Page 41 of Hercules

“All right, then. The whole truth.”

Starting now.

He emphasized it to her—and who was he kidding; he needed it too—by gripping her other hand, as well. By wrapping his fingers around until he pressed his intent across all her knuckles, drawing from the contact to fortify his resolve.

Drawing a lot from it.

Did she know? That she was why he cast all the protections aside? That this was his soul’s version of naked skydiving? And that she’d better be damn sure all the parachutes were packed right?

“What I initially said…it’s the truth,” he stated. “I seriously have no idea if that spell will ever take over me again, or when.”

He forced himself to loosen the hold, giving her every possible opportunity to pull free. Her refusal, for which her better sense was probably barraging her every brain cell, meant something very different for him. Permission to go on.

“I know that’s not a very rosy forecast, especially because there’s not a lot of insight I can lend about the onset of the thing. That night, when it came on…there was no warning. One moment I was fine, standing in the kitchen with Megaera…”

“Your wife.” The query was more of a soft overtone from her, instead of a full pry. Herc respected her as much with his answer, a little upsweep of a smile that was as easy as the memories that came with it.

“We were at home,” he murmured, hearing the faraway husk in his voice but powerless to change it. “It wasn’t a palace because we didn’t want one. Just a few bedrooms and a lot of patios spread over three levels of a hillside near her hometown in Thebes. We could see all the way down to Saranti Beach, where the kids had been playing all day. They were already passed out in their beds, and all the two of us could hear were the waves on the sand and the cicadas in the trees.”

The patient look persisted on Lois’s face, though a pair of keen fires now kindled in her eyes. “So you two had ideas about some unique noise of your own.”

Herc glanced away as miniature blazes stole across his own face. “It was on the agenda, yes. But we were making a quick dinner first. Meg had only snuck in bites of the kids’ leftovers all day.” Also beyond his volition, the hoists on his lips slipped free. His smile dissolved as swiftly as it’d come. “I was chopping vegetables for a salad. Two tomatoes, three carrots, and half a cucumber. Damn,” —it was a good spot for a wistful laugh, but he could only gulp hard against the heavy pain through his senses— “I can remember all that, but not a thing about how I suddenly wanted to slice my wife’s neck instead of that cucumber.”

“Oh…God.” Her guttural blurt was tight and real with misery, but the authenticity rolled on in her relieved whoosh once Herc released his hold and stepped back. Still, even as he turned away, the weight of her regard stuck with him. The intensity of her attention was all still here, like a beacon on his back.

More than that.

She was a full presence in his senses.

Her scent, so ardent and bright. Her strength, a tangible bearing on the air. The accountability she called him to, though not with a megaphone. She was just…here. Just waiting. Just knowing he wasn’t going to leave her like this, no matter how shitty it was to drag his mind through this place in the mental mire.

“Whoever, whatever, held me under that curse, released me long enough to hold her, and to try and…” A rough sound crawled up his throat, exploding past his gritted teeth. “To say I was sorry. So fucking sorry. But…she couldn’t hear. She was already gone. I was already by myself.”

He endured the awareness of Lois’s hand flying to her mouth, and the horrified sob she fought to stifle with her palm, before ordering himself to push on. To tell her all of it.

“That was before…I remembered the kids.”

Okay, maybe not all.

Before the caveat chipped at his resolve and the horror hammered into his memory. But he pushed back, stumbling past Lois as a physical symbol of his resolution.

“Hercules?” she rasped, though he didn’t respond. He was too busy focusing on simple actions—throughout his body and mind.

Keep. Moving.

It had been nearly ten years, damn it. Certainly he could do this now, under his own power, instead of being a victim of his subconscious demons.

It’s time.

Outwardly, he stopped at the three steps that led up to the short hallway to his bedroom. But in his mind’s eye, he faced the staircase up the side of a coastal hill in the south of Greece.

Mentally, he put his foot on the first tread. The second. The third.

He stopped. And shuddered.

But the memory refused to let go. It surrounded him just like the awful quiet of the house. No more gurgling stew or Meg’s gentle hums from the kitchen. He’d silenced them both: one with a deft turn of a knob, the next with a single swipe of a blade. In the wake of his unspeakable act, the place now felt like a silent crypt with three-feet-thick walls. He couldn’t detect a single wave from below or a cicada from above…

“Hercules? Hey—”