Page 60 of Wildfire

With a groan, Lysandros turned to rejoin his boyfriend, but when Hermes caught Wilder’s eye, the man was smiling.

Fair Trade

Wilder was not the person who gave keynote addresses. Not that he expected to have to do so in this case either, but he had realized the night before the fake graduation that he didn’t even know what he was going to say.

As they had wrapped up their last training session, someone had jokingly asked if he was going to give the “Independence Day” speech, which had led to laughter all around, and then a debate about two actors named Bill, and whether Wilder was better looking than both of them anyway.

He didn’t know much about any actors, but he decided to take it as a compliment that the consensus was that yes, he was.

“It’s the fireball,” a girl had observed as the students had headed out in a group. “That much power is seriously sexy.”

Wilder thought if that were true, everyone would think that Hermes was the sexiest man in the room. Well, when he was himself, and not struggling to regain anything resembling his normal abilities.

He had seemed peppier over the course of the afternoon, and Wilder hoped that being around so many people was helping. The man couldn’t be more extroverted if he tried.

It was one of Wilder’s problems. He found extroverts attractive, they returned the feeling, then they got to know him and realized he was deeply boring. He’d prefer to stay home with Melly, a book, and a cup of tea than go clubbing most nights.

Unless he was looking for a new extrovert to charm, or as with the night he’d run into Hermes at the club, unless he was depressed and lonely, and looking to impress someone.

And get laid.

Which of course, he had. It just hadn’t turned out to be a silent, furtive thing where he ignored the guy forever afterward.

Hermes practically bounced his way over, shield still attached to his arm, and struck a pose in front of Wilder. “Do I look hot?”

It was an opening for Wilder to say something snarky about how he was the hot one, or something silly about fireballs, but in that moment, he decided he was done with that.

Well, for now. They could get back to snarky nonsense when Typhon had been defeated or killed. For now, since Wilder didn’t even know that he was going to live through the next twenty-four hours, he didn’t feel like being snarky or irreverent.

He stepped in close to Hermes, wrapping his fingers around the shell of his shield and leaning in to press a soft kiss to his lips. “You do.”

And with that, they both forgot about fire puns... and about the speech Wilder was supposed to give the next afternoon.

So when he stood in front of the students, looking out at the sea of faces—so familiar, so nervous, and so very young—he had no idea where to start. He wasn’t a natural speaker. People liked what he could do; he’d never been popular for his pretty words. In fact, many people decided after speaking to him that they would prefer to never do so again.

Still, he didn’t need to say anything impressive. He just needed to fill a role, and to fill time. He was glad parents hadn’t been invited to see him make a fool of himself.

“I think you’re all out of your minds for showing up here today,” he said into the microphone, bluntly as ever. “But I understand it. And I’d like to think it isn’t all because you think you’re going to impress the world today. Maybe you didn’t know, or didn’t even like Matthew, and Rebekah, and Marco. Goodness knows Marco spent enough time questioning my knowledge in class.”

A couple of the kids from the classes Marco had been in chuckled, but everyone else just kept staring at him, intent, like he had something meaningful to say. It was horrible.

“I’m going to be honest with you. If I could end this here and now without another fight, I would. I talked to Ares in my kitchen last week, and let me tell you, that was a whole new level of surreal.” He just barely stopped himself from going into a tangent about how he’d made the god of war half a dozen eggs, and the man had doused them in hot sauce. “And I understand his family doesn’t respect him terribly much, but he said something to me that night that made me think they should.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Hermes move, and braced himself for Typhon to appear like a stage magician, but nothing happened. So he shook himself and went on. “He said conflicts are supposed to end.” It was a paraphrase that maybe Ares hadn’t intended, but it was what Wilder had felt in the words. “And right now, that’s our purpose. Maybe we can’t end the whole war, but this is our part. This is where Banneker College stands up and says not here. Not our people. Not our school. It ends, here.”

“That’s very sweet, Professor,” the newly familiar voice of Typhon said, loud, amused, and accompanied by a slow clap. Maybe the man had been trapped away from the world for millennia, but he certainly made the entrance of a modern villain. He gave Wilder a big smile. “I tell you what, I’ll surrender. Leave your school alone forever.”

“If we all agree to lie down and die?” one of the younger students asked, taking an attack stance and clearly trying to draw attention to himself.

Right, that was what they were supposed to be doing. Wilder was supposed to be stoking the internal fire, getting ready for—

“All you have to do is turn yourself over, and I’ll never come back to your precious school,” Typhon said. “It’s a fair trade, isn’t it? The most powerful mage sacrifices himself to the cause, to feed the great titan and win the war against Olympus, and Cronus accepts that sacrifice in the spirit of camaraderie, and takes this school under his protection.”

And that statement stopped Wilder right in his tracks, because... wasn’t it a fair trade?

Faith for the Faithless

Hermes watched in horror as he realized that Wilder was actually considering the trade. To save his students, for the greater good, he might actually hand himself over to Typhon. To Cronus. Because he didn’t understand that there was nothing worth that sacrifice.

---