Page 57 of Wildfire

“You cannot just kill an immortal creature. The cow, fine, but it didn’t have ichor in its veins. It couldn’t fight back. You need someone with power that’s destructive on a cellular level to take down a titan. Father, with his lightning—but he’s busy with Cronus—”

“Busy hiding,” Hermes interrupted. He could see it all laid out—she was going to try and convince Wilder he didn’t have a choice in this, but there were plenty of immortals powerful enough to fill in for him. “What about Prometheus?”

“Prometheus isn’t a warrior. I trust Wilder,” Athena argued.

Hermes had the sharp desire to shove her through a window. He didn’t give a damn how she wanted this to go.

“I’m only saying there areoptions,” Hermes hissed. “You don’t have to do this.” The last, he said to Wilder, whose brow had furrowed.

“Prometheus?” Wilder echoed after a moment.

Biting his lip, Hermes nodded. “Titan god of fire. Gave humans magic. He could kill Typhon.”

“He’s a pacifist.” Athena spat the word like she was talking about a pile of rotting fish.

“Not one who’d let innocent humans die at the hands of a monster, Athena.”

While Hermes and Athena argued, Wilder lowered himself onto a stool. His hands curled around both sides of his coffee mug, and his quiet sigh brought Hermes up short. He, then Athena, both turned toward the professor, who sat staring into his coffee mug.

“I think I met him. He’s in New York?”

Hermes nodded. “Yeah. He’s taken up with a vampire hunt in the city. You were in New York?”

“Visiting my ex’s family over the holiday,” Wilder explained.

A soft purr filled Hermes’s ears, and he looked down to see Melly winding around Wilder’s ankles, pressing in like she could tell he needed the support. It didn’t matter if a cat was better at seeing that than Hermes was; he pushed in toward the island and took up on Wilder’s side.

“He said fire was the first gift—the first sort of magic. I thought he was just talking out of his ass. Seemed like just another homeless guy, you know?”

“Did he say anything else?” Athena asked, her dark eyes intent. Hermes glared at her.

Wilder sighed. “That I could do great things with it—with fire.”

Athena spread her arms wide. “He’s got the gift of prophecy.”

With a scoff, Hermes rolled his eyes so hard they threatened to pop out. “Comeon. That is the vaguest, most trivial ‘prophecy’ anyone has ever passed. It’s the kind of thing you tell a mopey guy in Central Park strolling around playing with his own fireballs. Especially if you’re a bleeding-heart titan like Prometheus.”

“That’s how propheciesare,” Athena snipped back.

And Hermes would’ve jumped right back into the fray, but Wilder’s hand pressed down on his wrist on the countertop, and Hermes’s eyes snapped to his.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a prophecy or not,” Wilder said softly. “I can do this.”

“I know you can,” Hermes insisted. “But you don’thaveto.”

Wilder’s smile then was small, sad, and self-effacing. “I know, but the students are in danger, and I can do something. I don’t know if I want immortality, but I do know that my life, or death, isn’t worth more than the people Typhon has already hurt—it’s not worth more than the lives he will take.”

Hermes frowned. What Wilder didn’t understand was that, to Hermes, his life was worth everything.

“I’ll do it,” Wilder said to Athena, his expression set and unafraid. “What’s the plan?”

Take a Stand

After he agreed to help, Dean Woods became insufferable. Was this how people saw him? Arrogant and haughty and determined that not only should he always have his way, but that any other option was unthinkable?

It made him want to slap himself.

Instead, he stood and listened to her talk about her plan, ate the brownies Hermes shoved at him, and drank the coffee he kept refilling. Something about feeling protective gave Hermes the urge to feed him, it seemed.

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