After meeting Niko on the beach, my son had talked of nothing else but the man with dark green eyes who had ruined his competition with his unnecessary rescue. I should have expected that he would demand a visit to the museum, but somehow it still came as a surprise. As always, I found the request impossible to deny.    

“I saw him in the rocks, spying on us,” Thero had said quietly as Cayden ran ahead through the forest towards the Sanctuary of the Great Gods.

“Who?” I hadn’t been listening to her, busy watching Cayden as he jumped over tree roots and rocks.

“The mortal… I saw him earlier today.”

“Spying?” I frowned. What could he have overheard? Was he one of Hera’s spies?

“It was an accident, I am sure,” Thero soothed me. “He seemed curious more than anything. I sent him running when I spotted him,” she concluded with a wink.

“But the museum? Why would Cayden be interested in going there?”

Thero looked contrite for only a moment before she confessed, “I take him there sometimes when the crowds are smaller, to show him his ancestry…” Her voice trailed away and I detected something in her eyes I did not expect.

“Are you homesick, Thero?”

My son’s nurse squared her shoulders and glared up at me. “I am no such thing,” she snapped. “But your son should not grow up knowing nothing about himself.”

“What do you tell him?”

“Nothing that would arouse any suspicion. I do not tell him that the statue that gives this island its fame is dedicated to his sister…”

“Enough,” I interrupted her. “This is a foolish idea. You should have told me.”

“Told you what? That I was educating your child because you refuse to do so?” Thero’s accusation was clear, but my patience had run thin. I did not like this arrangement any more than she did.

“I said enough!”  

Thero closed her mouth and folded her arms over her chest, but her pale eyes still burned defiantly into mine.

“We will address this later,” I said through gritted teeth as I ducked under an oak branch and stepped through the barrier that protected my child and the defiant goddess who stared at me. I could feel her eyes burning into my back, but her lectures had as little effect on me now as they had when I was a child in her care.

I jogged to catch up with my son and found him walking along the edge of one of the ruined temples. I ached to tell him of his birthright—to tell him that he was the son of immortals. That he would one day ascend to Olympus and be welcomed among the gods, his brothers and sisters, his uncles and his grandfather. They would love him as I did.

I plucked my son off the fallen stones and tucked my squealing, wriggling boy under my arm like a piglet and marched towards the museum courtyard.

The museum was still and had just opened for the afternoon. I set Cayden down and laid a finger on my lips to try and quiet him.

“You mustn’t scare him,” I said and my son smiled at me and did as he was told, even going so far as to creep carefully across the courtyard before breaking into a run so that he could jump through the doorway and into the shade of the building.

“Niko!”

He was far too interested in this mortal, as was Thero. Niko had gotten past the barrier that she had laid over the grove she inhabited with my son, and I still wasn’t sure what that meant. Perhaps if I spoke to him, I would be able to discover his secret. If he were in the thrall of a goddess, I would know immediately. But if it were something more insidious, it might take me some time to discover. I stood in the doorway, watching the mortal interact with my son; but when his dark green eyes slid to mine, as though he could feel me watching him, I felt something entirely different shudder up my spine.

It wasn’t until I was standing in front of him, this mortal who dared to meet my gaze without flinching, that I knew there was something different about him. His eyes were clear and bright, with no trace of the control of any goddess in them. His smooth skin was tanned and healthy, a native of the island, to be sure, and I could still smell the salt of the ocean in his hair from that morning. He passed me a museum brochure, and I made sure that our fingers touched—if he was an enemy in disguise, I would have felt it in an instant. But instead of the warning I was expecting, a flare of heat trembled up my arm. I almost dropped the brochure but recovered quickly enough that he didn’t notice. He had felt something too; the brief flash of surprise in his green eyes was enough to give it away.

Unaware that anything had happened, Cayden tugged at my hand and pulled me in the direction of the exhibits. I followed until he dropped my hand and ran ahead towards the statue of Nike.

“Papá! Hurry!”

My son’s excited voice echoed in the empty museum, but the space was small enough that I could let him run ahead without worrying.

My father talked about how he’d felt the first time he’d touched his spark—that it would be different for each of us, and that it would change us forever—the hope of that touch… That completion. But what I’d just felt wasn’t new to me. I had felt it before, with Cayden’s father. It had happened much the same way, a quick brush of my hand against his arm.

I felt his approach before I heard his footsteps, something that vibrated up through the soles of my feet and into my spine.

“Hey, wait up,” Niko said as he appeared at my elbow. “If I’m going to show you through the museum, I should know your name.” He smiled at his own boldness, and for a moment, I forgot my confusion and smiled back.

“Andreas,” I said after a moment. It would do, for now.

“Andreas,” he repeated. “Is this your first time in the museum?”

I stifled the urge to laugh at him and nodded instead. “It’s all the same with these small museums though, isn’t it? The same replica vases, the same replica statues, over and over just in case the tourists didn’t see Agamemnon’s gold death mask in Athens, or Milo’s Venus in the Louvre…”

“It is,” he said with a shrug, and now I allowed myself to chuckle. I hadn’t expected him to agree with me.

“The Nike is why people come to Samothrace. They’ve seen her in the Louvre, or in textbooks, but they come here to see her birthplace,” Niko said as we approached the statue. “She represents much more to this island, and the temple sanctuary, than we can guess… and that’s all we’re really doing…”

“Guessing?”

