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“They were worth less money. Cronos needed more of them to make it worth it.”
I could throw up. Being on the street and getting beat to shit wasn’t pleasant, but I wasn’t small. Not that thirteen is anything close to an adult.
Still.Still. I’ve always been strong.
“Anyway.” Zeus sounds like he’d rather move on to another topic. “He was used to it when we were very young. The last time I heard him scream was the year we turned seven. Never again after that. So when I heard it, I thought...”
He doesn’t say, in the end.
I take the opportunity. “How long ago was that?”
Zeus looks me in the eye.
I look back at him, keeping my face as innocent as possible.
“Fifty years,” he says slowly. “Give or take.”
“Youcannotbe more than forty. I don’t even think you lookthatold.”
He shrugs, and hope creeps in so slowly I don’t recognize it at first.
“So you…” I don’t dare say it out loud. “And Daisy?”
“My theory is that Cronos kept time,” Zeus says, like he’s discussing an HBO limited series. “And we killed him. So.”
They—fuck. Eliminating the enemy is second nature to a soldier, but they weren’t soldiers. They were a bunch of messed-up kids who grew up trying to survive the bad hand they were dealt in a man who kept time and loved cruelty.
“So if you keep Hades alive—”
“If you keepheralive, I would guess she’d live for…” He lets out a short laugh. “A very long time.”
Okay.
Okay.
“I should have said more to you when you came here.”
Takes me a second to stop thinking about how I’ve never been able to die and catch up. “Why?”
“You thought I was trying to make up for what I’d done at the whorehouse, and you were right, but I was also trying to make up for something else.”
“What?”
“Cronos liked to kill the women.” His tone goes flat, like it’s too hard to talk about when he’s at a party. “He didn’t want me to walk around with bruises, so he used them against me. If he caught me helping Hades or Poseidon or Demeter, he’d torture them in front of me. Ares was pissed when I told them about that. He thought I should’ve died instead, and I agreed with him. I should have.”
Hearing it from him is another shock. He’s sowrong. “You couldn’t do that.”
“I know. I knew, on some level, that killing me wouldn’t stop him from killing any more women, but mostly it would mean my siblings had no chance. Poseidon would disappear. Hades would die.”
“And your sister?”
“I can’t—” A shivery shake of his head. “That’ll have to wait for another day.”
“Okay.”
“What I mean is that I understand the impulse to lay down your life for the people you love. And I understand how hard it isnotto do it, too. So…thank you. For doing both for Daisy.”
Dying for her was as easy as breathing. “It was nothing.”
