Page 47 of Wildfire

“Motherfucker deserved it.” Hermes gave a little wiggle and turned in toward Wilder’s lap. The man above him returned to stroking his forehead. “So Lysandros brought us to the underworld for safe keeping?”

The movement of Wilder’s fingers was a slow, steady brush across his skin, and Hermes wasn’t sure he’d ever felt anything so luxurious.

“I suppose he thought, what with you leaking poison from your pores, vomiting it up all over the lawn like a sick dog, it would be easiest to handle you in a place where the people are already dead,” Wilder said imperiously.

Hermes chuckled. “Ever resourceful, our prince of death.”

All Wilder did was hum his assent. If Hermes could have gone back to sleep then, he would have. It was tempting, but...

“And you came with him?”With me?

His eyes fluttered open and caught on Wilder’s own dark pools. Hermes couldn’t place the emotion swimming inside them. Slowly, the man nodded. “I couldn’t very well leave you alone like that.”

“Right,” Hermes whispered. He licked his lips, now dry and cracked. “Well, uh, thank you. For making sure I didn’t puke up all the ichor in me.”

Wilder’s lips twitched wryly. “I’m not sure I could’ve stopped that.” Silence hung for a beat, then two. “Typhon got away.”

Curling in around Wilder, Hermes shrugged. “You’ll get him next time.”

And Hermes didn’t know if it was worry or desire that made his breath shake when Wilder traced a circle over his temple, but right then, he didn’t really care.

A Deficit of Ambrosia

He wasn’t sure whether to be grateful that Ward’s boyfriend seemed to give a damn about his soft squishy heart, or offended that the man thought he had one. After all, what difference did it make to him if Hermes wasn’t looking for a wedding, a house with a white picket fence, a dog, a cat, and one-point-eight children? Neither was he.

Right?

Right. Wilder definitely did not want children. They were squirmy and loud, and they smelled bad.

Plus what if he treated them the same way his parents had treated him?

And even with what little Wilder knew of Hermes’s parents, he could guess Hermes would be even worse.

He shook his head. Why the hell was he on about kids? Maybe he’d managed to absorb some of that poison after all, and his brain was turning to mush.

It wasn’t until he heard quiet voices outside the door that Wilder realized he and Hermes had settled back in, silently, just holding on to each other, Wilder carding his hand through the god’s short curls over and over, as though it was something he did, always.

At just that moment, he was hard pressed to find something else to want to do. As long as he was touching Hermes, and Hermes was breathing and leaning on him andthere, then he was alive.

He wasn’t as deathly pale as when they had arrived in the underworld, not sweating and shaking and muttering in a language Wilder didn’t know, but it was going to be a long time before that image worked its way out of Wilder’s mind.

A tall man with hair as black as the stone walls surrounding them came in, his brow knit and eyes filled with concern. “Hermes?”

“Hey, big man,” Hermes whispered. His voice still sounded scraped raw, which Wilder supposed wasn’t shocking. He’d absorbed poison, and then gotten sick repeatedly.

But it was concerning that it wasn’t getting better.

Wilder remembered vividly watching as Hermes’s fist reddened, blistered, and then immediately healed when he’d gotten his hand close to the flames of Wilder’s anger.

He tried not to imagine if, even with the chance to concentrate like that in a real fight, Typhon would react the same way, and simply heal. He’d thrown fireballs and the monster had shaken it off. That other skill, the ability he thought of as “going nuclear,” was the only thing he had left. If that didn’t work, Wilder suspected he’d be dead in a week.

If that long.

The man laid a very paternal hand on Hermes’s head, expression sad. “How do you feel?”

“How do I look?” The man didn’t answer, only grimaced, so Hermes gave a broken, ragged chuckle and nodded. “Yeah, about like that, then.”

With a glance behind him at Lysandros, and—oh. Seeing the two of them together made it obvious enough. This man was Lysandros’s father.

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