Chapter Text
Luke strung the cloth over a bowl, watching the slow rhythm of the falling drops, careful to keep his gaze strictly fixed ahead.
He hadn't said a word since the twins had arrived, their feet bloodied, the soles raw and pink, tracking blood across the floor he'd just swept. But the anger didn't come. Neither did the warmth he wanted to offer, to cradle them close and kiss their tears away. He longed to, but the guarded look in their eyes had stilled his hand before he could ruin the fragile trust rebuilding itself in this cave. He had spent his rage hours ago. Now, he had to remain the one thing in this place that was still safe.
Aithon's cut had been shallow, cleaned and wrapped in a few short minutes. But instead of running off, he hovered over Luke's shoulder, uncharacteristically still.
Phaidros's was worse.
Luke snapped the cloth taut with practiced ease, then knelt, eyes on the ground, and took the boy's foot into his palm, dabbing at the sole with careful, precise strokes. The edges of the wound were inflamed but clean—a rock, probably, when he'd bolted without looking where he ran.
“I should have made you both put your sandals on,” Luke said quietly, the words meant more to himself than to either of them. “Before I sent you out.”
“We wouldn’t have worn them anyway,” Aithon offered, too quickly, his usual grin bolted crookedly back into place. “Sandals are for old men and Lykē.”
Phaidros didn’t laugh. His mouth stayed pinched, eyes bright with unshed tears. When his gaze caught Luke’s, he looked away fast.
Luke let the silence sit rather than force it away. He finished cleaning the cut to his satisfaction, then reached for the jar of crushed herbs—a constant necessity in a home full of reckless children—and scooped a generous amount onto two fingers, smoothing it over the wound in one swipe before Phaidros could flinch and pull away.
“Don’t put weight on it for a few days,” Luke murmured, winding a clean bolt of cloth around the foot and tying it off.
Phaidros’s fingers twisted in his own chiton. “…Are you still mad?”
Luke’s hands went still around his son’s ankle.
“No,” he said, and made himself hold the boy’s eyes so he’d know it was true. “I was angry, but not at you."
Phaidros didn’t quite believe it, Luke could see that much, but he nodded anyway.
“…Thank you, Mom.”
A trembling exhale was the only sign of weakness Luke let himself show. His hand lingered on Phaidros’s foot a moment longer than necessary before he rose, dusting his palms against his chiton.
He needed his hands to keep working, needed to give this boy something that wasn’t an apology, because words had already failed him once today.
“I have something to show you both. All of you, if you’ll let me,” Luke said, tentative, almost unsteady. “Go find your brothers and Asterope. Meet me by the hearth.”
Aithon was already moving, grateful for something to do with his hands and feet again. Phaidros lingered a beat longer, his eyes flicking once more to Luke’s face, checking, still, before he limped off after his twin.
Soon enough, high-pitched shrieks rose, followed by the scuffle of bare feet against stone.
"Aithon, Phaidros," Luke called, then caught himself when he heard the uneven slap of Phaidros's steps. "Phaidros, walk. Your foot." After a brief pause, he added, "Asterope, Antauges, don't chase your brothers. Come here. Quietly."
A scowling, pouting Asterope appeared from the hall first, her arms crossed decisively over her chest. Behind her came her older brothers, the twins muttering to each other, their faces set into identical glowers aimed at the back of her skull, while Antauges whistled a cheerful tune, hands laced behind his head, the very picture of a boy with absolutely nothing to do with any of it.
Luke let his gaze linger on each of them, a frown knotting his brows when he noticed his older son's absence. "Where is Lykē?"
"We—" Aithon cut himself off, his grin snapping into place a beat too late, eyes carefully fixed on anything but Luke's face. "He's doing the ledgers. It's boring stuff, Mom, you don't need him."
It wasn't what the boy meant, and they both knew it.
Luke closed his eyes, his throat tight, and opened them so fast it simply looked like a longer blink.
"Call your brother, Aithon," he said softly, placing his arm around Asterope when she slotted herself under it, Antauges mirroring her from the other side. "It's a family activity. All of you, or none of you."
