James frowned. “How often is Henry there with you?”
“All the time. I asked him to stay, and he did.”
“Can you touch him?” said James, and I nodded. “What about Milo?”
“He can. I can’t.”
“Right.” His frown deepened. “What have you been telling him?”
“What, I can’t have a private conversation with my husband without you butting in?”
James set his bottle aside and faced me. “Did you tell him where we’re going and what we’re doing?”
“Of course,” I said. “Well, no, I mean, I told him what we’re doing and that we’re going to Africa. I didn’t mention Zimbabwe specifically.”
“Good.” He brushed his fingers against mine, and I pulled away, folding my hands together and setting them in my lap. Friends or not, he’d intentionally hurt Henry all those years ago by having an affair with Persephone. While Henry might’ve been willing to forgive, he undoubtedly hadn’t forgotten, and I wasn’t about to give him any more of a reason to worry. “How has he been treating you? Has he said anything strange? Done anything that didn’t seem quite right?”
“What is this, twenty questions?” I leaned back in my seat, leaving my plate all but untouched. “It’s none of your business.”
“Yes, it is. We’ve never had a situation like this before. During the first war—obviously I wasn’t alive back then, but Walter—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Not when it had anything to do with Walter.
“You need to.” James’s voice was surprisingly kind. “It doesn’t matter who Walter is to you, all right? Forget about him. He’s not important right now.”
“He’s never been important.” As far as I was concerned, he never would be.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said James with a wry smile. “He is King of the Gods and head of the council, after all. We’re all his children. You know that.”
“So what, are you saying I’m stupid for not figuring it out sooner?” I said, and though James shook his head, I still felt like an idiot. He was right. He and Ava had told me that every younger member of the council was one of Walter’s children.
“You’re not stupid,” said James. “Not at all. Walter, he’s the stupid one for not stepping in to act like your father when Diana told us her mortal body had cancer. Your mother wanted him to,” he added. “So don’t be pissed off at her for this, all right? She fought hard to get him to show up. Phillip even volunteered to step up as your uncle, but in the end, Walter decided going through that alone would give you a better chance of passing the tests.”
“He’s a bastard,” I whispered, half expecting a bolt of lightning to tear through the sky and knock us out of the air.
“Most of the time,” agreed James. “He doesn’t understand emotions well, I guess. Wasn’t a great father to any of us, except for maybe Ava, and she was adopted. Can’t blame him too much, though. He didn’t exactly have the greatest role model either.”
That didn’t make up for abandoning me when he knew I’d needed him, but it did help to know that I was part of the rule rather than the exception. “Good to know I didn’t miss out on anything,” I mumbled.
James snorted. “Hardly. He makes Henry look like a clingy, doe-eyed schoolgirl.”
At least I knew Henry was a good father, and in the end, that was what mattered—that Milo had a dad. My childhood was already over. His was just beginning, and I wasn’t about to let him go through the same thing I’d endured. He would have a father, one who loved him, one he saw every day. I would make sure of it.
“We need to talk about your visions now,” said James quietly. “Will you let me go with you and see?”
“Go with me? It’s not like I travel, you know. I’m still here when I have them.”
“You can take someone with you if you want, though. Persephone did it with me sometimes.”
“I’m sure she did,” I said, rolling my eyes.
He groaned. “Not like that. I mean—you can slip into it now, right? You’ve gained control?”
After nine months of nothing else to do? “Yeah, I’ve got it down.”
He set his hand over mine again, and this time I didn’t pull away. “I don’t know how Persephone did it, exactly, but she described it to me as swimming through nectar. Instead of breaking the connection so she was alone, she took me with her.”
Right. Wasn’t helping. “If you need me to get there, then how did you manage to talk to me when I was there before?”
“That’s different. I did that mentally.” Like this.
His voice echoed in my head, louder than it’d ever been before, and I jerked away from him. “What was that?”
“Shh,” hissed someone in the seats behind us.
James laughed quietly, but there was nothing funny about this. “That was me, of course.”
“But how—” I stopped short and lowered my voice to a whisper. “How did you do that?”
“It’s easy. We can all speak mentally one on one. Not all at once, of course, because that would get crowded and very, very loud, but if we focus our thoughts on one person, we can do it.” He offered me his hand again. “You try.”