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)
A barrier that will most certainly not allow me entry.
My people try to form a line to keep the crowd back. They’re mostly successful, but it won’t last indefinitely. The feel of violence in the air grows with every frantic beat of my heart. I can taste it in the air. “No.”
Antigone keeps a vise grip around my bicep as she drags me behind her further onto the bridge. “Are you fucking happy?” Antigone yells at Demeter, her voice breaking. “You’ve killed us all.”
My back bumps against the barrier, and I have to swallow down a pained sound. It feels like a thousand bees stinging, but if there was any give at all, I would willingly take my chances. There isn’t. It’s a wall of pain I’ll be pinned against if we don’t figure out a plan, and fast.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I don’t know what to do.
“Some sacrifices are worth it. There’s no going back now. You’ve lost.” Demeter pulls a tiny gun from her pocket—tiny but just as capable of killing as any other—and aims it at me. “This ends now.”
Somehow, I still have the space to admire how well she played me. I don’t know if this was her plan all along. Surely not? She’s shown herself to be changeable time and time again over the course of her duration as Demeter. If I hadn’t made several key mistakes, she would still be at my side, would still be using her influence and words to guide the citizens of Olympus to my preferred conclusion.
Instead, she’s killed me, even if she doesn’t manage to get a shot off. I shake my head…or maybe it’s my whole body shaking. I hold up my hands. “Don’t do this.”
I courted Demeter for the very reason that the mob listens to her. For all her faults, she did do better for her portion of Olympus. And everyone present knows it. If I can just find the right words, maybe I can turn the worst of the tide. Surely there’s some angle to take, some solution that my frantically circling brain just hasn’t landed on. “I was never going to kill Callisto or Persephone.”
“Yes, you were. But you won’t get a chance to touch any of my daughters now.” Demeter smiles grimly. “All your plans are finished. Or they will be.” She shifts, angling her body away from the people starting to press insistently against the line my people have formed. “Goodbye, Circe.”
I feel Antigone tense and have a moment to scream, “Don’t!” before she shoots Demeter. The bullet takes the woman between the eyes. She’s dead before her body hits the ground, taking with her any chance of salvaging this. “Godsdamn it.”
Everything goes still. The mob actually pauses for several beats as if they’re shocked by what just happened. As if, like me, they can hardly believe that a personality as big as Demeter’s could be cut down so quickly, so violently. And then, as one, the people roar. I feel the sound down to my very bones, written in my nerve endings. It was bad before. There’s no surviving what comes next.
One of my people screams as the mob courses over her, more force of nature than individual people. And all that unspeakable rage is pointed directly at me. I was never naive enough to think my death would come easily, not from Zeus and not from whatever finally removed me from this earth. But being torn apart by a mob is a nightmarish scenario by any standard. I can’t stop shaking.
Antigone hauls me to the side of the bridge. “You’re going to have to jump.”
The water. Again. “No.” I clutch at her arms. “Antigone, no. I’ll die.”
“You’ll die if you stay here.” The mob is almost to us. She pulls me into a tight hug that I have no chance to process and grabs my shoulders. “Live, Circe. For all of us.” And then she shoves me over the edge of the bridge.
I fall.
26
Circe
My vision whites out the moment I hit the water. It’s cold, ice injected directly into my veins, frozen blocks of muscle and bones weighing me down even more than my foolishly dramatic dress. By the time I can see again, the surface is gone. Darkness reigns.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to give in. To just…open my mouth and let the water take me. This time, for good. I’ve heard drowning is the most peaceful way to die a violent death. My nightmares would disagree with that statement, but this cold darkness is still preferable to what would have happened to me on the bridge. My bones shattered as I was trampled to death. My limbs torn, my face bludgeoned. A thousand other ways to go from being a person to simply a body.