Page 127 of Ungodly Rich

“Gods,” she repeated, waiting for the punch line of the joke.

“We are gods. We live among humans, but we are not mortal.” He kept talking, using names she had studied for her art history thesis—Athena, Zeus, Hermes—explaining that she had met them all, but that they went by different names in the mortal world.

Julia could barely keep up. Harry thought he was a god? He must be delusional. Perhaps he was a megalomaniac, and having an episode, and she needed to get him help.

And yet…

She thought of all the times that she’d been with Harry and reality seemed to shift slightly around her. All the times she had prickled with an awareness that there was somethingmoregoing on, something beyond the reach of her senses. Something she didn’t fully understand.

“You’re saying you’re a god,” she repeated, shaking her head. “As in, you think people should be praying to you?”

“As in, one of the gods from the Greek pottery you wrote your thesis about.”

It made no sense. And at the same time, it made sense of everything.

Julia recalled the way he’d calmed her racing heartbeat with a brush of his bare hands. All the moments he’d appeared with objects she needed as if he’d conjured them from thin air. The water that had heated around them, when they were wrapped around each other in that river in the Catskills, as if they were in a hot tub.

The time he’d saved her life by flying.

Perhaps deep down, some part of Juliawantedthis ludicrous, impossible, unbelievable explanation to be true, because she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him.

“Prove it to me.”

“Prove it?” Harry repeated.

“Yes. If you’re a god, like you claim to be, then do something godly.”

Harry looped the reins around Santos’s neck. Julia started to tell him what a stupid idea that was; he couldn’t leave a horse untethered like that—but then she heard Harry whicker and neigh, sounding exactly like a horse. Santos and JB bothnoddedat him in clear gestures of understanding.

“Did you justtalkto the horses?” she demanded, her voice shrill.

“It’s one of my powers. Not all animals, just horses and dogs,” Harry explained, as if that made it any more reasonable. “I wanted to assure them that they shouldn’t be afraid of what I’m going to do next.”

Harry waded into the river. As he walked, the water skirted around his ankles, parting like the Red Sea each time he took a step, so that he was walking on the smooth river rocks instead of getting wet. He crossed to the other side of the stream, where an enormous granite boulder stood, easily the size of a truck.

As Julia watched, Harry bent down toliftthe boulder into his arms, then hurled it several dozen yards forward.

The resounding crash should have spooked the horses, but they just stood there, watching him with curious eyes.

Julia swallowed. All the things she had just seen him do—they were real. And there was undoubtedly more.

“Harry,” she breathed, but he shook his head.

“Ares. My real name is Ares.”

“Ares,” Julia repeated, the syllables rolling around her mouth strangely. She let out a breath. “I think it’s about time you told me everything. From the beginning.”