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)
As the warmth of her presence leaves me, I can’t help wilting a little. It’s so much easier to keep up appearances when feeding off the energy of others. We’re close to realizing the goals we’ve been working toward since the moment I met Atalanta and realized we were in alignment. The goals that started even before then, with Circe.
The Thirteen have to fall. I would prefer not to line them up and put a bullet in each of their brains, one after another. Better—smoother—if they can be convinced to step down. Then we can move forward with the plan to bring true democracy to this shit show, nominating and voting three delegates from the three main parts of Olympus: lower city, upper city, and countryside. The people will decide. More than that, if the leaders the population chooses fuck up and don’t represent their interests, there will be checks in place to force them to step down.
I’m not a fool. I understand that there aren’t any known governments in the world right now that are fully free of corruption. That doesn’t mean we can’t strive for something better. And that something better is not a dark queen to take the place of thirteen corrupt assholes—myself included.
Exhaustion weighs heavy on my shoulders. It’s been so long… But with the finish line in sight, I can’t afford to flag. There’s still plenty of work to be done. First step being trying to talk some sense into Zeus now that the stakes are clear. He won’t be happy to see me, but people rarely are these days. I heft myself to my feet and head toward the ladder leading down to the street.
Olympus has to fall, and I still have some key support beams to kick out to make it happen. Time to get to work.
3
Zeus
I wake all at once. It’s a trick I learned at too young an age; there’s no use dwelling on why. I reach over without thinking, touching the empty side of my bed where my wife normally sleeps. Cold. She’s been gone for some time. Whether she woke early or barely waited for me to fall asleep before she left… It’s better not to think about that.
Because then I’ll start wondering where she went, and who she’s with. If she left my bed to go straight to Ixion’s. There’s nothing I can do to stop her. Trying would be the height of foolishness and would only serve to make me look weak. A man who can’t control his own wife. I climb out of bed and start the process of putting myself together.
It’s all unraveling. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve fought and bled and suffered for. Olympus. My city, my people, my place in this world.
I’ve never felt more like a pretender than as I shove out the doors of my building and stalk down the street toward Dodona Tower. On a normal day, the sidewalks would be filled with people heading to work or running errands. Now, it’s a ghost town. The vast majority of the city has evacuated to the countryside in an effort to keep civilians out of the way of Circe’s threat of attack. An attack that never quite manifested. I want to believe it’s because we moved fast enough to thwart her, but there were days between the start of her blockade and the moment I boarded the Penelope to find she wasn’t there—hadn’t been there in some time.
We have to find Circe.
It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world realizes the barrier that kept us separate and safe is down. I doubt it can be repaired, even with the part Circe stole all those years ago. She ensured it would fail eventually, and then she went on to make sure of it with a bomb that took out what was left of the machinery keeping it up.
The outside world will come, first with curiosity and fascination, and then with force. We have a small window to prepare for it, and we can’t very well fucking do that with Circe remaining an active problem. More than that, I have no faith that the Thirteen will be able to come together to protect Olympus from the next threat. They wouldn’t even vote to take down the blockade, and that was a clear and present danger to the city.
I whip out my phone and call Apollo, barely waiting for him to answer before I bark, “Update.”
“There’s nothing.” He sounds exhausted. “My team has been through every camera around the perimeter of the city. It’s tedious but easy enough now that most of the population isn’t present. She’s not here.” He sighs. “Or she knows about the cameras and has taken great pains to avoid them. But, Zeus, no one is perfect. She should have slipped up.”