“Obviously. It’s not like any of us were there or knew what went on in the marketplaces. We got lucky with Pompeii…”

“Lucky?” I snorted.

“Well, they weren’t so lucky, but they’re dead so they don’t get to complain.”

I shook my head. “Archaeologists are all the same,” I muttered.

“I’m not an archaeologist,” Niko replied with a smile. “My father is. I just work here when I come home for the summer.”

“Some of your father’s love for the ancient world must have rubbed off on you,” I said.

Niko shrugged in reply and we stood in silence in front of the statue. Niko was allowing me time to appreciate the fine lines of the carved drapery and the intricacy of the detail in the wings of this ancient battle angel. My daughter.

This statue had been the product of a love affair. Nike had admired the sculptor’s work and grieved with him when he was at his poorest and could not find a patron. He had fallen into drink and depression, and in her despair at losing so fine an artist she had come to him in a vision and this statue was the result. It did not take a scholar to see that the marble curves had been carved by the hand of a lover, a worshipper, and it made my heart ache to know she had felt the same pain I did over the love of a mortal.

I hadn’t spoken to her in eons, literal eons. When the goddesses had been driven out of Olympus, Nike had taken her own path and disappeared into the world. I hadn’t looked for her, but I had just assumed she would rather not be found. I had been a terrible father to her, but I was trying to rectify those mistakes with Cayden. Even if she never saw the change Hera’s curse had wrought in me, it was enough that I knew it was possible to take it all back.

To start over.

“Niko!” Cayden’s happy shout sounded louder than it should have and I turned a stern eye towards my son as he ran over, but the boy ignored me. He only had eyes for Niko. I watched with a tightening feeling in my chest as Cayden grabbed Niko’s hand and dragged him over to the statue to ask him questions and tell Niko what he knew about the items in the museum—how this coin was from Nemea where Hercules killed the lion with his bare hands, and how that vase showed the nine Muses.

“And this one looks just like my Papá!”

Panic flashed through me and my eyes darted to Niko, but he was laughing at Cayden’s pronouncement. “You’re right, he kind of does. But this is Ares, the god of war,” Niko said and then lowered his voice, knowing I could still hear him in the empty museum, “and your Papa is much more handsome.”

Cayden nodded solemnly, and I was thankful for a moment that even in this place, surrounded by antiquity and the weight of history, that such a simple pronouncement could be pushed away as a childish fiction.

Feeling a little more protected by that assertion I walked up behind them and pretended to study the vase very carefully. “Do you really believe he looks like me, Cayden?”

“Oh, yes, Papá,” he said.

“Ares is very ferocious, do you think your papá could be like that?” I teased him.

Cayden looked at the vase thoughtfully and then up at me. “Thero says so,” he replied simply.

Niko laughed. “Maybe we should give your papá a sword and see if he can be Ares,” he said with a smile.

Skatá.

Giving me a sword would be a bad idea. Especially in front of a mortal. Especially in this place where my memories of the old feasts, sacrifices, and devotions weighed so heavily.  

“Oh, no,” I said hastily.

“Are you sure? We have helmets, swords, and shields for the kids who want to play Hoplites in the courtyard. I used to do it all the time when I was a kid. What do you think, Cayden? Do you want to show your papá how to be a proper Greek soldier?”

Cayden’s hesitation was evident, and I was reminded instantly of what Thero had said about him being more like Julio than me. It was true; I could see it in his deep blue eyes. Julio had been a soldier, and a brave one, but he had been a medic, and his experience with combat was vastly different… I nodded slightly, and Cayden’s eyes lit up. He put his hand in Niko’s and allowed himself to be led to a corner where red cloaks were hung on hooks next to shining metal helmets that were made specifically for little heads.

Niko settled a helmet on Cayden’s dark curls and swept one of the red cloaks over his shoulders before handing him a spear. Cayden looked a little unsure of himself, but my heart beat faster at the sight of him standing there in the dusty light of the museum.

“Let’s go outside, I’ll show you how to use it,” Niko said encouragingly. Cayden beamed at me and then ran to follow Niko. His little helmet clanked softly and the red cloak spread out behind him as he hurried to catch up.

I followed more slowly, and nodded to the older gentleman, Stelios, who usually tended the museum. He nodded vaguely and went back to his ledger. I’d looked different the last time I’d come here, and he had been a much younger man, so he couldn’t be blamed for not recognizing me.  

I leaned against the doorframe, listening to the older man sigh behind me as my son’s shouts and Niko’s commands filled the courtyard.

Watching them together stirred something inside me—something that felt like guilt. Julio would never be able to do this, never be able to hold our son or hear his laughter. Maybe one day I’d take Cayden to the Underworld and introduce them… but it would have to wait until he could understand what was happening, and until I could find the strength to bear the weight of the sorrow that would come with it.

Thero was standing at the edge of the courtyard, and I raised my hand in greeting. She acknowledged me briefly, clearly still angry with me. Let her be angry. I had more on my mind than anything as petty as our argument, or Thero’s attempted disobedience. I would address that when I returned.

With Niko and Cayden distracted by their shouting and spear-waving, and Thero close by, I willed myself to Olympus and the cool marble halls of the gods. I needed to think, and I needed to speak to my uncle.