When Hermes left, so did his lightness, and I was painfully reminded of my furor that might have lessened but not disappeared. I still felt it smoldering in the pit of my stomach - it wasn't strong enough to overtake me anymore, but I'd felt it often enough to know that I couldn't ignore it either. And I didn't want it to return, not while Emma was still here, not while there was still something to be salvaged. I clenched my abs in an effort to quell the fire. Pointless. I'd have to find a punching bag later, or go back to Mariscal. Right now I had other things to worry about - like why the hell Emma had chosen to stay even though she was scared out of her mind.

"He seems… nice," Emma said softly. She was still a little timid, but she didn't seem nervous or apprehensive anymore now that the storm had ostensibly passed.

I looked up. "Oh, sure. He is. I consider him my best friend," I said, more casually than I felt, and sat down, gesturing for her to take a seat either next to me or on the other sofa. She chose the latter.

"Mm." She considered that for a moment. "Anyway, you were saying..."

I swallowed. Of course she'd want to talk about it. Here it goes, no avoiding it, I'd better just get it over with. Yes, Emma, I love you, I love you, I can't help but love you.

"I mean, that's part of what I read online, the stories about you and her."

Oh.

"About... Aphro— Aphro-dye-tee. Is that how you pronounce it?"

I opened my mouth, but she shook her head dismissively.

"Whatever. But I thought... I guess it seemed like you were together for just a little while, had all those children…" Her eyes widened slightly. "And then each went your own way, or something."

Were we going to skip over the I-love-you part? I didn't know if I minded that. But I wouldn't enjoy talking about my daunting former lover, either. That didn't mean I was going to lie. "Aphrodite and I have always been complicated," I said matter-of-factly. I finally released my abs - I trusted myself enough to relax. For now.

"Complicated." She paused. "That's usually code for not having broken up."

I raised an eyebrow. "Are you accusing me of infidelity, Emma?"

She froze. "No!" she said, her voice cracking.

Shit. I did it again. I should have realized that even if I had understood why our emotions had gone completely haywire, and even if I had mostly come back from that, that didn't necessarily apply to her. She might still be reeling from that whirlwind of anger and fear. And I still didn't even know what had led her to come here, to come back to me, in the first place, I didn't know what her week of radio silence meant. I didn't know if she even cared about any supposed infidelity, or if maybe we were done. If maybe Emma and I weren't fated after all. If maybe I'd been wrong again. It would hardly be the first time.

I slid off the sofa, landing on my knees next to her, took her hand and rested my forehead on it. Her skin was still tight, she didn't understand what I was doing - and of course she wouldn't. I had just gone from sounding like I'd threatened her to sitting at her feet like a beggar, I had just induced my fury in her in a way that I'd never, ever wanted to and then cracked jokes with my brother. No wonder she was confused. No wonder she was still scared.

"I'm so sorry, Emma," I mumbled.

She didn't move. She didn't even seem to breathe.

"I didn't mean any of it," I said and looked up to meet her eyes.

She avoided my glance and pulled her hand back. My hand fell onto her lap. "But you did, didn't you?" she then asked in a small voice. "You did mean it."

I groaned and buried my face in the space between the cushion and her leg. "Yes, no, I don't know," I grumbled incomprehensibly into the cushion. I lifted my head and leaned back onto my heels. She was right, of course. I had meant it. I just hadn't meant to say it.

"I'm so sorry," I repeated softly.

She bit her lip, still didn't meet my eyes. A few times it was as if she wanted to say something - she opened her mouth ever so slightly, then closed it - but nothing came out of her and she just kept staring at the floor.

I took her hand again. She let me.

"Emma, Aphrodite and I are done, I swear," I said.

She looked at me now from the corner of a watery eye. "How am I supposed to believe anything you say?" she asked. "The myths say that you're a cheat and a… a two-faced liar."

Those words sounded familiar. They weren't her own. I started to smile, and I suddenly realized that the heat in my stomach had started to wither. "Ah, good old Homer."

Confusion crossed her face. "What?" she asked warily.

