Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Even with that sorrow weighing on me, my body sings with the memory of Circe’s touch. The sex was both familiar and intensely new, a reminder of the people we were when we first fell in love—and the people we’ve become in the meantime. And yet…
I grip the steering wheel tightly and try to talk myself out of taking the necessary next step. Atalanta will see to the lower city. Surely Hades and the others will listen to her, will take precautions so Circe isn’t successful in bringing down the barrier. I don’t know what happens after that, not when the people are fed up with the Thirteen. If left to their own devices, maybe they’ll finish what we started, will bring down the government once and for all. It’s messier than I wanted, without a clear path forward to rebuild, but it gets the job done.
And yet I’m incapable of giving up. It’s not in me. I don’t know if it’s a sunk cost fallacy muddying the waters or if I actually have a chance to change Olympus’s course from the threat of mass violence into a calmer transition of power. All I know is that I have to try—to convince the Thirteen to leave this city once and for all.
If they do, hopefully Circe will back down and accept exile as price enough for her pain.
Which is why my fool ass picks up one of the burner phones I took from Dionysus’s safe house and dials Circe. There’s no good reason for her to answer, and a thousand for her not to, but after a few rings, I hear her voice on the line.
“I don’t know this number, which means this is likely Hecate reaching out despite herself.” Her tone holds the same sweet warmth it did when she told me to come last night.
I shiver. “It’s not too late to stop this.”
“Hecate.” She sighs. “Unfortunately, dear heart, it was too late the moment I marched on Olympus. Artemis’s trial starts in the morning. Justice must be done.”
I grip the steering wheel so tightly with one hand that my fingers go numb. “Wholesale murder isn’t who you are.”
“We have this conversation again and again, and yet you never see. It might not be who I was, but it is who I am.” She pauses. “Just like a murderer isn’t who you were, but it is what you’ve become. I don’t judge you for that change, Hecate. I simply accept it.”
The truth of her words threatens to undo me. I can say I never wanted this, but I knew and accepted the potential cost when I took my first step down this path. I just never bargained on her. “Last night was a mistake.”
She laughs. It’s almost a perfect parody of the laugh I used to soak up like sunshine on a warm summer day, but there’s a ragged edge just beneath the surface. “Have I caused problems with you and the lovely Atalanta?”
“Keep her name out of your mouth,” I snap.
She laughs again, this time even brighter. “I understand what you see in her, you know. She’s so strong and fierce and honorable despite the blood that stains her hands.” Circe lowers her voice. “Do you know how she tastes yet, Hecate? I think you don’t. It must have hurt her deeply to discover you slept with me, and after she lost a knife fight to me. Salt in the wound, so to speak.”
It did. It cut Atalanta right to the bone. No, not it. Me. My choices, my weakness when it comes to Circe. “I love her.”
Circe is silent for a beat. Not as if I’ve surprised her; more like she’s mulling over my words. “You know, I actually believe that, even though you only said it just now to hurt me. Is today the first time she ever drew a proper boundary with you? How frustrating it must be to discover she’s not simply a doll you can pick up when you get around to it.”
Circe has always known exactly where my fault lines lie. It’s frustrating to discover a decade apart hasn’t changed that. Calling her was a mistake. Sleeping with her was a mistake. Loving her was a mistake. Except I can’t believe that last bit, thought my life would be so much simpler if it were true. “You’re right. I was careless with her. I won’t be again.”
“Good. She deserves better than to be treated like an afterthought.”
Circe in a nutshell. She’s complicated in the extreme, and clearly the time spent apart hasn’t changed that any. I sigh. “The mob will turn on you, one way or another. They won’t trade the Thirteen for a queen, no matter how pretty you talk.”
“Perhaps.” To anyone else, she must sound unbothered, but I know her. There’s a thread of tension in her tone, just beneath the charming surface.