I open my mouth to ask her about the baby, but click my jaw shut before the words emerge. Foolish sap that I am, I want her to tell me about the pregnancy in her own time. I clear my throat. “I’m going to go find the doctor and get some more information on the others. Stay here.”
“I want to check on my sister.” She must see me getting ready to argue, because she reaches out and tentatively touches my hand. “Please, Perseus. It’s my fault she got hurt. I need to see her.”
“Give me a few minutes, and then I’ll escort you there myself.” I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to let her out of my sight now. I step out of the room and close the door softly behind me.
Only then do I slump against the wall as all the adrenaline and fear and fury race through me, my heart beating so hard it’s a wonder I can’t feel it rattling against my rib cage. My thoughts swirl and spiral and finally fade entirely.
She was fucking shot—she could havedied—and I wasn’t there. She didn’t tell me where she was going so I could send someone to look out for her. Why would she? She doesn’t trust me. She never has. I’m starting to wonder if she ever will.
I reach out and grab the arm of a doctor walking past. Their badge says that their name is Rex. “My wife is in that room behind me. She’s pregnant and she was shot. I need you to check her thoroughly to make sure she’s okay. And…the baby, too. Do you understand me?”
“I… But I’m a…” They swallow hard at whatever look is on my face and nod. “I’ll go check on her now.”
“Donottell her I sent you.”
They blink. “Um. Okay.”
I stand there for what feels like the longest fifteen minutes of my life. When the doctor emerges, it’s everything I can do not to grab them and shove them against the wall until they tell me what I need to know. It doesn’t escape my notice that they stay several steps out of reach.
They straighten their coat. “She’s fine. She lost a little blood, but nowhere near enough to require a transfusion. We can do an ultrasound to check on the pregnancy if you’d like, but the heartbeat seems perfectly within normal ranges.”
The heartbeat. My baby’s heartbeat.
Later, I’ll wade through the mess of conflicting emotions those words bring me. Right now, I only care about Callisto. “Thank you.” I take a deep breath that does nothing to steady me and step back into the room. “All right. Let’s go find your sister.”
19
Hera
I’m in a full-blown panic by the time Perseus comes back into the room. Everything has gone so wrong. I might have been able to convince Persephone to listen to me, but that opportunity is slipping through my fingers with each passing second. If I admit my opportunity is already gone…
I have to talk to Persephone. I have to talk to her right fucking now.
I start fumbling at my IV. “I need to get out of here.” This is all my fault. I should have figured out a way to meet my sister more securely. I should have at least had my team present, or tasked them with sweeping the area around us. I was so fucking careless and people got hurt as a result. People I care about.
They’re going to get hurt worse before this is over if I don’t do something, and fast.
Perseus crosses the room in three long strides and covers my hands with his. “Stop. What are you doing?”
“I have to see my sister.” But not just my sister. I talked so muchshit to Orpheus, but at the first sign of danger, he threw himself forward to protect me. Eurydice is never going to forgive me if he doesn’t walk away from this. Fuck. “I have to see Orpheus, too.”
I fully expect Perseus to tell me to stop, and sit still, and wait for the doctor to come back. Anything to shut me up until someone can show up to sedate me. But he just watches me for several heartbeats with those icy blue eyes and gives a short nod. “I understand, Callisto. We’ll go see them right now. Give me a few minutes to figure out where your clothing is.”
“It’s ruined. The blood, you know.” I’m speaking far too quickly. I recognize that, I understand it’s a bad sign, but I can’t seem to stop. “I already asked Imbros to bring me some spare clothing. Ze should be here shortly.”
“Imbros. Right.” He gives me another long look and then sighs. “Hold still. I don’t want to hurt you by accident.”
I watch in stunned silence as he digs around in the drawers until he finds a box of bandages and then expertly removes the IV from my arm. I can’t find words when he’s unclipping the heart monitors on my chest, as distant as if he were a nurse himself. The machine instantly starts beeping an alarm, but Perseus pushes a few buttons and it’s silenced before it can draw any nurses or doctors from the hall.
I swallow hard. “You know your way around a hospital room?”
“Yes.” He half turns away but seems to reconsider his abruptness. “You know who my father was. You know what he was capable of. Even before her death, my mother saw a lot of hospital rooms. After her death, I did, too.” He looks around as if he didn’t just drop truly horrific information as casually as commenting on the weather.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper.
“There’s no reason you would have. I never visited public hospitals. What would people think, you know?”
People already believed the last Zeus was a wife killer. It didn’t affect their apparent love for him or his social standing within the city. There’s no reason to believe that finding out he was abusing his children would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Zeus still knew enough to hide, which speaks volumes. It makes me want to bring the former Zeus back from the dead so I can kill him all over again.