"My father didn't like me very much back in the day," I explained, "and Homer capitalized on that. That's what you read, isn't it? Homer quoting Zeus?"

"I, uh, I think so."

"He was exaggerating. Now, Emma, I swear on Styx that I have not been romantically or sexually involved with Aphrodite since the Christian year of 1362," I said solemnly.

She looked at me blankly.

I frowned. Did she not know about Stygian oaths? Had she done her research so selectively that she knew about Zeus's supposed quotes in the Iliad and about all my alleged children, but not a single thing about the parts that actually mattered? "Styx is the river that leads to Hades."

Still no response. It was almost amusing.

"An oath on Styx is binding," I clarified.

She nodded slowly. "Binding how? Would you… die?"

I shook my head. "Much worse. I'd have to drink from Styx, which would drive me to madness, then live insane and mute stretched out in Tartaros for nine human years, and finally be incarcerated for another seventy-two years."

"What the f—?" she said after a moment of silence and laughed involuntarily. "That doesn't sound real. Has that ever happened to you?"

The left corner of my mouth went up in a crooked smile. "More than once. Not in the last six thousand years or so, though. It's not pretty." I let go of her hand, pulled my legs out and crossed them. "Don't go and abuse this knowledge, Emma, I'd rather not be baited into insanity."

She chuckled with me, but within seconds her face was serious again. "What happened in 1362?" she asked.

"Nothing much. It was just the last time Aphrodite and I slept together." I wasn't lying, was I? I wasn't lying about that. But I didn't have to tell her everything. I didn't have to tell her what Aphrodite had done since then, what she had done to Elisabetta and Claudine. To me. "We're just friends now, Emma." That was still not a lie. Despite her missteps, Aphrodite and I greatly respected each other. And I hadn't been innocent either - Aphrodite still hadn't forgiven me for having Adonis, the love of her life, killed out of jealousy. We were definitely complicated.

"Okay," she nodded in acceptance, though she still seemed cautious. "And, uh…" She bit her lip.

"Hm?"

She looked back at the floor and briefly rubbed the sofa's leather. "No, nothing. Never mind."

I almost took her hand again, almost told her she could tell me anything and ask me anything, but then it dawned on me that she might've been about to refer to my earlier confession - and I wasn't going to press her about that if I didn't have to. I wanted to unfold my legs and stand up, but there was one more thing.

"Does this mean you can forgive me?" I asked carefully, watching for any nuance in her expression.

"I…" She sat back a little, her knees drawn tightly together, and breathed in deeply before meeting my gaze. "I don't know, No— Noah," she said. "Even if I forgive you, I don't know if I can… forget about it."

I nodded slowly, but kept scrutinizing her. Her words and even her body language didn't quite match the energy she gave off. There was a calmness to her now. "Okay. We'll see if we get there," I said gently, and I meant it.

Her legs relaxed, then her torso, shoulders, face. She stared back at me through soft eyes. "Now what?"

"That's up to you, Emma," I said. "I'd love for you to stay. But I don't want you to feel like you have to." I looked down, licked my thumb, and rubbed a bit of ichor from my heel.

"I want to," she said, and I looked up. She looked as surprised as I was. "I think, uh, going home… would be worse."

Yeah, if you go home now, we don't stand a chance. "Okay," I said and stood up. I held out my hand and, when she took it, pulled her up. "Do you mind if I make lunch? I'm ravenous, I haven't eaten yet since getting home."

She smiled as she followed me into the kitchen after a moment of hesitation. "How are you always hungry?"

"Have you seen this body?" I protested.

Her eyes lingered on said body for a second - if I didn't know better I'd think she was checking me out, but no, she wouldn't, not after the fight we'd just had - before she replied. "But you're immortal. You don't need human food to survive, do you?"

I laughed as I opened the fridge. "No, but I do get hungry and I'll take pasta over ambrosia any day. You know, there are things that humans do better than gods. Do you want anything?"

She shook her head, leaning against the counter - closer to me than I'd thought she would be comfortable with - and watched me put together a quick sandwich. "What's ambrosia like?"

