Chapter 87: Dream World
Both twins had finally passed out. Selene with her thumb in her mouth, Aurora drooling like she had a personal grudge against the pillow. Their breathing softened, fell into rhythm with each other, and Alexis leaned forward and caught the drool with the blanket before it could land.
Shiro pushed himself off the bed and stretched, his back popping in three places that probably shouldn’t have.
"Okay. So how do we enter the dream world?"
Alexis’s gaze shifted back to him. She tucked a strand of orange hair behind her ear. "It’s, um." She pulled herself off the bed. "I can’t control dreams. But I know someone who can."
"Who is it?" Shiro asked, slightly concerned about this whole process.
"Oma. He’s the son of Hypnos."
"Hyp—what?"
"Hypnos." She said it slower, like she was teaching a child. "God of sleep. Brother of Thanatos. Lives in a cave. Loves it there. Doesn’t come out much."
"Right."
"You don’t know any of the gods, do you."
"I know four now. Five if Hypnos counts."
"He counts," she said softly.
"Five, then," he muttered.
They slipped out of the room.
Once the door clicked shut behind them, she turned and started down the hall, walking like she was leading him somewhere far more exciting than a teenager’s bedroom. Light steps. Almost a skip. Her hair caught the lantern light as she moved, swaying with every turn.
According to her, they were going to find a kid named Oma. Shiro had never seen him before, and apparently that was because Oma slept through most of the day. Which according to her was normal for a child of the sleep god.
She glanced back over her shoulder. Met his eyes. Held them a beat too long before turning back.
"So this Oma kid," Shiro said. "He just—what. Pulls people into dreams?"
She laughed under her breath. The sound was light, lilting. "No. He can control them. Like rooms."
She’d slowed her steps. Just slightly. Enough so Shiro could catch up. Her shoulder brushed against his arm, and when he turned, she startled.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
"He can put two people in the same one." A pause. "That’s the part I—"
She stopped. Her shoulders went stiff.
"I mean—" The words came out fast. Too fast. "I—I can’t put people in dreams. Other people. Together. With each other. That’s what I meant."
"That’s the part I can’t do," she finished quickly. Voice half a pitch higher than before. "That’s all I meant."
She kept walking. Faster now.
Shiro tilted his head, watching the back of her neck go pink under the lantern light.
’Did I do something wrong again?’
Before he could fix what he didn’t know he’d done, Jason was waiting for them.
In his arms was a kid. Small. Practically a toddler. Fast asleep with a pillow somehow stuck to his head, his whole body floating two feet off the ground like gravity had decided to take the night off.
’Yeah. That’s him.’
He didn’t need an introduction. Nobody slept like that without divine assistance.
"You found him." Alexis’s voice came out soft. Honey-soft. The nervous, fidgeting energy from a minute ago was gone.
"Yeah," Jason muttered. He sounded annoyed. "I searched the entire ship. He was all the way in the bottom hold."
"It was nice and cool down there," Oma mumbled into the pillow. "No sound. No anything."
The kid was sleep-talking. With his eyes closed. Floating.
Shiro stared.
"He does that," Alexis whispered.
"Mhm."
Alexis walked toward the sleeping boy. "Please. You can go back to sleep once you help us."
The kid touched down on his feet, still hugging the pillow like someone might snatch it off him. He snapped his fingers in front of Alexis. The sound echoed. Her eyes rolled back and she dropped instantly, Jason catching her body before it hit the floor.
Then the kid drifted toward Shiro. Floated, really. His feet barely brushed the wood. He snapped his fingers in front of Shiro’s eyes.
Shiro felt the tug immediately. A heavy, syrupy pull behind his eyelids. The kind of tired that didn’t ask permission.
’Oh, that’s not fa—’
He was out before he finished the thought.
He woke up in nothing.
Just a blank, empty stretch of nowhere, like someone had started building a world and gotten distracted halfway through.
Alexis stood next to him, eyes wandering. ’She’s nervous. Probably about meeting her mother’s boyfriend.’
Then a sleepy voice drifted in from somewhere. From everywhere.
"Okay. Let’s begin."
A door appeared in front of them. Wooden. Plain. Boring.
