But I don’t know what, and so I can’t bargain that information to Circe in return for my family’s safety. I’m not even certain where she is right now, if she’s still on that ship in the bay or if she’d already moved forward with whatever her plans are. I deeply resent not knowing.
Exhaustion rolls over me in a wave. Before the parasite, I could operate on little sleep for weeks on end without issue. Now, I need to be in bed by midnight or I’m weaving on my feet. I’m well past that time tonight…or this morning, more accurately. I should have sent Ixion away and tried to get some sleep, but I can’t stand the thought of being in that big bed and being surprised by Zeus coming home unexpectedly. That’s all.
I scrub my hands over my face, apply my lotion, and pad out to the perfect darkness of our bedroom. Or near-perfect. Dawn is making itself known in between the cracks of the curtains. Really, I should skip sleeping entirely and go about my day, but my body has other ideas.
The sheets are cool against my skin, the heat from Zeus’s sleeping body not reaching my side of the bed. I settle into place, moving gingerly to avoid waking him and potentially startinganother conversation I don’t have capacity to deal with right now. Or ever.
A few hours. In a few hours, I’ll be able to think again, to plan, to find the angle needed to see us through the coming conflict…
Interlude I
Hermes
“This is a problem.”
I lower the binoculars and sigh. “Problems are nothing new. Every step of this has gotten more complicated for no damned reason. We’ll deal with it.” I almost interfered with Zeus’s cute little coup’s attempt to sink our enemy’s small fleet, but ultimately the ships wereanotherproblem that needed to be taken care of. Olympus has done nothing but hurt those it’s meant to care for, and evacuating the civilians to the countryside—even though Demeter had the foresight to purchase land specifically for this purpose from one of my many shell companies—will put pressure on our food supply sooner rather than later. We needed that blockade gone.
Of course, now no one knows where our enemy is—not even me—andthatis a larger problem.
Atalanta shifts next to me and bumps her shoulder against mine. “Normally me pointing out problems has you giddy with the opportunity to fix them.”
“It keeps life interesting,” I say absently. She smells good—reallygood—like coconut or something tropical that makes my mouth water. Unfortunately, pressing my nose to her skin or, gods forbid,tastingher is out of the question. She’s the only true friend and ally I have left in Olympus, so I’d be a damn fool to complicate things by crossing that line. It’s something we’ve both mutually—silently—agreed to talk aboutafter.
After this plan that’s been years in the making either fails spectacularly or, more likely, gets pulled off even more spectacularly. Yes, there have been hiccups. Atalanta had a better than stellar shot at the Ares title, and if she’d won the competition, it would have made everything so much simpler. But no one could have anticipated Minos—or the news he brought with him to Olympus. That Circe is alive and well and bent on revenge.
Circe.
I shiver. No use thinking about her. Not now. Not ever. “You should get going. Athena will be looking for you.”
“Not for a bit.” Atalanta shrugs, her gaze distant. “Since they didn’t findher, I’m about to be up to my eyeballs in a wild-goose chase. I don’t suppose you have any information about where she is so I can just cut her throat and be done with it?”
We’re perched on the roof near the shipyard, watching Poseidon return without hostages—orIcarus. At least one person in Olympus can be trusted to act true to form. He’s honorable to a fault, and sending Icarus away buttons up a loose end that someone would have taken advantage of.
None of that explainswhereCirce is.
“I don’t know everything, darling.” It’s the truth. If it wasn’t… I want to believe I’d hand that information to Atalanta willingly. Ifwe knew where Circe is, Atalanta would have a better than average chance of killing her. She’s very good at what she does, andshehas no messy, complicated emotions when it comes to Circe. Not like I do.
It’s a good thing I don’t know where Circe is, because I can’t say for certain I would give the information to Atalanta. And then I’d have to face some feelings I’ve been purposely avoiding.
“Shocking,” she murmurs, her brows drawing together into a beautiful frown. “Would you tell me if youdidknow where she is?”
I know the proper response. Press my hand to my chest and swear with all apparent sincerity that, of course, I would convey Circe’s location to Atalanta and, naturally, I want her dead as much as the rest of the Thirteen. Itshouldbe the truth. I might be enacting a plan that hatched many, many years ago with Circe herself, but our methods vary wildly. We are not in alignment. Not anymore. Never again.
“Hermes.” Atalanta grips my shoulder, her strong fingers anchoring me in place even as her dark-brown eyes see far too much. “I know better than anyone the kind of history you have with her…”
History. It’s such a trite way of putting it. There was a season in my life when my sun rose and set on Circe’s smile. A simpler time, yes, but all the crueler for it. Olympus has never been the utopia the Thirteen and legacy families pretend. Someone has to pay the price for their ambitions, and it falls to the civilians who might as well be nameless as far as those in power are concerned. For the first third of my life, I lived in the countryside and worked in one of the farms that feeds the city, Circe by my side.
And we dreamed of a better world. One that wasfair.
Ironic, that. Nothing in life is fair. If it was, Zeus never would have seen Circe on her trip into the city to buy me a gift with her hard-earned money. He never would have taken her, married her, and murdered her on their honeymoon.
To find that hedidn’tmurder her…
I clear my throat. “Yes, we have history. Ancient history.” Losing Circe broke something in me that will never be repaired. It was only finding Atalanta and having her there to pick up the pieces that saved me. Saved, but never healed. Not fully. Even if Circe isn’t dead like I believed for damn near twenty years. I attempt a smile, though it falls flat. “It’s a nonissue.”
Atalanta snorts. “You can lie to everyone else with aplomb. Don’t lie to me. I know better. It’s an issue.”
Damn it, I hate when she perceives me. I sit back and kick my feet out over the drop to the street. “It won’t be an issue in the way you mean. It will hurt to see her again, but you and I have been working for damn near fifteen years to give Olympus a chance to fix itself. Having my ex show up to blow the place to smithereens is not the distraction you think it will be.”
