If it were possible for steam to pour out his ears, I was absolutely positive it would happen right about now. “Guards!” he barked. “Take them to the dungeons.”
“The dungeons? But—” Before Tuck could finish, a guard yanked her backward, half carrying her twisting form toward the door. “You can’t do this to them! I don’t know where the pendant is—I dropped it!”
“Perhaps your mother would have believed your lies, but I’m not soft like she was. Take them away,” the earl said again, and the guards marched the rest of us out of the hall. Sprout and Mac look scared out of their minds, their eyes wide as they wore identical masks of terror, but there wasn’t much I could do to reassure them.
Tuck continued to kick and scream the entire way into the dungeons, but the guards didn’t pay her much attention as they artfully dodged her flailing limbs. Somehow I got the feeling this wasn’t exactly the first time she’d been down here, and that only made my hatred for the earl burn hotter. Who locked his own daughter up? No wonder she’d run away.
The guards shoved Mac and Sprout into a cell near the stairs, but they led Tuck and me deep into the darkness, with only torches to light our way. It felt unnatural down here, almost like the Underworld—but unlike the Underworld, my powers worked just fine in the earl’s dungeon. It was a maze to the center, where a high-security cell awaited us, complete with four guards and a stone door operated by some sort of pulley system. No way anyone mortal could knock them in.
The lead guard pushed me into the cell first, and the others threw Tuck down onto a pile of hay before the door dropped, shaking the walls around us and effectively sealing us inside.
“Well,” I said, leaning up against the nearest wall. “This is inconvenient.”
Without warning, Tuck launched herself at me, pounding her fists into my chest. “Who—the hell—are you?”
I stood still, letting her get out her anger and frustration and worry and whatever else she was feeling. Didn’t hurt me one bit, and if it made her feel better, brilliant. “I already told you. I’m Hermes. Sometimes called Mercury, especially in Rome.”
“I don’t know who that is.” With one final punch, she went limp, barely able to keep standing. I wrapped my arms around her before she could fall.
“I’m a god,” I said. No need to dance around it. “One of the twelve Olympians. Well, er, fifteen now. Bit of a long story.”
She shook her head wearily, and I lowered her down onto the ground. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “There’s only one god.”
Only one? I frowned. “No, there’s definitely more. Zeus, my father, he’s head of the council, but—”
“There’s only one. Or are you pagan?”
I blinked. Was she serious? “You really have no idea who I am or how many gods there are?”
“I rather thought it was all just a matter of opinion,” she said. “I mean, here you have one god. Some people say more than one. Some people say there isn’t any god, though how they could possibly believe that and live in this world…” She shook her head. “Do you really think you’re a god?”
“I really am a god.” This was going to get very old very fast if she kept it up. “I’ve been to plenty of places where the people don’t know who I am, but we’re not that far from Greece, where the religion centered around our best-known identities started.”
“Greece?” She frowned. Did she even know where—or what—Greece was? Before I could ask, she changed the subject, confirming my suspicions. “How can you possibly be a god and look so—normal?”
I shrugged. “We can change our appearance at will, and I like blending in, I suppose. Let me prove it to you. Hold out your hand.”
She immediately clasped them behind her back. “If you’re going to show me magic or—something—”
“You’ve already seen what I can do,” I said with a small smile. “I won’t hurt you. The opposite, I promise. Just hold out your hand.”
Tuck eyed me for a long moment, and even though we were in a darkened cell with only a single torch for light, her eyes were as blue as ever. Reluctantly she offered me her palm, and I set my hand over hers. My skin tingled where we touched, and exhaling slowly, I willed the pendant back from nothing. It arrived in her hand, heavy and warm, and she gasped.
“How did you…?” She stared at me, stunned, and without warning, she kissed me on the mouth. “James.”
My entire body grew hot. “It’s nothing,” I mumbled. “Just a trick. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth sooner. It’s sort of…you know. Not something you go around bragging about.”
She snorted, her lips still half an inch in front of mine. “If I were a goddess, I’d run around the world telling everyone I met. To have that kind of power…”
“It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know. I might be powerful, but there are loads of others even more powerful than I am.”
“A frightening thought,” she said with a small, distant smile. “Still, for even a fraction of that…for some sort of control…”
I hesitated. It clearly wasn’t something she wanted to talk about, but I had to know. “Why did you run away?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She made a vague gesture that reminded me all too much of the earl. Her father. “I was trapped here. Never had any freedom. My only friend was my mother, and when she died, I didn’t want to stay here anymore. I didn’t want to be under his thumb. He tried to marry me off, you know, to a neighboring lord. In exchange for land. Land.” She shook her head, as if that were the most insulting, preposterous thing she’d ever heard. “Like he doesn’t have enough of it already. So I ran. Met the others in the village, and the four of us took off together.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Most of us are tied to our lives one way or the other. You’re lucky you had the option of running.”
“We all have the option of running,” she said. “It’s just a matter of whether or not you’re brave enough to do it. It isn’t just running, you know. You have to change yourself completely. Become the person you need to be in order to survive. It isn’t easy, but it has to be done. That’s the only way you can choose your own life, you know?”