Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
She clears her throat, and when she speaks again, she sounds more like herself. “Are you safe?”
No. Not even a little bit. I haven’t been for a very long time. “Please, Seph.” The childhood nickname slips out despite my best efforts. “As soon as possible.”
“I can’t cross the barrier.” She lowers her voice. “I want to see you—you have no idea how much I want to see you—but it’s not just me I have to worry about anymore. It’s Hades and our people and—”
“And the babies.” I press my hand to my stomach, to the pawn within. A future child not created from love, but from necessity.
“Yeah. And the babies.” She pauses. “I can’t let you cross, either. I love you, Cal, but I also know you, and as much as I trust you, I understand that you’re playing our mother’s game now.”
“Not on her behalf,” I snap.
“No, not on her behalf.” Persephone is silent for several beats. “I guess we needed the lessons she taught us after all, didn’t we?”
“I guess we did.” I close my eyes. I should have expected the conversation to go like this, but Circe rattled me more than I want to admit. I have no idea how a sniper—two—got into the lower city. They must have already been there when the barrier went up. “Can we meet on one of the bridges? I have to talk to you and it has to be in person.” She’ll have to hear me out that way, won’t be able to sever the conversation by hanging up.
She hesitates long enough that I suspect she’s going to reject the idea, but she finally says, “Tomorrow. I’ll call you later with the plan once I’ve made the proper arrangements.” Another pause. “Unless Zeus did something and you need sanctuary?”
“No.” The absurdity of it makes me laugh. No matter how much I hate my husband, he’s never actually hurt me. In fact, he takes such care with me that it makes me want to scream. I’m not breakable—I never have been—and I certainly don’t need to be protected by him.
But some things I can’t admit aloud, not even to Persephone.
“Tomorrow, then. I’ll wait for your call.”
“Okay,” she says. “Be safe.”
Not a chance of that. “You too.” I hang up and take what amounts to a steadying breath. Or at least I try. Nothing is going like it should. It was one thing to take personal risks with myself to murder my husband and establish myself as regent to the future Zeus of Olympus. The only one in danger if that plan went wrong was me, and my life is something I’m willing to risk. My family’s lives, on the other hand? Absolutely not.
Circe made a mistake threatening them, but damned if I can see a route through this that doesn’t end in blood and grief.
6
Zeus
“Do you know where your wife is right now?”
I’m getting heartily tired of people asking me that question. I’m getting even more tired of the fact that my answer is usually no. Of course I don’t know where Hera is. She doesn’t talk to me. Not more than she absolutely has to. And every time I turn around, she’s trying to slip a knife between my ribs.
Or cuddling up with that fucker Ixion.
I look up from the reports I’m wading through—more and more of absolutely fucking nothing—to find Atalanta standing in my doorway. “I thought you were supposed to be leading a team searching for Circe.”
Atalanta is a handsome Black woman with medium-brown skin and scars across her face and hands. She wears her black curls back in a stylized mohawk. For as long as I’ve known her, at least until this last year, she worked under Artemis. But after the events of Minos’s party, she transferred to Athena.
I’ve always liked her. She would have made a stellar Ares. But I can’t deny having my sister in the Ares position benefits the city as a whole, and me especially. I don’t have to worry about Olympian forces turning against me when Helen—Ares—is in charge.
“I’m headed out again shortly.” She leans against the doorway, apparently settling in for a conversation I very much don’t want to have.
I sigh and motion Atalanta forward. “I assume you’re here to give me a report, not just to engage in gossip.”
“You know me, Zeus. I only gossip when I’m commanded to.” She waves her phone at me. “I’ve sent you everything we have, as Athena ordered. All of the video feeds around the area where Circe came out of the water came back clean. There’s no sign of her or her people anywhere. Which means that either she’s a ghost—”
“Or she’s in our system.” I don’t know enough about this shit to know whether or not that’s easy to accomplish. Our camera network is one of those things that has always fallen under the jurisdiction of either Apollo or Hephaestus, depending on what the specific ask is. My father never concerned himself with the details, and he taught me not to as well. It’s only now, when the wheels have come off the bus and everything is on fire, that I wish I knew more about the specific ways Olympus runs in the nitty-gritty detail. It’d make it a lot harder for people to put one over on me.