I had already decided that it didn’t matter, but hearing her confession after giving my own delivers a cruel kind of hope. We’re trapped and have been outmaneuvered by our enemies, and yet I’ve never been surer of what I’m feeling. I frame her face with my hands. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she whispers. She closes her eyes. “Too little, too late. No matter what Circe told my mother, these trials are a sham. She’s going to kill us all. The Thirteen, the legacy families, anyone who might threaten her power.”
I hug her closer again. I wish I had a solution or a clever plan to get us out of this, but even with everything she’s done, I didn’t see the betrayal from Demeter coming. If it hadn’t put my wife firmly in the crosshairs, I might even admire Demeter for being so savvy. It’s a clever play, no matter how ruthless. “That was always her aim.”
Callisto sniffles a little and slips from my arms. “Damn hormones. I hope my mother has a plan for Persephone. She’s not one of the Thirteen andwearen’t a legacy family, so putting her on trial won’t go the way Circe wants. Persephone is all but universally beloved and she’s visibly pregnant. That will inspire sympathy.” She shudders. “There will be an accident. That’s the only way.”
I can’t stand being this close to her and not touching her. I catchher hand and lace my fingers through hers again. “We’ll figure it out.”
“How?” Callisto gives a ragged laugh. “If you didn’t notice, we’re in a cell in the middle of what is essentially an enemy camp. Circe has integrated her people with ours, and while we may have the majority, she’s right about the greater population not being happy. We can’t count on any help from that direction. Hades has even more reason to stay behind the barrier in the lower city, and the rest of the Thirteen couldn’t even unify to vote to act when Circe was on our doorstep. With Hades, my mother, and us out of the equation, there’s no way they’ll manage it now. We’re fucked.”
“When you put it like that, it does sound bad.”
She blinks. “Did you just make a joke?”
I can actually feel the ice cracking around me. It only happens with her. It’s only ever happened with her. “A small one.”
She shakes her head slowly, a grin pulling at her lips. “Now is not the time for jokes, Husband.”
“Might as well go to the gallows laughing, Wife.”
“Of course you would have gallows humor.” She chuckles a little before her smile fades away. “We’re in trouble.”
“I know.”
“I don’t see a way out.”
I hate to admit it, but… “I don’t, either.”
We stare at each other for a long moment. “Well…shit.” She walks to the wall opposite the door, tugging me behind her, and slides to the floor. I follow her down, close enough that we’re pressed together from shoulder to thigh. I wrap my arm around her and we sit in silence as the light through the small window changes. By thetime it’s dark enough that I can’t make out her features clearly, I still don’t have a plan or answers.
We are well and truly fucked.
I don’t realize I’ve shut my eyes until Callisto goes tense beside me. “Do you hear that?” she whispers.
“Hear what?” But as soon as I voice the question, I register the faint sound of a scuffle outside the door. It sounds like a fight. Has Circe decided that she won’t risk a trial for Callisto? Surely she noticed the way Demeter hesitated, ever so briefly. It would be hard to frame an attack in a locked cell as an accident, but I’m sure she has some fiction ready to spin. “Get behind me.”
“Perseus?” For once, even as Callisto questions me, she obeys, slipping between me and the wall. I move until we’re just to the side of the door. If someone comes in here with the intent of violence, they’ll be looking ahead, not in either direction.
What will you do, fool? You have nothing.
I have my hands, my body, my determination that no one will lay a single finger on my wife. We’re in an impossible situation, with no way out, but I’m not about to stop fighting.
The sounds on the other side of the door cease. For a moment, I wonder if it was nothing, but then the door swings silently open. I tense, ready to spring.
“If you jump me the moment I walk through the door, this is going to be quite the botched escape. I’m hardly at my best right now, thanks to a little friendly poisoning. We don’t have time for heroics. We have to move.”
Hermes.
“What trap is this?”
“No trap.” She speaks quietly and quickly, and even though I can’t actually see her, she sounds absolutely exhausted—a condition I didn’t know could affecther.
“Did you saypoisoned?” Callisto whispers.
“I did, in fact. Don’t worry, I’m fine. You don’t survive in Olympus without building up an intentional immunity to a whole boatload of poisons.” She laughs faintly. “Or maybe I’m just a paranoid type of person. Anyway, there’s a shift change in seven minutes. We have a lot of ground to cover and very little time to do it. Are you coming or not?”
I open my mouth to argue, to point out that she wants the same thing as Circe, that she’s no doubt leading us out of a cell and into certain death.
