Page 26 of Hercules

“Just your what, now?”

Unbelievably—or maybe not—Aphrodite’s shout was louder than her footfalls. But at least he expected that part, a typical volume from his bubbly sibling. The real stinger here was her irritated ire, which he hadn’t endured in centuries.

“Let’s try that one again, adelfós.” She moved all the way in from the entrance foyer, hands on her hips and shades of indigo fire in her intent eyes. “This time, what about, ‘Ah, it’s my beautiful and talented sister, who knows exactly what to say when the press stampedes her, asking questions about the eight pummeled war vets across her patio. And guess what? She also knows how to deflect when they move on to the next question, about how and why the giant thug who brutalized those guys is also the idiot who made off with one of the world’s most adored pop stars. Isn’t that incredible?’”

As shock bombs went for the evening, Herc rated this one several notches below Lois’s revelation. But the woman in his arms didn’t agree, as her tensing limbs rapidly conveyed.

“Ohhh my God,” she half-moaned out.

“You’re welcome,” his sister snarked, though the follow-up punctuation didn’t match. Aphrodite’s eyes suddenly narrowed. Her eyebrows crunched. “But who the hell are you? And where’s Natash… Ohhh.”

She got the picture much faster than it had taken Herc and Apollo. The next second, her gaze swung from suspicious slits to wide blue blazes of comprehension.

“Okay, I knew something was a little off,” his sister asserted, directly addressing the woman in his grip. “But not because of how you looked. Though holy shit, you really do look like her.” She stopped for a couple of hard blinks. “Even now…”

Herc tossed a disgruntled snuff. “You knew something was off? But you didn’t say a thing?

“I thought it was me, okay?” Aphrodite snapped. “I’ve never actually met Natasha Korra before.” She copied his sound while rolling her gaze away. “Seems like I still haven’t. But it wasn’t a big deal. I just figured…”

“What?” Apollo interjected.

“Well.” Their little sibling shrugged and eyed Lois once more. “You just weren’t as kooky as everyone claims you—she—has a tendency to be. I mean, you get it, right?”

Though the woman still close enough to him to smell—ocean wind and orange blossoms, not that he’d admit to noticing—nodded and laughed off the comment, Herc wasn’t sure what path to forge for himself. Why was it so hard to figure out? His sister wasn’t rambling about Lois, after all. But the association was still there, and its assumption irked him.

“Well, I don’t understand.” He pushed around and then in, until his siblings couldn’t see anything but the breadth of his chest. “You still looking for kooky now, adelfi?”

Why the twitches on his sister’s lips were annoying instead of adorable, he couldn’t figure. He normally delighted in Aphrodites’s expressiveness, but it had been a while since their sunnier days. Back before he put a ring on Megaera’s finger. Became a father. And then a widower. Things had changed, at least for him.

Except for the last twenty minutes.

In which the sun had shined longer on his soul than in—

Well.

It’d been a long damn time.

Aphrodite’s strict snort recentered his attention on the moment.

“Not looking for anything except the truth, okay?” she snipped. “More specifically, the reason why the biggest night we were going to have at the club has gone to shambles thanks to a scene from some military drama. Without, I might add, any Kevlar-clad hunks as a consolation prize.” She folded her arms. “So, you buttheads want to fill a girl in on what’s going on?”

Herc stifled a new groan. His poor sibling, always trying to rustle effective comic book lingo for situations, only to sound like Commissioner Gordon in drag. Thankfully Apollo pushed back in, determined not to feed her sarcasm. He was serious as if someone had shot an arrow into one of Aphrodite’s chariot doves.

“We didn’t expect the strike team. You have my honest confession about that. Herc was only there to talk to Natasha Korra, or the person we assumed to be her, in order to gain some important information.”

Lois spoke up again, her voice lowering to a just-between-us-gals murmur. “They think Reks Byrd is a demigod who’s out to level up.”

“Okay.” Aphrodite repeated her irked snort. “Who doesn’t know that?”

Apollo huffed too. “Now he’s taken a string off my lyre to game things.”

“Shit.” The blood drained from their sister’s face faster than the snark from her tone. “Maybe you could’ve led with that part?”

Herc was ready with the he-started-it look toward his brother, but Apollo beat him to it by several seconds.

“Some of us are still stamping the hero card.” He toss-tossed his green-tinged strands like a classic rock songstress. “One more square and you get a free T-shirt, broha.”

“You two want to get back to the point?” Aphrodite bit out—though her irked undertone wasn’t ominous enough to prepare Herc for the next moment.