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“Is it awful that I want to hurt her?” he whispers, shame burning his cheeks.
“No. It’s not. But if we can take her powers, maybe we can let her live out her life as a mortal.” I honestly hadn’t thought past that next step. It seems so improbable, that we will defeat her. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a plan. Should there be a trial where all of our misdeeds are dragged into the open light of day? Do we reveal the existence of Titans and weapons that can kill Gods? Are we just setting ourselves up for more trouble?
“Daphne?” Finn asks. I realize then that while I spiraled down, down, down into the possibilities of tomorrow and the day after, Finn had been talking to me and I totally missed it.
“What was that?” I ask, walking again. Rather than taking him to his rooms, I walk him to mine, determined to keep him out of his room for just a little longer.
“I said, I think you and Essos should take over Solarem. You can find someone else to rule the Underworld. What Solarem needs now is a leader who will actually lead.” Finn’s steps falter when we walk past his room.
“I’m not ready to be alone. Come sit with me and Cat in my room?” I’m almost begging him.
Finn turns his head toward his room, then back to me. “Fine, but only if you consider it.”
“Essos and I have no dreams of leading more than just the Underworld. We want to be able to fix what was broken. It’s also been so long since I last ruled. You can’t expect me to step in and rule all of Solarem.”
“Someone has to. Xavier made it clear that he’s not that person. We’ve all known it for a long time, but no one wanted to say or do anything about it. There is no better time.”
“You’re talking about a coup, and I’m not interested. Let’s survive this and see what happens next. I have complete faith that Xavier will want to do better.” I don’t say that I think that part of Xavier’s reluctance to actually lead had less to do with laziness and more to do with his aversion to Posey. She was the one that tried to push him to do more. She was the one that pushed him to take on more and more that he passed off to Essos.
“I plan on helping,” Cat pipes up, taking a seat on the couch and helping Finn sit beside her. He turns his head toward her sharply.
“And what do you know of the politics of Gods?” he snaps.
A frown tugs my lips down. He might be one of my best friends, but Cat is my sister. I will defend her and fight the battles she doesn’t want to. This might be one that she wants to take on herself, but I can’t tolerate his tone.
“Whatever you will teach me,” she says, playing on his pride before I can even open my mouth.
Finn’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You think I can teach you about what it means to be not only a Goddess, but a queen?” Finn scoffs, slouching in his chair. His sunglasses start to slide down his nose and he pushes them back up self-consciously.
“I think you can teach me what makes the people of Solarem tick. I think you can teach me about a lot more than you think, like what they want and how disappointed they have been in Xavier and Posey. You seem to know a lot about that personally.”
“And do you think, Catalina, that just because the Fates said you were meant to be together, that all of the sudden the biggest man-whore in all of Solarem is going to keep his dick dry just because you told him to? His focus has always been on chasing a warm body to fuck and not on leading.”
“Finn,” I warn, but Cat holds up a hand to silence me.
“Isn’t that what your Fates do? Pre-determine everyone’s destinies and who they were meant to be with? I don’t believe that this will change who he is, and I don’t want to change him. If I’m not enough for him then we can face that, but maybe I don’t just want to be with him. Maybe I’m biding my time to taste all the goods that Solarem has to offer. You said it yourself, you live too long to limit yourself to one gender. I’ve lived and died as a woman in love with straight men so many times, maybe I want to see what else life has to offer. Maybe I want to have several lovers. Maybe I’ll have a queen’s harem, but I know that I was born or created or however gods come to exist to be the Queen of the Pantheon, and I’ll be damned if anyone will stop me from fulfilling my destiny. Actually, I take that back. I literally was damned to prevent that and I won’t let it happen again.”
Cat is breathing heavily by the time she finishes the tirade that she actually ended up shouting in Finn’s face. I expect him to be turning various shades of reds or purples from being filled with rage, but he’s not. There is an amused tilt to his lips.
“Sounds like someone is ready to do what it takes to be queen. As long as you’re not going to step all over people to get there, you can. You forget, Catalina, I know you. I understand you. You’re going to make a great queen and I know you will serve the people of Solarem well. We just have to survive long enough to get there.”
“That means gettingyouinto fighting shape,” I point out, ready to be on the receiving end of his ire. Whatever fight is in Finn leaves him quickly and he deflates.
“You’re talking about those gadgets Tink made, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
Tink never showed me what he made for Finn, just that he made something. I envision some horrible thing that he will have to use, but I’m not sure. The craftsmanship of the gloves and the belts was perfect. Maybe he has another way to do this without making Finn feel worse.
“I don’t want to become Frankenstein’s monster. I’m already hideously scarred and Dion won’t touch me.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “What if he won’t have me? What if it makes me more monstrously deformed? Never mind that Bria is here now too.”
I surprise Finn by cupping his face and pressing my fingertips to his temples He jerks back and out of my grip, but I see the change in his features. With one touch, I am able to give Finn a gift. All I’m doing is sharing with Finn what he can’t grasp for himself.
He saw what I’ve been seeing. He’s seen the last few weeks of Dion and Bria fussing over him, tears that I caught Dion spilling that I shouldn’t have been privy to, and the general concern the rest of us have expressed about how to help him. There are moments of Bria consoling Dion and little signs of solidarity once they were able to get past their earlier animosity. None of our conversations have been about how horrible he looks or how we can’t bear to look at him any longer. They’re not full of pity, they’re full of helplessness, knowing that he is our friend, knowing that we love him and there’s nothing he will let us do until he’s ready.
Finn covers his face with his hands, collapsing in on himself. I reach around his shoulders and hug him until he folds his body in half. Cat takes over from there, following him down to whisper something in his ears that I don’t catch. I rub his back, knowing that for now this is how he has to cry.
“I’m trying,” he grits out, sitting up so quickly, he nearly smacks his head into Cat’s nose. She gets out of the way just in time.