"But Mom—"
Phaidros's elbow caught him square in the ribs, a small wheeze escaping Aithon just as it cut him off mid-sentence. He whipped his head toward his twin, eyes narrowed in a glare—but it didn't hold. Something in Phaidros's face made it die there, and after a beat of silence that carried an entire argument neither of them had voiced, Aithon's shoulders dropped.
"Fine, Mom. I'll call Yaya, too," he said at last, his voice airy again, before turning and marching off toward Maia's side of the cave.
Luke didn't protest Grandma's inclusion. If anything, his heart squeezed with something like relief; having her near felt like balm pressed to a wound still raw enough to reopen if he wasn't careful.
She won't take this from me, he thought. This one small thing that's still mine.
And—maybe it would be good, sharing a piece of who he'd been before Hermes, with her.
He didn't let his racing heart or the tangle of his thoughts reach his face. Instead, he leaned down and smiled, nudging Asterope and Antauges toward the hearth, slow enough not to jostle Phaidros's bandaged foot. He kept his gaze soft when they passed over his son, careful to not let his attention linger and turn it into another thing to flinch from.
"Mom," Asterope grumbled. "What are we doing? I was playing."
Luke brushed her curls back. "Patience, little star. You'll see."
He let her muttering roll past him, turning his attention toward the hearth instead. Their fire was modest, but well-tended, kept burning through the nights in a hollow Maia had carved into the stone herself. Furs surrounded it: a bear pelt sprawled across the ground like a sleeping giant, a pair of pristine white fox furs laid over the chairs, and, where Luke always sat, a leopard skin—Hermes's newest trophy.
Right before the crackling fire, Luke bent his knees and folded his tall frame down, sinking onto the furs until he'd made himself small, a shape he'd hoped would say I am safe louder than his clumsy words could. He waited until his children had settled around him, then reached for the chest he kept near the hearth, letting it rest on his lap.
His fingers traced the grain of the rough wood. A long time ago, Annabeth had told him that if you cut a tree, the rings in its trunk would tell you how long it had lived. It made him wonder: if a sword cut him open, would his meat reveal the years his face refused to bear?
"Can we start now, Mom?" Asterope asked.
Luke blinked, yanked back from the thought.
His gaze darted sideways. Somewhere between telling his children to sit and the moment his daydream broke, they had all gathered—all but Phoebe, who was still out hunting.
I didn't even see them arrive, he thought, his fingers twitching once, before flattening against the wood.
"…Yes," he said, covering his lapse with a smile. He ignored the weight of Maia's stare, and the way Lykē folded into himself. Normalcy. Everything was fine. "Since everyone's here—" He glanced at the empty space beside Lykē where Phoebe should have been, "—we can begin. Phoebe should be home soon."
He unlatched the chest, paused, then picked the clothes up with something close to reverence. It had been so long since he had dared to look at them, let alone touch them—the same clothes he had arrived in, the one he'd died in, though the word still snagged something in his chest after all these years. He'd refused to let them fade or fray; they were the only proof he had left of a life before this cave.
His fingers found the fabric, tracing the weave, and a small jolt of surprise ran through him at how foreign it felt against his skin. Understandable, he supposed. After decades of rough wool, coarse linen, and soft silk, the memory of synthetic fabric had faded, turning strange in his hands. His thumb caught on a faint line of stitching, impossibly even when compared to the uneven hand-sewn seams he'd grown used to making himself.
His lips pressed into a thin line.
"This is from before—" Luke started, then stopped. Six pair of eyes were on him, and the truth he wanted to give them was lodged in his throat. He exhaled. "Before I married your father."
He unfolded the clothes, laying out the old T-shirt and blue jeans for his children to see.
"I remember. When you first arrived, you wore these." Maia studied his face, perhaps she'd seen something there, before her mouth twitched. She held out her hands, a silent request to touch the fabric.