"Here," I said, and put a bowl of the honey-like substance in front of her.

She picked it up and peered at it. "Can I try some?"

"No!" I snatched it from her hands, and when she froze in surprise, very deliberately set it down. "Don't," I added in a softer tone.

"Why not?"

I resumed the construction of my sandwich. "It confers immortality on those who eat it."

"It's that simple?" she asked with a frown. "That's how immortality works? You just take a few bites of something?"

"Pretty much," I smiled, "but it wears off, so humans have to keep eating it. And eating human food negates its effects on those who weren't born immortal."

"Wow, that sucks," she said with a chuckle. "I don't think I could ever give pizza up. Or ramen."

I pretended to focus on cutting the bread much harder than I really had to. If she was staying, if she and I weren't over, if Emma really was the girl in Apollo's prophecy, then we'd eventually have to have this conversation. I already knew the outcome, of course - if the prophecy was correct this time around, she would eventually eat the ambrosia - but the outcome was all that Apollo had seen. He didn't know the road there any more than I did. That road was still a long one: at this point, there was not a chance in hell that Emma would want to spend eternity with me. I would be surprised if she even wanted to spend the night.

"What about alcohol? Does that affect you at all?" she asked.

I looked up and smiled in relief that she'd unwittingly changed the subject. "Only if I drink enough of it."

"A whole lot then."

"Yes."

A smile slowly grew on her face to match mine. That beautiful, vivacious smile of hers, the smile that pulled me out of the darkness. "Then what are you waiting for?"

She spent most of the afternoon asking questions - whether all those mythical creatures were real (centaurs, sphinxes and phoenixes yes, fairies and werewolves no, giants not in the modern sense of the word), if they still existed (most of them in hiding now, but unicorns had unfortunately long been extinct - that bit rendered her speechless for over a minute), if the Trojan War had actually happened (it had), if dead people really did go to the underworld.

"So what happens after you die?" she was asking now.

"Well, Hermes shows up if you're lucky but probably it's one of his children and..."

"No, you said that, but I mean... what do people see when they die? What do they feel?" In her eyes was the excitement and curiosity that I loved so much about her, but that I'd been missing since before I'd told her who I really was. I felt a glimmer of hope that maybe all was not lost, that maybe we could go back to how we had been in this new context of full honesty. Not full. Fuller. I couldn't be completely honest with her - there were things I would never be able to tell her.

I considered her question, frowning at my own incapability of answering it. "I... don't know, Emma."

"But you're a god. You've seen it all," she said decisively.

"I've never died, though. I have no idea what that's really like."

"Can't you go to the underworld and talk to the dead?"

"It's not that simple. That's Hades's domain, he hardly ever lets any of us in... and even so, most of the souls there barely remember living, let alone dying." I did visit the underworld, sometimes. Hades allowed me to see Elisabetta in Elysium every so often and tell her about my life and her descendants, but I never lingered and I'd only been to the Asphodel Meadows one time in the past few thousand years. It had been to visit Claudine, not long after she'd gone mad with lust and killed herself, and to see if death had done her any good. It had, she'd found peace, but she only remembered me after drinking blood from the bull I'd brought as a sacrifice that rendered her animate. The souls in the Asphodel Meadows were empty shells otherwise.

"That's... bleak," Emma said.

"Well, nobody said death is sunshine and rainbows."

"I assume sunshine and rainbows are also relatives of yours." She laughed in disbelief.

"Apollo or Helios and Iris, yes," I said matter-of-factly, almost businesslike.

"This whole conversation is making me reconsider everything," she said and rolled her eyes, but chuckled.

I poured another glass of Dionysus's wine for myself and regular wine for her. "I would imagine it does."

"What about technology? Is there a god of, I don't know, social media?"

And so the questions went on and on, well into the hours of the evening and the night - she had to rebuild her entire worldview and she seemed determined to do so in a single day. But all her questions were about the world around her, about ancient myths, about the other gods. She didn't ask a single question about me, and despite her interest, despite our almost-easy demeanor around each other, she didn't feel a bit closer to me than she had a week ago.