"Once you enter, you’re on your own," Oma yawned. "Cool. I’m going back to sleep."
’Aren’t we already asleep?’
Shiro sighed. Turned to Alexis. Forced a smile that he hoped looked more reassuring than it felt.
"I promise. Nothing’s going to happen."
He took her hand and stepped through the door.
And on the other side, more doors. Rows of them. Stretching out into the distance like a hallway with no end.
’Oh. More doors.’
She guided him through each door. And inside every door was another door. Then another. Then more after that.
Hephaestus had built a maze, and his wife had built a bigger one to lose him in.
But a child of the love goddess could sense her mother. So Alexis led, and Shiro followed, and the doors kept opening.
Each one took them somewhere else.
The first opened onto a garden. Massive. Endless. Flowers in colors he didn’t have names for, blooming in the kind of impossible arrangements that only existed in dreams. Smelled like every kind of perfume ever made.
Wrong door.
The next one opened into a small red-lit room. Cushions on the floor. A table set for two. Half-empty cups of wine.
"They’ve been here. Damn it, we missed them," he muttered.
She instantly grabbed his arm and yanked him back through the door so hard his shoulder almost popped without him purposely doing it.
"Nope," she muttered, face going crimson. "Not that one."
The next door dropped them onto a marble balcony in the middle of a palace he didn’t recognize. The one after that, a ship cutting across a wine-dark sea. The one after that, a moonlit beach with no footprints in the sand.
Door after door. Each one felt like a puzzle. A test. A "find me if you can."
’She really doesn’t want to be found.’
Then they came to one that looked different.
Tall. Fancy. Gold from edge to edge, the kind that screamed we are hiding here.
Alexis stopped in front of it. Her hand hovered an inch from the handle.
"They’re in there," she said softly.
"Okay."
He opened the door.
Beneath a massive tree, beside a clear lake ringed with wildflowers swaying in a breeze that came from nowhere, lay a half-naked, hairy man with his head in the lap of the most beautiful woman Shiro had ever seen.
The man looked like he was halfway through a midlife crisis and losing.
The woman was feeding him grapes.
’So this is the god of war.’
He’d pictured something more impressive. Armor. A scar. At least a shirt.
Shiro stepped through the door. Her eyes found his first.
Ares jumped up like someone had set the grass on fire under him. "What the hell is that kid doing here again?"
Alexis ducked behind Shiro. "I’m sorry—I’m sorry—"
"Calm down."
Shiro walked past him.
He stopped at the basket beside the lake, plucked an apple from the top, and rubbed it clean against his shirt. Then took a bite.
His eyes closed for a half-second.
’Oh, that’s not fair.’
It was sweeter than anything he’d ever tasted. Fruit grown in a goddess’s dream apparently came with its own set of rules. Every other apple he’d ever eaten just lost its title of being called an apple.
Once he was done, he reached for her hand.
And she lifted her hand toward his.
He turned her palm. Pressed his lips to the back of it.
"It is a cruel thing," he said quietly, lips still hovering just above her skin, "for the gods to call you only the goddess of beauty. As if there were nothing else worth naming."
Aphrodite’s breath left her in a small, uneven sound.
He looked up. Met her eyes from below.
"My lady. I came a long way to ask for your help."
Her free hand had drifted to her collarbone.
"You are..." Her lips parted, but no word came out. Her eyes stayed on his face, unable to look away.
The grapes on the blanket beside her, forgotten. Ares, forgotten. The whole dream had narrowed down to the space between her hand and his mouth, and she didn’t seem to know how to widen it again.
Color had risen in her cheeks.
"You are..." she tried again. Her voice came out softer than the breeze. "Different."
Ares stepped forward.
Shiro felt the shadow before he saw it. He gently set Aphrodite’s hand back in her lap, almost like he was tucking it in, and pushed himself up to his full height.
He met Ares’s gaze.
"I don’t know why," he said, tilting his head, "but I kind of want to bash my fist into your face."
Ares smiled. It wasn’t a friendly one.
"I can sense Father’s blood within you." A pause. His eyes narrowed. "And something else. Something I don’t recognize."
Then he laughed. Loud. Unhinged.
"So you’re the one Mother’s been obsessed about."
Shiro just smiled like that answered his question.
