Page 19 of The New Gods

Dagger in hand.

A god, clad in golden armor, smiling at me. “Well done, Orestes.”

Shutting my eyes, I willed myself from that scene to the present.

“Orestes?” Paris’s voice had me opening my eyes. He stood at the top of the stairs, looking more tired than I’d ever seen him before.

And I’d been there when Troy fell.

“We’re up here.” He turned his back on me, just as the voice whispered again.“Murderer.”

Putting one foot in front of another, I climbed the stairs and made my way toward the others. It had been many years since all five of us had been together, but I could pick out each person by only the rise and fall of their voices.

“I don’t understand why we’re discussing this at all. If there is even the slightest chance of finding the last four pieces.” Achilles’ voice, though loud, was calm. Forever a general.

“We don’t know where they all are,” Hector interrupted. He still spoke like the king he was supposed to have been. Except, he would never have been a dictator. Had Hector ruled Troy, he would have invented democracy before the rest of Greece.

“I’m not murdering a woman on the off chance she’ll discover something that’s been hidden for two-hundred-thousand years.” I could tell from his tone, no argument would move Hector.

“Murderer.”The voice was like the wind that buffeted this cottage. One minute silent, the next, all I could hear.

There was no need to knock. I walked inside the study. Neither Hector’s nor Achilles’ expression changed.

“What do you think?” Achilles didn’t pretend I hadn’t heard them.

“One piece?” But that was one piece less that protected the world from the gods. “I might agree with you.”

“Murderer!”The furious voice roared, knocking me out of the present. My mother lay sightless, a pool of blood growing beneath her body, and all I could hear was thedrip, drip, dripof the blood rolling off the dagger in my hand.

“Orestes.” Paris touched my shoulder, wrenching me from one reality to another.

My three friends stared at me. The knowledge of my eternal punishment evident in their white lips and crossed arms.

“I’m fine.” It was a blatant lie, but this hell? I deserved it. And as much as the voices tortured me, reminding me I’d committed the ultimate crime, I wanted the pain.

Needed it.

The only thing the horror of those moments could match was my continued guilt.

“I’m fine.”

“And you agree with me.” To Achilles, that was what mattered. The task. The mission.

A phone chimed and the general sighed, withdrawing it. He scoffed at whatever he read. “Why is Pollux messaging me when he’s twenty feet away?”

“Because I’m fixing the house, you fucking asshole!” Pollux yelled. With gods—humor?

“He’s been acting strange for days,” Achilles grumbled.

“He’s become more tolerable,” Paris murmured.

Now, I was worried. In our group, we were generally split among the same lines by which we fought that long ago war. Achilles and Pollux. Paris and Hector. Like with all things, I vacillated between the two sides, but more often, fell in line with Hector and Paris.

I couldn’t with this, though. There was more at stake than just the old gods destroying us if they were freed.

“I’m with Achilles,” I stated. “No one can find the seal.”

They’d wipe this entire mortal plain, and maybe even the spiritual one, to ensure no one ever challenged them again.

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