beneath his three-piece suit. “Everyone is aware.”

“So.” My sister’s gulp is thick with her trepidation. “What happens now? What are they going to do with him? Or…what’s left…”

“Cronus.”

Maximus has been so stiff and still that his sudden interjection startles me. After a second’s worth of an atoning glance, he refocuses on Arden with eyes like twin blue lasers.

“Damn it. I can’t believe I didn’t put that together sooner.”

“Same mind track,” Jesse puts in, his voice sure but his mien deflated. Though Arden’s arrival is the last thing we all expected, it’s clearly the last thing that the poor guy wanted.

“Why?” Kell asks. “What does Cronus have to do with this?”

“He’s Zeus’s father,” Jesse fills in. “And, once upon a time, was the acknowledged ruler of the gods.”

“Until what?” My sister’s composure teeters between desperation and agitation. I feel it all from her soul before it reaches her voice. She always scoffed at me for loving the last-minute romance movie saves, but now she’s gunning most of her spirit for one. “He abdicated, right? Fell in love? Decided to plant an herb garden and binge true crime shows in his old age? Bought an RV and rigged it for cross-cosmos adventures?”

Maximus fits his hands together, only giving away his dread by rubbing the knuckle of one thumb with the pad of the other. “He was killed. By Z himself.”

I’m up on my feet again too, moving quickly to steady Kell’s backward stumble.

“Also…by accident?” she stammers.

“Depends on your viewpoint.” While the answer is amorphous, my husband isn’t. His stance is still firm but attentive, his version of acknowledging the conflict Kell’s own composure is losing out to. “The move was premeditated but nobly purposed. Cronus had already eaten Z’s five siblings and would’ve done the same thing to him if not for some fast thinking on his wife’s part. After Zeus used poison to make his father hurl the family back up, he realized he had no choice about what to do next.”

I stick to my position behind Kell, here to help if the story just made her stomach do the same gymnastics as mine. I even grab my middle for a long moment, inwardly begging Niki not to ride the acid flumes. The child isn’t listening, of course, but I’m relieved to observe that my sister’s attention is better.

“No choice,” she repeats, her nod as deliberate as her voice. “Yes. I get it.”

I just lived it.

The wordless addendum might be somewhat different through the filter of my senses, but the overall meaning is the same. And its follow-up feelings inside my sister’s spirit. That surely, if Zeus’s motivation was properly preserved, hers will be equally acknowledged. Forgiven.