Yes, the greenery here is half-fake, but I’m not a perfect person and it’s pleasing to see plants and flowers even in the darkest part of winter. Or that was the theory. In reality, I haven’t been back here since renovations were completed. I walked through the house and realized it was a tribute to a future I would never experience. A future spent with Circe.
I key in the code and slip inside, making sure the gate is closed behind me. It’s late enough in the year that most of the live bushes have lost their leaves, but there are still a few dozen sharing their artificial brightness. It’s strange to see them against their hibernating neighbors. Maybe I shouldn’t have “planted” the fakes. Maybe…
Well, I made a lot of mistakes back then. I was young and foolish and part of me truly believed building this tribute to a dead womanwould be enough to ease the pain of losing her. I was wrong on both counts. She’s not dead, and it still hurts as much today as it did the moment Zeus came back from their honeymoon and announced Circe had passed. A loss opened up inside me when I heard those words and nothing I’ve done since has come close to filling it.
Maybethat’sthe reason I’ve held off on pursuing the interest Atalanta and I both feel. I don’t have a whole heart to give her, and she deserves nothing less.
I key open the door and step inside, refusing to take the time to brace myself. Barely a week ago, I sent Ariadne and Icarus to this house to hide. Naturally, Atalanta was clever enough to follow them here, but she didn’t catch them. An intentional mistake. I needed the Minotaur to help me with a tiny little task and he would have gotten unruly if something happened to his precious love or her brother.
I expect to see the dust disturbed and the house to feel like someone had been here recently—because someone was, in fact, here recently. What Idon’texpect was for it to be spotless.
The wooden floors gleam under my feet as I walk slowly down the hall. The first room—a parlor—is more of the same, the sheets covering the furniture nowhere in evidence. It looks just like it did the one and only time I walked through before closing it up for good.
“What the fuck?” But I know, don’t I? Maybe I’ve always known.
I find her in the bedroom. Circe reclines on the bed, reading a paperback novel with two people clutched tight together on the cover, the woman’s dress looking like something with claws got to it. For a moment, I’m convinced I wandered into another world, onewhere she wasn’t ripped violently from me, one wherethisis our life—where she still reads those titillating novels and then kisses me as if she never needs to breathe.
She was very careful after her “death.” Even after Minos dropped enough hints that his sponsor was someone I knew intimately, I still didn’t quite believe it could be her. No amount of digging found digital evidence of her—no pictures, no social media, no government documents. I even tried to hack into several banking systems, but while I’m good, I’m not on that level.
I’m not prepared for her beauty. Oh, she was always gorgeous in the fresh-faced way young people tend to be, but it’s been almosttwenty years. The girl who I loved bears only a passing resemblance to the woman who idly presses a bookmark into her book and closes it carefully.
Her short hair leaves her face in sharp relief, giving me nothing to focus on but her big dark eyes and her model-like cheekbones and, gods, her mouth. It’s as if the years have melted away what little softness she had and now her beauty is a weapon.
I belatedly realize I still haven’t spoken, but the air has been sucked right out of my lungs. I can only stand there and stare.
She rises slowly, wearing a pair of leggings and a knit sweater that shows off her athletic legs and her lean body. And, damn it, her breasts press against the thin fabric, tempting curves that my hands know the weight of, despite my being sure time had stolen the memory from me.
“Circe,” I finally manage, my voice mangled.
“Hecate.” She moves around the edge of the bed and stops before me. In her bare feet, she’s only a couple inches taller than me.She lifts an elegant hand, but stops short of touching my face. “The years look good on you.”
“You too.” Gods, I can do better than this. I’m no longer just Hecate, victim of the whims of the powerful. I’mHermes, for fuck’s sake. There’s never been a situation I can’t find a way to backflip through—sometimes literally.
But standing here, held captive by her gaze, I’m not Hermes at all. I reallyamonly Hecate, a woman with more dreams than I can contain alone.
Circe has new lines at the edges of her eyes, but they only enhance her beauty. She surveys me. “You know, when I realizedyouwere the new Hermes, I hated you.”
My mouth is so dry, I can’t possibly dream of swallowing. “Hated, past tense.”
“Yes, hated, past tense.” Her full lips curve. “You were the one who taught me how tolook. It didn’t take long to figure out you were on a revenge mission.” She glances around the room. “This house only further confirms it. You didn’t miss a single detail, did you?”
“How could I?” I whisper. “Those dreams were all I had left of you after…”
“Yes. After.” She cups my cheek the way she used to, all those years ago. “Join me. I’m so close to accomplishing more than we ever dared dream.”
I almost say yes. That word, those three letters, dance on the edge of my tongue. I have to concentrate to swallow them back. “What is your endgame, Circe?”
She shrugs, so elegant that I want to fall to my knees and weep.“Nothing more than what we always talked about. A dream, just like this house.”
I knew it to be true the moment I realized who Minos’s benefactor was. I just didn’t want to believe it. I’m ruthless to a fault and I have blood on my hands—and will have more before this is over. But being Hermes, moving through circles previously closed to me, made me realize something I never could have imagined all those years ago, when the downfall of Olympus was just a dream shared in the dark space between my lips and hers.
The legacy families are just people. There are good ones and bad ones and petty ones and selfish ones. Some of them actually use their privilege to do good things. The system of the Thirteen must be abolished, but I don’t have the stomach for wholesale slaughter. Some of those people have become my friends, even if they don’t trust me much right now. Even if they weren’t…there have to be lines.
Otherwise, we’re just as bad as the thing we’re trying to eradicate.
It kills me to take a step back, to put more distance between the love of my life and me. The next step feels like I’m being stabbed. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Her smile never dims. “I thought that might be your answer.” She looks around the room again, but her gaze is distant in a way that makes me think she’s seeing beyond these walls. “This place has changed you.”
