Page 32 of Wildfire

Perhaps she would lose her father in this conflict, but she vowed to herself in that moment that she would see it done, if for any reason he could not. She would kill her grandfather with her bare hands if need be.

Never had she loved anyone more than she loved this one god. If she had to lose him, she would vanquish his enemies. It was the least she could give him.

“We should plan contingencies.”

He nodded and preceded her into his study.

Eggs & Toast

When Hermes woke up, Wilder was already out of bed.

He didn’t need to sleep, but there’d been something in the night before that demanded he shut his eyes and forget about the world for a while. Wilder had been warm and close, and for once, that was enough.

Hermes found him in the kitchen, heaping eggs onto plates with toast from a toaster with four slots—did he need so many for just himself?

He’d never considered that Wilder might’ve had someone. He didn’t seem the sort of man to get on especially well with a long-term romantic partner. Well, if he had, they must be gone now.

Even though he hadn’t eaten breakfast before, Wilder dropped a plate in front of him now. Staring up at the man, Hermes thought twice about questioning him. His mouth was a hard line, the set of his jaw angry and resolute. But at least, this time, that anger wasn’t burning a hole in Hermes.

So he picked up his fork.

“Classes today?” Hermes asked. He halfway wondered if things would be better if they simply didn’t go onto Banneker’s campus. On the chance Typhon was following Wilder specifically, maybe some distance from the place would serve the students. And Hermes would—Hermes would figure out what to do with the great bloody daddy of all monsters with his poison skin and vicious claws and... he could do it. Or, more likely, he would snatch Wilder up and run to the far side of the world. It’d take Typhon a while to catch up with them.

Wilder was staring at his plate, cutting vicious little triangles off his toast and dragging them through runny yolk. “I emailed the students this morning.”

Hermes hummed. Come to think of it, he hadn’t actually seen many computers at Banneker, but pretty much everyone these days had a smartphone, so it stood to reason that there was some communication between them.

Hermes fuckinglovedemail, only slightly less than text messaging. When mortals had invented phones, his job had become a lot easier, but it was more than that.

Some gods on Olympus had faded into the background and were struggling for notice. Poseidon railed against the degradation of the oceans, but his influence was disappearing as the nymphs died out. Zeus had his thunderstorms, but he’d been sulking for millennia, using his power only to seduce beautiful people into his bed. And Artemis’s hunting grounds were fast disappearing.

But some Olympians had adjusted to the new world. Hebe thrived on social media andTeen Vogue, Dionysus had clubs where people let themselves go and worshipped him without realizing it, Athena had a whole system of universities all over the globe—and Hermes. Hermes had phones that got smarter every year, the Internet capable of sending a message across the world at almost no cost to the user. Globalization washis, and every time a mortal pulled out their phone to shoot a message to their bestie or send an email to their coworker, it was like a little prayer, keeping him strong.

“Okay,” Hermes said, taking a bite of his eggs. If Wilder had gone through the trouble of cooking for him, he wasn’t going to let it go to waste. “What’d you email them about?”

“I offered students the option to finish out their semesters with a term paper rather than an in-person examination.”

Hermes frowned. “Doesn’t sound like you. More work, and less... shooty shooty fireballs.”

Wilder sighed deeply, leaning against the kitchen island and crossing his arms. “I’m not going to ask them all to risk their lives just to finish out one semester,” he snipped. And that was just about the most conscientious thing Hermes had ever seen him do.

A smile grew on his face, and it made Wilder scowl across the bar at him. But he didn’t address his annoyance, just plugged right along. “To those who elect to stay, I’m offering additional training sessions every morning, starting today.”

“Fast. You think they’ll show up?”

Wilder frowned and nodded. “It’s a college campus. Word travels quickly, and if they don’t know specifics, they know that something awful has happened to some of their classmates. The ones who stay are going to want to be prepared. They need to be able to defend themselves.”

“That didn’t work out so well for Marco,” Hermes muttered.

Wilder’s expression turned dark and furious, and Hermes was halfway surprised he didn’t burn down the house. That, he could credit to Melisandre twining her way around her daddy’s ankles, purring.

“Marco didn’t know what he was up against,” Wilder said quietly. “We know now.”

Slowly, Hermes nodded. He wasn’t sure what good knowing would do against the likes of Typhon. The gods struggled to subdue him, and if he was working with Cronus, the king daddy of monsters was one small piece in a big fucking landscape of problems.

“And he didn’t have you to help him train,” Wilder continued.

Hermes’s eyebrows shot up. Oh, he wassonot a team player. “Excuse me?”

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