“No, you’re here because your plane is broken and your Omega is in the ocean.” He said it with a cheerfulness that tore a growl from my chest. The dark-haired woman at his side shifted away from me, but Lysander didn’t flinch. “I understand the urgency. But the Strait belongs to Orion Maris. Sending a House Zeus Alpha into Poseidon’s waters on a borrowed boat would be a very entertaining way to start a war. Entertaining for me, at least. Less so for you.”
“Alexander.” Helena stepped between us. Her hand found my arm, and her grip beneath the gentle touch was iron. “Go to the terrace. Get some air.”
“I don’t need air.”
“You need to stop sparking before you set the vineyards on fire.” Her voice dropped low. “You are not helping Andie by throwing a fit. Give me twenty minutes. I’ll handle the arrangements.”
The lightning hissed between my fingers. Behind Helena, Lysander watched us with the bright-eyed attention of a man witnessing a drama he hadn’t had to arrange.
I looked past them both, through the foyer and the open doors at the far end. The Strait was visible from here. A dark blue line between the headlands, calm and indifferent beneath the afternoon sun.
Andromeda was out there.
“Twenty minutes,” I said.
Helena turned to Lysander with a shift in posture that was almost audible. The grieving mother vanished behind the House Hera diplomat. “Lysander, I need a secure communication line, a damage report on the aircraft, and a guest room that doesn’t share a wall with anything flammable.”
“My dear Helena, you wound me. Everything in this house is fireproof.” He offered his arm. “The wine cellars alone could survive a volcanic eruption. Come. Let me show you what Dionysus hospitality actually looks like.”
They disappeared into the house. The two women followed, the dark-haired one glancing back at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
I walked to the terrace. It was wide and stone-paved, shaded by a pergola heavy with grapevines. I gripped the stone railing and closed my eyes. The lightning bled from my hands into the volcanic rock, dissipating harmlessly into the earth.
I tried to think. Not react, not burn, not pour my power into the sky until the Mediterranean boiled. Think. The way Nikos would tell me to think if he were here. But every time I reached for strategy, I saw her instead. Standing in the open doorway of the plane with the wind tearing at her hair. Her eyes, clear and certain. The calm in her voice when she said his name and stepped into the air.
“He saved me before. Why not now?”
The words kept replaying. She hadn’t been raving. She hadn’t been curse-driven or delusional. She’d been lucid and deliberate, and she’d chosen the ocean over me. Over House Zeus. Over every promise and every sacrifice and every compromise I’d made to keep her safe.
I’d failed. The collar had failed. The Elara arrangement had failed before it began. Every strategy I’d deployed had either poisoned her further or driven her closer to the one Alpha who could offer what I couldn’t. Silence. Distance from me.
The railing was warm under my palms. Below, the vineyard workers moved between the rows, their voices carrying in the still air. Ordinary people doing ordinary work, untouched by the divine mess that had deposited a House Zeus Alpha on their terrace.
“You look like a man who has run out of plans.”
I opened my eyes. Julian Solaris stood at the archway that led back into the house. His blond hair was pulled back, and his pale blue suit caught the Sicilian light. His eyes shifted between blue and gold, too knowing, too clever.
“How did you get here, Julian?”
“The Council monitors significant atmospheric events in the Mediterranean.” He stepped onto the terrace. “A storm of that magnitude required attention. I was dispatched from Rome.”
“Dispatched. Not summoned. Not asked.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You came here on your own initiative.”
“I came because you need to hear something before you do whatever you’re planning to do next.” He stopped at a careful distance, close enough for conversation, far enough to be outsidethe range of an impulsive discharge. “And because I owe you that much, after Norway.”
That stopped me. I’d expected deflection, the usual Council doublespeak about neutrality and mandate. Not an admission.
“Norway,” I said. “Where you put me in a room with Orion Maris and let him take my measure.”
“Where I invited two representatives of major Houses to discuss the political landscape. Yes.” Julian’s tone was even, but something shifted behind his eyes. Not guilt. Something adjacent to it. “I didn’t anticipate this outcome, Alexander. I won’t pretend otherwise, but I also won’t pretend the meeting was a mistake. The Council needed to understand where House Poseidon stood.”
“And now you understand. He’s on his yacht in the Strait of Messina, and he has my mate.”
“Which is precisely the problem.” Julian clasped his hands behind his back. “Andromeda jumped from a House Zeus aircraft without coercion. No Poseidon vessel was observed at the scene. The Italian authorities have classified it as a passenger emergency in severe weather. Orion chose the most volatile stretch of water in the Mediterranean to stage his storm. Any investigation will blame the geography.”
“So the Council does nothing.”
“The Council cannot authorize intervention in Poseidon’s domain without a real reason. Poseidon has trade alliances with too many Houses that depend on his shipping network. And if you tried to take it to a vote, it would fail before it reached the floor.”