Luke passed the bundle to her with care. Once it was settled securely in her arms, Lykē finally perked up, his curiosity slicing through the gloom he'd carried all day. Luke's lips tilted upward, watching as Asterope announced "I want to see it too," and marched straight to Lykē's side, Antauges close behind. The twins crowded in over Maia's shoulders, one on each side, their blue eyes wide and curious.
They weren't really interested in the weave—Luke knew that. What drew them in was the secret itself. He never spoke of his homeland, deflecting every question once they had grown old enough to understand what "foreigner" meant.
"Look at this," Lykē breathed, gaze filled with wonder as he stared through the clothing and its implications rather than at the fabric itself. "I've never saw such tightly woven thread. It's better even than Mom's! The technique must be far more advanced than ours…"
"They had a tool," Luke started, then paused. How should he explain it? Sewing machine wasn't a word that would survive crossing into Ancient Greek, and it would only confuse them. "…Similar to a loom. But faster. They made these lines without a hand ever touching the needle."
Lykē knitted his brows in thought. "Not touching the needle… for that to be possible, there would have to be a mechanism that moves it on its own, maybe something like how farmers use a yoke and oxen to pull a plow with greater force…"
Luke blinked.
He reached that conclusion from a handful of words about stitching? Men in universities back in the past-future spent their entire lives chasing after this kind of brilliance, and his son was working it out while sitting on a bear pelt. Pride rushed at him first, fast and fierce, followed immediately by a bitter realization: what a waste. A mind this clever trapped in a cave, simply because Hermes was waiting for something—or so he claimed.
He kept none of it on his face, but something subtle in his posture made Lykē's grin falter, uncertain.
"That's very clever, Lykē," Luke praised warmly, and quickly, before his son could mistake it for disappointment. "I imagine it works like that, but I've never had much interest in how they were made."
Lykē let out a thin, quiet laugh, ducking his head toward his chest, though the flush in his cheeks was undeniably pleased.
"But why?" Asterope said, her brows furrowed in thought. She rested her weight against Lykē, clinging to his side. "If Dad were here, he could just snap his fingers and make the needle move alone without Lykē having to spend so much effort in making something no one is even sure would work."
A frown immediately crossed Luke's features. "Then all of our work would be meaningless."
"But it would happen faster," she pointed out.
A sigh escaped his mouth. He looked up, his gaze sweeping slowly between each child.
They were so young.
Luke's fingers found the hem of the old shirt again where it rested across Maia's lap. He ran the thumb along the seam Lykē had marveled at just moments ago.
"When we build something up," he murmured, "it takes time. We might make mistakes. We might fail. It is hard work." He tapped the fabric once. "But because we are mortal... because our time is short... everything we make with our own hands carries more beauty than magic ever could."
They had no answer for him.
Luke didn't expect them to understand it yet. They were still so young, their cheeks soft and entirely untouched by the ugly things waiting outside the cave. But the silence was its own kind of answer. The weight of his words had settled into their minds.
That was enough for now.
With a quiet huff, Luke folded the shirt back into its worn creases, then set it carefully inside the chest.
"Alright," he murmured, the stern lines of his face melting back into an easy smile. "Mom has imparted enough wisdom for one afternoon. Go on. Go play, before your grandmother gets stuck being your seamstress instead of mine."
The children scattered, some faster than others. Asterope cast one last backward glance before Antauges pulled her away by the hand. The twins whispered in hushed tones, Phaidros limping slightly while Aithon kept an arm around him. Lykē wrung his hands before rising, that pleased smile still lingering on his lips, and followed his younger siblings deeper inside.
“Wise words,” Maia said the moment they were alone. She gave his hands a soft squeeze before standing. “And brave actions.”
Luke managed a smile, though it felt fragile. “Thank you, Grandma. I—I think they deserved to know.”
I deserved it, went unsaid.
The rustle of fabric against stone cut through the quiet before Maia could reply, followed by the dull clack of a spear haft. Phoebe crossed the curtain a beat later, a scowl already firmly etched onto her face. Her braid hung crooked, tangled with stray leaves and twigs, and her once-white chiton was smeared with dirt and grass from more than one hard tumble. A freshly killed rabbit swung from her belt, but Luke’s eyes immediately caught on the strange talon tucked beside it.
