Arius leaned one elbow on the table to draw himself closer to her. “What is your real name, if I may ask?”

While Val gulped, it did not matter if she gave him her real name since he already knew it. “My name is Val.”

“No, seriously. I already know that you are a girl. I want to know your feminine name.”

“I am serious. My name is Val.”

Arius raised his eyebrows at her. “I am not that gullible. You have a different name, and I want to know it.”

“You can Read Intentions, right? Does it feel like I am trying to deceive you?”

“No,” he said hesitantly. “Still, I trust my own logic more than any information that I receive from other people’s head.”

A slight laugh escaped her. Arius should be the one not to trust his own head since he seemed more than a little off. “For pretending to be a boy, my name is Valentine while my real name is Valentine.” All she did was change the pronunciation of her name. “I go by Val either way.”

“No way. Seriously?” Leaning back in his chair, Arius crossed his arms and stared at her dumbfounded. “You have got to be pulling my leg.”

In response, Val could only shake her head.

“Whose stupid idea was this? Tavras,” he shouted instantly, “it also would have been a good idea to make her go by an entirely different name as a boy!”

Down the hallway, Tavras yelled back, “I was not the one who chose to do that! Val decided that one on her own.”

Arius returned his attention to Val and slapped his palm on the table. The beginnings of anger flared in his eyes. “Look. Tavras is horrible at planning anything. If he says that something is a good idea, it is the opposite of that. You never listen to Tavras, ever.”

Considering this, Val directed her eyes to the ceiling. From when they had met, Tavras had sent a sea serpent to knock her off of the ship, nearly drowning her and Foofy. Maybe instead, he could have caught her alone, introduced himself, and offered his mentorship. Val would have been too excited at the opportunity to account for any of the risks associated with wandering off with a strange god. Why did he go through all of that trouble and pain when he could have just talked to her?

Then, there was this whole disguise as a boy which clearly did not work. Nodding along, Val determined that Arius was right at least in this regard. Tavras could not come up with plans to save his life—or in this case, it was her life.

“While we wait for our senior citizen over there, let me Read your Aura,” Arius said. “I have a feeling that Tavras messed that up too.”

“I do have a passport,” Val said, uncertain if that was what he meant.

“I still want to check. I doubt that you have an official one.” Rubbing at the back of his neck, Arius said, “Um, I am bad at reading auras without a physical connection. Could I hold your hands?”

At this, Tavras cut into their conversation again. “Arius, stop being a depraved bastard. It is disgusting for you to flirt with a literal child!”

Before, Arius must have blushed indeed because he now turned red in the face at Tavras’s accusation. His cheeks burned almost as bright as his hair. Back at Tavras, he snapped, “I am not flirting with her! I am trying to figure out all of your mistakes so that I can correct them. Plus, she is not a child but a grown woman.”

Looking back to Val, he explained hastily, “Tavras calls me a child too, so do not take too much offense when he calls you that. We’re both too young for acknowledgement in his eyes, even though I absolutely wrecked him over his own ocean eighty years ago!” Over that last bit, Arius lifted his voice into a shout for Tavras to hear. With a golden smile back to Val, he added in a lighter tone, “Actually, I’m only a century older than you plus a few odd years.”

For a moment, Arius seemed proud of himself at his speech, but then he shied away. His angular jaw and brow were easily observed as he directed his gaze to the wall. Without looking at her, he stuck out both hands across the table.

Like Arius, Val could feel the heat of a blush for absolutely no reason at all. Turning her face the opposite way as his, she placed her hands into his palms.

Big and warm, his fingers moved against hers so that he could clutch her hands gently. Arius straightened himself up to face her, closely followed by him closing his eyes. He bowed his head close to her knuckles where the skin of his forehead hovered just an inch away.

Once again, Val’s body was reacting in a stupid way. Her heart raced at Arius’s proximity. Along with her face and the rest of her body, her hands started to feel hot. How long did it take to for him to Read Aura? Hopefully Arius would not resent her even more for sweating while he held her hands.

After a painfully long period of time, he lifted himself up while still holding her hands slightly firmer than before. A daze seemed to have overtaken him as he stared at Val, unmoving, save for the way that his tongue darted out to lick his lips. Within a few blinks, Arius seemed to return to the present moment.

He lifted his chin to yell at Tavras once more. “You cannot bring people to the Summit however you want anymore! Val is here illegally. You would have needed to get her fake documentation at minimum, if you wanted her to have any chance at going undiscovered!”

“I never had a problem with any of that documentation nonsense,” Tavras replied.

“Yeah. You get a free pass on all of the modern laws only because you are the Sea Itself!” Arius put some tense fingers to his forehead as he shook his head. “Val, I hope that you realize how lucky you are to have me.”

A lump pressed its way down her throat. She felt quite unlucky for Arius to have seen right through her identity, unsure of what this would all mean yet. Shifting around in discomfort, she focused on the matter of her passport. “I thought that I had gotten a passport in Altis Point from this vendor.”

“You must have met Lady Margus, yes. She is Emergalia, the Enchantress, goddess of—you know—enchantments, if you are familiar with her.”

Val could not say that she had heard of her, aside maybe having seen a stub of a page on the Internet. “How is Lady Margus a goddess if she looks so old? Why is she selling enchanted trinkets to mortals?”

Addressing the latter question, Arius said, “Emergalia sells enchantments for the same reason that I make special appearances in mortal wars or give blessings to hopeless romantic sacks of shit. We need something to keep our attributes strong.”

As for her first question, he countered her with one of his own. “Why do you think that almost all gods look beautiful? Most of us learn how to change our appearances to some degree eventually. There are also enchantments to do that very thing. Each have a chance to be seen through—”

Arius broke himself off. “Wait. I am so stupid for not thinking on Tavras’s level of stupidity. He did not give you an enchantment to make you resemble a boy, did he?” His eyes narrowed at her as if trying to see through her. “It seems like there is some enchantment about you.”

“Oh, it would be this.” Val took off her necklace and dangled it in front of Arius. “Lady Margus… Emergalia gave it to me.”

As the little charm twirled in the air, Arius’s eyes widened just as his lips crept into a smile. “You do look a lot more like a girl now. I see. Tavras was hoping that no one would notice this slight enchantment on you. Again,” he lifted his voice into a shout, “anyone at the security locales would have seen right through this. You were most definitely going to get Val killed!”

“It is not an enchantment to change appearances though,” Tavras snapped. “It should be fine!”

The bewildered look on Arius’s face dissipated quickly. Instead, he flung out a hand towards the hallway. “Can you believe this guy? He has been guiding you astray this entire time.”

Val had nothing to say for herself because she had trusted Tavras in full. It was not like she had any reason on the contrary to not believe him.

Arius stated that much for her. “Of course you did because you are a gullible, young demigoddess. Don’t beat yourself up over this. You had no way to no better, but now you do. I really mean it when I say do not ever listen to Tavras’s bright ideas.”

Speaking of him, he finally came tromping out into the kitchen.

“Are you done playing with your fish?” Arius asked.

“Yes,” Tavras said though his voice sounded dark with anger. The Sea Itself had arrived to the table for discussions.

For some reason, Val had a suspicion that the bad blood between Tavras and Arius would make everything take a turn for the worse from here.