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I laid my head down on the table with a groan. How were we supposed to do anything with a hundred soldiers following us around? There was no way to move discreetly with that many people, and the boat Vasileios had arranged definitely didn’t have enough room.
“I know you guys said they nominally listen to Wild,” Dare began hesitantly. “But have you considered, er,commandingthem?”
I turned my head to the side, resting it on my forearms so I could watch Grace’s expression. She chewed nervously on her lower lip. “I understand what it’s like to be a slave to my instincts. I don’t ever want to take away anyone’s free will.”
There was my Gracie again, wanting perfect safety and perfect comfort for everyone. No wonder the Fates hadn’t made a daimon the Prophêtis. We didn’t possess that kind of compassion.
“Hey,” Foster panted, jogging up the steps and skidding a stop in front of us. “The big press conference kept getting pushed back, but it’s happening now. You guys are going to want to see this.”
He quickly turned up the volume on his phone, holding it out for us to watch the broadcast playing on the screen.
“There are nogods. This is nonsense.”
“Is that thePresident?” I asked, squinting at the screen. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to politics, but I was pretty sure that dude was the one in charge. Behind him were a bunch of other stoic, boring-looking people that I guessed were other politicians? World leaders?
“Sure is. We’ve really hit the big time,” Bullet noted. “At least this one isn’t an agathos, though I can spot a couple in the background.”
Bullet was right—there were two pale-eyed agathos in suits in the crowd. While the humans may know about our existence, apparently the eyes, our biggest giveaway, were still hidden from them.
“There is clearly some kind of genuine threat, some elaborate hoax at play,” the speaker continued, standing behind a podium. His suit was rumpled, and there were dark bags under his eyes. All of them looked terrible—like they’d been up for two days straight discussing the whole world-falling-apart issue.
Good.
“Perhaps some sort ofSatanicmagic involved—I’m not ruling that out. You heard her say herself that she wants you to dorituals. But the nonsense that thiswoman, Grace Bellamy, was spouting is just that—nonsense. There are explanations for everything—the scorpions, the light effects at the ruins—all can be logically explained.Willbe logically explained.”
I didn’t think I imagined the extra derision in his voice when he said ‘woman’. Like Grace was some sort of hysterical, lesser being that only an idiot would listen to. Was that how people saw Grace? That was so unfair.
Where the fuck were Nyx and Gaia throughout the centuries of patriarchal oppression? They’dchosento stay silent through all that bullshit.
“It is clear to all of us,” he continued, “that Grace Bellamy is deliberately creating a divide between people who are already concerned about the very explainable rise in natural disasters. That she is exploiting their fear for her own gain. We have already seen evidence of the violence her words and actions have caused. Grace Bellamy must be found and detained. That is how we will get explanations. She is a threat, and while we don’t currently know the full scope of what she’s done or what sheplansto do—”
“Joke’s on them, we don’t have a plan,” I scoffed.
“—we know that it cannot continue. A notice has been issued by Interpol—this is with a view to locating and arresting Grace Bellamy with the intent of extradition back to the United States. We know that she was last seen in Athens, but she may have left Greece by now and her location is currently unknown. There will be a reward in place for anyone who helps in apprehending her, but we do urge you to be careful. This is an unstable individual with delusions of grandeur. Proceed with extreme caution.”
He was wrong, and we all knew it, but Grace couldn’t quite hide her shame through the bond at his words. She’d been told she was wrong and broken and unnatural her entire life, and now she was hearing it on a global scale.
“Why don’t they know where I am?” Grace asked, her voice disconcertingly flat. “We weren’t that secretive in getting here. There should have been witnesses.”
“My guess is that they’re either discrediting those accounts, or people here have been less than forthcoming with authorities who claim the very real threat they experienced was justspecial effects,” Bullet replied, rolling his eyes. “They’re trying to downplay it all. To keep everyone under control.”
“They’re suggesting Grace has a god complex as a way of undermining her,” Dare agreed.
“Right, when what Grace actually has is aCassandracomplex, in that she gives people accurate warnings and no one fucking believes her,” Bullet muttered. “Though those agathos in the background are looking a little nervous now.”
He was right, they did look a little uncomfortable. Whatever they believed about Grace, theyknewthat what they’d seen hadn’t been special effects. They knew Gaia was real, they knew she was mad and wanted the daimons wiped out. They fuckingworshippedher. That they stood back now and said nothing just proved how cowardly they were, how even if they couldn’t lie, they valued power and prestige over the truth.
“I’ll take questions now—” the President began, immediately drowned out by reporters all clamoring at once to ask their follow-ups, their voices blending together into an indecipherable blur of angry sound. No, maybe not angry. Afraid, perhaps?
What we were facingwasscary. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the human authorities were going to make that fear worse, not better. I doubted the two agathos in the back of the frame had helped keep things calm in whatever secret meetings had led up to this moment.
“I’m not entertaining this heresy!” the President shouted, evidently hearing a question that we couldn’t. “This is all alie. The elaborate speech she fed you was alie. There is no Nyx, noGaia. This is all—”
The stream cut out.
Chapter 9
Thenoisewasoverwhelming.