The moment she spotted them, she froze.
“I see the hunt was successful,” Luke said, his voice ringing crisp and clear through the cave.
Maia’s gaze flicked between the two of them, and under their combined scrutiny, Phoebe seemed to shrink beneath her otherwise impressive height.
“One of the southern traps caught it,” Phoebe answered, her voice dropping low. Her eyes refused to meet his, darting to the stone floor.
“Hm.” Luke lifted a finger, pointing at the grotesque trophy tucked into her belt. “And I suppose the trap also caught an abnormally large, flesh-eating bird to leave that behind?”
Phoebe flinched. Her hand jerked, instinctively flying down to cover the talon.
“Mom, I—” She cut herself off, her jaw tightening. “I’m old enough. I’m a demigod, I have a duty. Besides, Dad seems to think I’m grown.”
Luke’s lips twisted. He glanced at Maia for support, but her face had gone completely still, the color draining as her mouth pinched into a thin line. She held his gaze for a beat before looking away, her brows furrowed as if in quiet argument with herself.
“Your father considers himself a fountain of wisdom in this realm,” Maia said at last, her tone pitched into her usual neutral register. “He forgets that title belongs to his immortal sister.”
Luke went rigid. In twenty years, he had never once heard Maia speak against her son—not plainly, and never within earshot of a child. Beside him, Phoebe had gone equally still, blinking rapidly as her stubborn facade collapsed into disbelief.
“Phoebe,” Luke said, recovering enough to address her while filing Maia’s unusual candor away for later. “You are talented. I taught you to hold a blade myself. Maia taught you to read tracks and hunt”—because I couldn’t teach you that, went unsaid— “and your father has indulged you in sparring. I know it. We all know it. But you are still young.”
“Seventeen is an adult,” Phoebe argued, though her voice lacked its usual bite.
“Your mother is worried you will kill yourself trying to prove it,” Maia cut in, her starlight eyes fixed on the girl before dropping to the talon at her belt. “A Stymphalian bird; a man-eating monster, never alone, and fearsome enough to serve as one of the trials Herakles himself was made to face.”
“It was just a—”
“Phoebe,” Maia murmured, her tone final. “Go spend some time with Lykē. He needs you today.”
Phoebe flinched. Her grip tightened around her spear before she closed her eyes, biting her lower lip hard enough that Luke nearly stepped forward to stop her. She took a deep breath, her posture caving into sudden exhaustion.
“…Is Lykē alright?” she asked softly.
Luke averted his gaze, fixing it on a thin crack in the far wall beside the tapestry of a mother bird guarding a nest full of eggs.
“He is now. He’ll explain it better than I could.” Maia stepped closer, her fingers wrapping around Luke’s arm. “Go,” she whispered.
Phoebe darted one last glance at where Maia’s hand rested on Luke's arm before turning on her heel and vanishing down the dark corridor.
Maia watched her retreat, a troubled shadow settling into the lines of her face.
“A girl who rushes to prove her worth before anyone asks it of her,” she said quietly, as if speaking to the stone itself, “is a girl who already feels time running out.”
The words struck like a stone in Luke’s chest.
“She’ll hate me,” Luke confessed, a wet knot catching in his throat.
“Nonsense,” Maia interrupted. With a swift, urgent tug, she guided him toward her own side of the cave. Her fingers trembled faintly around his wrist, the first crack of her composure all day. “Follow me. This—you need to see it. Before it reaches her.”
“What is it, Maia?”
She offered no answer beyond a tight press of her lips, remaining silent until the heavy curtain of her quarters fell shut behind them. Her room was crowded with woven fabrics and soft furs, the walls hung with tapestries and bundles of drying herbs. A single candle flickered in the far corner, sweet incense curling through the air beneath a modest statue of a draped goddess. Luke squinted at the faint outline; by the veil covering the figure's head, he guessed it to be Hestia.
