There’s a rushing in my ears, so loud I can barely think past it. “Say that again.”
“She was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, but it’s her.” Patroclus flips his tablet around to show a screenshot of a woman who is clearly Hermes, even though she’s dressed nondescriptly and has her head down. “Note the bag on her back. That’s the rifle.”
I can actually feel my blood pressure rising. I’ve tolerated Hermes’s ridiculousness because it seemed relatively harmless, at least until Minos showed up. But ever since then, she’s proved herself to be just as dangerous and ruthless as Circe is. “Where is she now?”
Helen huffs out a breath. “Your guess is as good as ours. We’ve been trying to track her down even before this, but with little success.”
Hermes shot my wife. She endangered our unborn child. She could have killed Callisto. I clench my fists. “When you find her, I’ll deal with her personally.”
My sister reaches out a tentative hand and squeezes my shoulder. “We’ll find her, Perseus. Callisto is with her mother right now, and there’s nowhere safer. We’ll figure it out.”
Every time someone says that, I believe it less.
But no matter how much I want to turn around, march into that tent, and take my wife home, there’s a reason we’re out here, and we need to see it through.
I force myself to survey the mountains. My father wasn’t fond of the country, so we never spent much time outside the city limits. Maybe there’s beauty to the ragged peaks stretching high into the sky before us, but all I can see is the possibility for ruin. “Poseidon suspects Circe might be utilizing some little-known mountain pass.”
“Yes, I read the report.” Helen turns to face the mountains aswell, her shoulder nearly brushing mine. “I wish I had better news, but we don’t have the manpower to search this area in any kind of effective way. Even if there weren’t the evacuees to assist with and a city to search, we’re too inexperienced with this type of terrain. We almost lost someone earlier today because they didn’t see a crevasse and nearly fell in. I suspect we could search the mountains for years and not find every secret they hide. There might be a pass, but we are unlikely to find it.”
She’s right. It’s just not what I want to hear. We have maps of the mountains, but they’re ancient. For as long as I can remember, and at least going back several generations, Olympians have mostly ignored the peaks to the west and north. There are specific crops and herbs that grow in the lowlands, but once you reach a certain elevation, it’s only rock. And that rock is sheer and impossible to scale. Or so we thought.
I sigh. “What about drones? They should be able to see more than we would on the ground.”
“Yes, but you have all hands on deck searching for Circe in the city. We only have so many hands, Perseus.” She glances at Patroclus and Achilles and steps a little closer to me so she can lower her voice. I appreciate her attempt at privacy, but they’re standing near enough that there’s no way they don’t hear. “We already know that Circe is in the city. She’s got maybe twenty people, tops. All we need to do is find her—”
“But that’s the problem. We can’t find her.” I scan the mountains, but there’s nothing to see. The day is cold and cloudy, mist covering the top peaks from our sight. “She’s smart enough to know she can’t take the city with so few people. She’ll have another way.”
Helen curses under her breath. “She’s only one woman. I understand that we’ve suffered losses, but she’s human, not some supernatural boogeyman who will pop up when we least expect it. We just need to be prepared.”
I want to believe that. Truly I do. But evidence supports one truth: being prepared isn’t enough. I nod in the direction of the north. “Walk with me.”
She worries her bottom lip but nods. “Achilles. Patroclus. Would you mind getting the search parties put together? We’re running out of daylight, and I don’t want to spend the night out here.”
Neither one of them looks too happy to let her walk off with me, but I’m her brother. Even if we haven’t always seen eye to eye, I’ve never wished her harm. Yes, she would’ve married the winner of the Ares title if I had my way, but after seeing both Achilles and Patroclus perform in the trials, it was all but guaranteed one of them would’ve won if Helen hadn’t. Except shedidwin—because she was the best—and fuck if I’m not so proud of her that it makes me a little ill.
We start to the north, skirting the edges of the foothills. I wait until we’re well out of hearing range before I speak. “What do you think of the Thirteen?”
Helen shoots me an alarmed look. “What kind of question is that?”
“Before she shot my wife, Hermes came to see me.” Easier to focus on Hermes as the source of the topic than the careful conversation I had with Callisto in the privacy of our bedroom. Helen and Hermes used to be friends, before their relationship buckled under the weight of Hermes’s treachery. I relay everything Hermes saidbefore she disappeared. Helen looks more and more concerned the longer I speak.
She barely waits for me to finish before she cuts in. “It won’t work. The legacy families would never allow the Thirteen to cease to exist. And what would she set up in place of it? A democracy? That’s not easy to accomplish, and it’s just as likely to be rife with corruption as our system.”
“If there were term limits, it would prevent a lot. As members of the Thirteen, we hold our positions until we step down or die, and the number of people who have stepped down is minimal. Most keep the positions until their deaths.”
“I’m aware,” she snaps. “Are you actually giving this credence? You were trained to be Zeus from the moment you were born. You’d walk away from that?”
“Eris did.” I speak the words we’ve so carefully danced around for months. After Eris stepped down from the Aphrodite title, we never spoke of it again. Not her and me. Not Helen and me. From the expression on my sister’s face, I suspect they haven’t, either. I press forward. “She’s happier for it.”
Helen glances over her shoulder. I follow her gaze to where we can still see the silhouettes of her partners standing on the hill we left behind. “I fought so hard to become Ares. I almost lost so much.”
“I know.”
“Even if I were willing to hear Hermes out and entertain this idea, that doesn’t remove the threat of Circe. We have to deal with her before we can do anything else.”
She’s right. It’s the proper priority—not cowardice. Or that’swhat I tell myself as I nod. “Agreed. We’ll shelve the conversation until this conflict is resolved.”
We keep walking for some time in silence, curving to the east with the mountains. We reach the edge of the encampment and are about to turn back when I catch sight of something strange. I grab Helen’s arm and tug her back a few steps. “What is that?”
