I go to Desma and Aetos first, grip two bars of their cage, and then let my hands heat with the extraordinary power of Zeus himself. The metal glows red-hot, but no part of my own magic ever burns me, and I pull outward, easily bending the iron. I yank extra hard, knowing that Aetos will need plenty of room to get his big body out.
Desma stumbles out of the cage first and straight into my waiting arms. The swell of her growing baby bumps lightly into mine. She hugs me hard, even though she must be bone-weary.
Drawing back, she looks at me, her eyes as damp as mine. “I understand why you lied to us now, Cat. All these years. I don’t blame you for wanting to protect us.”
Aetos shimmies through the bent bars after her, and Desma leans against him. Somehow, he hugs us both at once, and for a moment, I also lean into his familiar, tattooed frame. Then I step away and turn to the next cage.
Vasili and I look at each other, and my heart turns over achingly hard at the sight of his abused face. There’s dried blood in his mustache, making it lopsided and crisp. His eye is puffed out and tight, the skin around it a terrible color. He needs a healer as soon as possible, or his vision might suffer, and he may never throw a knife as accurately again.
With his good eye, he stares steadily into my face. “I don’t regret a thing.”
Beside him, Phaedra nods her silent agreement. Their love and acceptance transport me back in time to when they first found me. In their wagon home, the red and gold paint forever coated in a fine layer of Sintan dust, they were the first to give me food, shelter, and clothes, knives to replace mine that had already seen too much blood, and a place to lay my head where I wasn’t terrified something was going to jump out at me.
I don’t regret a thing.Vasili isn’t only talking about this terrible, recent trial. He also means the beginning—the day he first saw me, weak and wandering, and quietly coaxed me toward him, and I went. I saw him, his hair already graying, his mustache wide and bushy, and his eyes so strong and kind, and my weary feet simply carried me toward him, and then he carried me to my new circus home. If I hadn’t been so bristly, he and Phaedra would have taken me in as more than just a friend. I’m the child they never had, but I was too damaged to let them have me, either.
I break Vasili and Phaedra out of their cage in mere seconds.
“I love you all,” I say, because it’s not something I say enough. “You’re my family, and I love you.”
“Oh, Cat.” Phaedra’s voice cracks, and Vasili wraps his arms around her.
“How did this happen?” I ask. “Why are you all here?”
“We heard you’d gone missing,” Aetos says. “We figured she must have had you.”
“We walked right into this trap,” Desma says sourly.
Good Gods, she’s pregnant, and she came to Castle Fisafor me? “Are you insane?” I hiss. Not that I’m much better. I pretty much did the same.
Aetos actually smiles, showing a touch of dry mirth. “You were with us for eight years. You must have rubbed off on us.”
I snort. “I’ve decided to stop charging recklessly into dangerous situations. That’s now a bad habit of the past.”
There are raised eyebrows all around. Griffin’s are the highest.
My husband slides his arm around my waist. “You really think you can do that?”
I wrap my arm around his waist, too. “I can try.”
Griffin’s eyes dance with humor as he looks down at me. And despite everything, we all laugh together, because that’s what friends and family do.
Finally, I turn to my brothers and open their cage. Laertes and Priam step out, watching us warily. I don’t ask them for a vow. I don’t ask them for anything. I say only, “Choose your loyalties carefully.”
“Good advice,” a calm, smooth new voice counsels from the side.
I turn to see Persephone, Selena amplified to her Olympian form.
I scowl. That she let these people—herfriends—suffer still infuriates me. There’s obviously more Goddess in her than I thought, more of the deity and less of the person I believed I knew.
A loud boom accompanies Ares’s entrance. He always did like a show.
Everyone but Griffin and I looks stunned and confused by their sudden arrival. We pray to the Gods, we make offerings, but no one ever really expects them to answer, let alone appear. Added to that is the fact that Selena is so obviously more than my circus friends ever could have imagined she was. It must be hard to take in.
“You risked big,” I say in a careful monotone. She must know how furious I am.
“We all gained bigger,” Persephone answers, her tone just as flat.
And that’s the difference between my Olympian ancestors and me. My view is finite, and theirs is too vast for me to see.
