Deep Water by Nicola Cameron

his
throat. “Maybe a month, if he’s lucky.”
    Poseidon nodded once, just as the sounds
of water splashing in the bathroom stopped. He couldn’t risk having Griffin see
him like this, so out of control. It smacked too much of the past.
    “I have to leave. Please see to it that
Griffin gets back to his cottage safely,” he said.
    Nick blinked. “But—”
    “Thank you, Nicholas.” Poseidon summoned a
portal and stepped through it before he could hear any more.
    ****
    The night sky over the Aegean was the
blackest velvet spread thickly with diamonds. Poseidon sat on the edge of a
cliff overlooking the sea, feet dangling in the warm, clear air. Beneath him,
his home waters spread out in their wine-dark glory, the illumination from the
half moon shedding light on the waves and creating a shimmering white road.
    After summoning three bottles of wine from
Bythos’s cellar, the sea god had started drinking, hoping to pass out sometime
before dawn. Two empty wine bottles now sat at his side, and a third
half-filled one was in his hand. He lifted it to his mouth, taking a deep swig.
He didn’t notice the taste, although anything from his son’s wine cellar was
guaranteed to be good. He was far more interested in the wine’s numbing
effects.
    Griffin is dying.
    It wasn’t working.
    He heard a heavy step on the grassy rise
behind him. “Nice view,” a dry voice said.
    Poseidon stared out at the sea, taking
another swig. “I thought so,” he said after he swallowed.
    There was a soft exhalation, and then a
pair of translucently glowing horse’s legs came into view. “Still, there are
better places to drink,” the centaur Chiron said. “Places with cute barmaids,
for example.”
    “I’m not in the mood for company.”
    “Yeah, I can tell. Unfortunately for you,
Hades suggested I come find you. I thought he was blowing things out of
proportion, but now I think he underplayed it.” Chiron shifted on the damp
grass. “Come on, talk to your little brother.”
    “Half brother.”
    “Whatever. Spill.”
    Poseidon’s throat closed, and he had to
swallow hard to open it again. “I’ve found her again. Medusa. She’s been
reborn.”
    “Huh.” A soft huff of breath. “Explains
why I haven’t seen her in the Vale of Mourning lately.”
    Poseidon turned, staring at his centaurine sibling. He had assumed Medusa would be sent
straight to Tartarus for her murderous crimes as the Gorgon. It had never
occurred to him that she might be somewhere else in the Underworld. “You knew she was in the Vale of Mourning?
And you didn’t tell me?”
    “She asked me not to,” Chiron said flatly.
“She told me what you and Amphitrite did to her. I always knew you were an
arrogant asshole, but I didn’t think Ammie was that
much of a bitch.”
    Poseidon wished his half-brother had a
physical body that he could beat senseless. “Amphitrite is blameless,” he
snarled. “None of this was her doing, do you hear me? It was all my fault.”
    Chiron raised his hands. “Okay, sorry.
Nice to know my judgment isn’t that badly off. But you’re still an asshole.”
    “Don’t you think I know that?” Poseidon
said, hurling the bottle of wine out into the night sky. It disappeared into
the darkness quickly, but he could still hear the soft splash when it hit the
water. “I have been alone with my guilt and regret for over seven thousand
years, brother, with no way to make amends to either of my agapetos , or so I thought. Do you have any idea what it’s like to
find out that not only had Medusa been in the Vale all this time, but that
she’d been reborn? And no one told me?”
    His half-brother sighed. “What would you
have done if they had?”
    “I would have tracked her down and begged
her to forgive me, to return to Amphitrite and myself,” Poseidon said,
wondering at the idiotic question. “To be our mate as the Fates intended.”
    “And if she said no?”
    The sea god opened his mouth to reply,
then deflated. Over the