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24
EURYDICE
Minthe must have called ahead, because they’re ready for us when we arrive. The apartment Medusa and Calypso share is a charming little space tucked into the neighborhood on the other side of the winter market. It’s close enough to walk, which we do despite the cold weather. Winter is more than just a promise; it’s here.
The situation seems relaxed enough as Calypso lets us through the front door and guides us into the living room. I’m pretty sure this space came furnished when they initially rented it, but evidence of the way that they’ve made it home is everywhere. On the kitchen counter, there’s a wide array of tea in neatly labeled canisters. The corner of the living room has been converted into an office space for Calypso. There’s a small desk scattered with papers covered in various stages of design. Curiosity flares, but that’s not what I’m here for, so I focus on Ariadne.
She looks muted. I can’t tell if it’s in relief or despair. She does manage to give me a small smile as I sink into the chair across from her. I lean forward. “How are you feeling?”
“Complicated.” She tugs on the throw blanket wrapped around her shoulders until it covers her more completely. “Mostly relieved, though I’m playing the part of betrayer to my father, even if he is an unmitigated ass. Conflicted, because I didn’t tell…” She shrugs. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
I can’t imagine the courage she must’ve had to reach out and ask for help, let alone trust us enough to actually follow through on that offer of help. It’s hard not to feel like a monster for pressing her when she’s so obviously feeling fragile, but I have my orders. I want this role that Hades gave me, and that means doing what’s necessary. “I know that you just went through an ordeal, but—”
“I have my bargain to fulfill,” she finishes for me.
“Yes.”
She looks down at her hands, and although impatience pricks at me, I keep my silence. It doesn’t take long for her to work through whatever thorny past she’s seeing. She’s certainly not looking at anything in this room, or even this day. When she finally speaks, her voice is soft and steady. “I don’t know if my father was always so ambitious that it poisoned everything about him, or if something happened to make him this way, but I do know he wasn’t always a bad father. I have many happy memories from my childhood in Aeaea.”
“What changed?” I should probably be silent and let her talk her way through this, but I’m supposed to be gathering information, and every little detail is important.
“Shecame to the island.”
I don’t move. I’m pretty sure I don’t even breathe. According to Eris, Cassandra heard Hermes and Minos talking at the party rightbefore everything went off the rails. In that conversation, they talked about his benefactor, a mysterious woman Hermes seems to have some connection to. Is this the same woman?
“You have to understand. Our island is almost as isolated as Olympus is, but we don’t have a magical barrier enforcing it. People just have no reason to come; we work very hard not to give them a reason. Aeaea watched tourism take the communities around us and turn them into mockeries of themselves. The council—not the current council, but the one from a couple generations ago—put laws into place ensuring that we couldn’t follow in the path of our neighbors.” The sadness in her voice tells me just as much as her words do.
“The community started to die,” I guess.
Her smile wobbles around the edges. “You’ve heard the story before.”
“Not this one, but there’s historical precedent. It’s horrible to watch a community wilt, but I don’t see what that has to do with our current situation.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say—fifteen years ago, this woman appeared on our island, walked right into the council meeting, and promised that if they put her in charge, it would pave the way to a glorious and prosperous future for our island.”
What she’s saying sounds like something out of a storybook. I narrow my eyes. “From everything you’ve just said, you have a community that is wary of outsiders, if not downright hostile. What conceivable reason would they have to listen to the stranger?”
“Because she promised them Olympus.” She must see the pure disbelief on my face because she shakes her head slowly. “Yeah, thatwas my initial reaction when I started digging through my father’s computer to find out why he suddenly started acting so strangely. It’s true. Ever since that day, Aeaea dances to her tune.”
This is a fascinating, but I don’t see how it helps the situation we’re in now. We already knew that Minos had a benefactor. This is just a little history lesson explaining that. “Okay,” I say slowly.
“It’s okay; I didn’t get it at first either. It wasn’t until she and my father started planning his entrance into Olympus so that Theseus and Aster—the Minotaur—could compete for the title of Ares that I was able to hack into her systems. Then I realized the scope of what they’re planning.”
I blink. “You didwhat?”
She won’t quite meet my eyes. “Like I said, my father wasn’t always neglectful and too busy with his master plan to worry about being an actual father. But ten years is plenty of time to learn any skill, including hacking. It’s not like it’s hard.”
I would beg to differ, but it’s not really my place to argue with her on the subject. “Are you going to keep me in suspense or tell me what you found?”
Her smile steadies a little. “The trouble was that I thought she gave us a fake name, so I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out who she really was. It’s a rookie mistake. Usually the simplest answer is the correct one.” She pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “She didn’t have all this information about Olympus because she was like my father, someone on the outside desperately looking in. She had it because she’sfromOlympus.”
I jolt. “What?” Even living in the country before my mother became Demeter, we should’ve heard about an exile. They areexceedingly rare, with the last Aphrodite being the only one in the last twenty years…or so I thought.
The thing is, once you exile someone, they stop being under your purview. Apollo might have technology to ensure that the former Aphrodite can’t be a danger to us, but was that technology in place fifteen years ago?
Maybe they killed the people they exiled…
The thought makes me shudder. I could ask my mother about this, except no, I can’t, because I agreed that I am working for Hades, which means all my reports will go to him. My mother can no longer be the main authority in my life.
