Our gray cookie-cutter house emerges against the twilight sky. A smile cuts across my face as I turn into the driveway and pull into the garage next to my wife's car.

I grab the bouquet of tiger liles from the passenger seat. Not very often do I see flowers the exact coloring of my wife's eyes at the florist cart in the lobby of the office building.

As soon as I push open the door leading to the kitchen, I know something is wrong. The room is unlit and darkening with the setting sun.

"Tia?" The bouquet slips out of my hand as I walk into the even darker living room, where I find her standing by the bay window. She's still in her black blazer, which she always flings off the second she comes home from work.

My footsteps reverberate in the stagnant room.

I stand next to her and put a hand on the small of her back. "Tia?"

She turns to me then. And as she does every time I look at her, she fills me with a sizzling energy igniting the flame in my chest.

"Ollie," she says in a bare whisper. "Welcome home."

"Good to be home." I take her hand and press my lips upon her soft skin. "What's bothering you?"

Her eyes meet mine. Her dark eyebrows knit in worry, though her posture and shoulders remain steady. "Someone's been watching me."

"Is it—" The words die on my tongue before I can finish the sentence.

A moment passes between us in silence. We don't need to say anything to each other for confirmation. We both knew this day would come.

"Go upstairs," she says, breaking the stillness. After a quick peck on my cheek, she heads to our unused fireplace.

On the top shelf of our wooden bookcase in the second floor hallway, the vase has been collecting a thick layer of dust, dulling the amber glaze of the ceramic. My fingertips barely graze its base when it begins vibrating, increasing in force when I grab it with both my hands. I send a prayer of gratitude for this gift.

Raising my arms over my head, I unleash the power I carefully keep locked inside this body. It starts as a burning behind my eyeballs, then courses under my skin to the dormant muscles in my arms, which burn in their awakening.

I smash the vase onto the floor.

An iridescent vapor spreads from the shattered pieces, slowly at first, testing its sudden freedom. Then, it rolls out with violent swiftness. In a few blinks, our entire house is engulfed in mist.

I feel Tia's presence; her distinctive warmth wraps around me like a blanket. "This'll buy us some time," she says. "And thank you for the beautiful flowers."

Her hand in mine, we go back downstairs. I gaze upon the flames burning steadily in our fireplace. She tightens her grip on my hand for a brief moment. With her thumb, she draws continuous circles on my skin.

***

My eyelids fly open. The sun, whose light cannot penetrate this mist, nor our clocks, which have ceased ticking as of 6:39 last evening, no longer have any bearing on the time. I know morning has come solely by the glowing heat emanating from my own skin. Centuries have passed since I last allowed myself these sensations as familiar to me as breathing.

I reach out my hand to wake Tia.

The bed beside me is empty. Cold. I jump out, call for her, taking the flight of stairs in one step. The fireplace. I stop dead in my tracks.

My fingers curl into fists, nails digging into flesh. The air around me crackles. My vision fringes with blood red.

I stare through the mist, at the ashen emptiness where her fire had been blazing. I know with absolute certainty that Tia is not here: her flames wouldn't have gone out otherwise. And there is only one way I can reach her now.

I go to the closet in the laundry room to find the box Tia had labeled "Memories Best Not Forgotten." The turtle shell is feather soft in my hand, and its earthy scent takes me back to when I first serenaded my wife with a song composed on this very lyre. I pull up a stool from the island in the kitchen.

With no particular melody in mind, I pluck its strings and wait.

***

"Brother!" I hear his nauseatingly cheerful voice before he finishes materializing in front of me. "It's been too long!" he says with a smile that I immediately punch off his face.

A smile of my own breaks out at the satisfying crunch of his jaw bone.

"What in the Hera f-ing Hades is that for!" He rubs his fingers along the jaw that I know is already healing. "You're the one who called for me!"

"Where did you take her?"

He works his jaw, carefully averting my gaze. "Who?"

"My wife."

His lips twist into a smirk. "My, how his passion runneth deep for his fair maiden." He stumbles backwards as my fist reconnects with his face. "Now that, maybe I did deserve."

"Where. Is. She."

"Why do you always think I'm responsible?"

I pinch the bridge of my nose to ease the pressure building behind my eyes. "You are the only one of us who can travel to and from the realms without any relics."

"I had nothing to do with it," he says in a somber tone at odds with his personality. "I wouldn't mess with you like that. Plus, Hestia's always been all right with me."

Bile rises up my throat. "He took her."

My brother gives a terse nod. "Our old man," he says, his voice taking on a dry bitterness I know all too well.

"Take me to him."

A tell-tale indication of his feigned confidence, he shrugs his narrow shoulders. "Let's go pay him a visit. It'll be like old times. Hermes and Apollo, doing the do." He walks over to me and places his hand on my shoulder. "Reunited with my fav'rite bro—"

"No."

I hear his laughter as every part of my being is pulled apart in infinite directions only to be slammed back together all at once.

"Ollie," a sweet voice calls to me. I blink forcefully. Then, I see her standing in front of me.

I wrap my arms tightly around her, not caring that all eyes are upon us, and bury my face in her neck.

"I'm okay, Ollie," she says, her voice ringing with joy. "Zeus just needed me to light the Hearth for a meeting. And apparently, the only way to get Hermes here was through you."

I slowly pull myself away from her. The Hearth of Olympus was extinguished by order of Zeus himself when we unanimously decided to leave humanity alone. "Why?"

"Hades is retiring."

I look at my wife, who smiles unabashedly at my confusion. "And we need to choose his replacement."

Tia cups my face with her warm hands and whispers, "Everything's going to change."

Everything except us.