“Look at this.” The words tore from her mouth in a rushed, urgent burst—entirely out of character for her.
Luke frowned, following her deeper into the room. Laying across the bed was a peplos. It was fine work, but nothing that should have put such a look on Maia’s face… unless it wasn’t the cloth itself that mattered.
“Is this your new peplos?” Luke asked, keeping his tone light while watching her closely; the tight clench of her jaw, the sharp pinch between her brows. “It's beautiful. Though perhaps trimming a few inches from the hem would suit you better.”
Maia let out a heavy sigh, her age suddenly showing through the perfection of her skin. Her starlight eyes glimmered with a thousand shades, worry pooling beneath the silver—and something else.
“It’s not for me.” Her hands fidgeted with a strip of parchment, hesitating for a beat before she held it out to him. “I found it hidden in the storeroom this morning, after you and Lykē spoke. Just… just read it, Luke. It’s best if you do.”
Luke stared at her for a beat before accepting it, unrolling it slowly as his eyes darted across the rows of letters.
To Hermes, son of Maia, Lord of Kyllene, Slayer of Argos—
I write as one branch of your mother’s tree writes to another, though many seasons of silence lie between our houses. Blood does not forget blood, even when scattered thin across the sky as ours has been.
Word has reached even my quiet hearth of a daughter grown fierce and fair in your keeping—quick with a spear, said to run down game most men would not dare face alone. Such a girl is rare, and rarer still that she springs from a line already touched by Olympus twice over.
Theron, who carries the blood of Lacedaemon and, through him, of Zeus himself, is the last unmarried son left to carry that inheritance forward. He is presently proving his worth wrestling the river-god of the Eurotas, as every man of our house has done before him since the river first bore our name, for he will not come to any bride’s hearth on the strength of his blood alone, but on strength he has earned with his own hands.
He does not chase glory that fades with the singer’s breath. He chases the kind the poets tell of Cadmus, who married a daughter of the gods and was granted, in the end, a resting place beyond the reach of Hades’s gray halls entirely. Theron would have such a fate for his house, and for whoever shares his bed and bears his sons.
For her hand, I offer what is owed between houses of our standing: six tripods of worked bronze, fifty head of cattle, a pair of Laconian hounds—swiftest of their breed and bred for hands as sure as hers is said to be—and cloth dyed in the true purple only my sea-born kin know how to draw from the rock. No one shall say Theron came to your daughter’s door as a beggar, nor that I sent him to woo a god’s daughter empty-handed.
I ask only this in return: that she stand before Olympus at the Karneia, when the god of that festival looks most kindly on new unions, so that all the gods gathered might witness the joining and swear to its honor. Let no shadow of shame or secrecy follow her into her new house.
Send your answer swiftly, Kyllenios. Theron waits, as sons of great houses often must, for a bride he has not yet been permitted to meet.
Taygete
Luke read it twice. The second time was slower, as though the words might rearrange themselves into something that made sense if he gave them enough time.
He didn't cry, nor did he rage. Instead, he sat and folded the letter back along its worn creases with the same quiet care he had shown his old shirt earlier that day, as if neatness could undo the carelessness already done. He set the parchment down beside the fine peplos on the bed.
"How long do we have?" he asked at last.
"He is due back after dark, perhaps later than usual because of trouble involving Pan and his satyrs in the lower plains," Maia said, her voice dropping low. "That gives you the evening, if you want it. Time to plan what you'll say—or if you'll say anything at all tonight."
Luke nodded slowly, though he wasn't sure what outcome he wanted.
"Thank you," he said softly, "for showing me."
Maia's hand found his shoulder, brief and steady. She didn't assure him that everything would be fine. He was grateful for that; she was the one person in this era who had never lied to him about that.
Outside, beyond the curtain, the faint sound of his children's voices drifted in, blissfully unaware. The younger ones played in the fading light, while Phoebe snapped at them to leave her alone, her sharp tone quickly smoothed over by Lykē’s gentle soothing.
Hours yet. He had to decide what kind of wife would be waiting for Hermes when the god finally returned home.