“How long has she been working for you?” Patrick asked.
“As my aide?” The Dagda stepped around Tisiphone to reach his office door. “Since I became mayor of this grand city.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Persephone asked a favor of me years ago when she discovered Hades was attempting to recruit her pantheon for Ethan’s gain. We needed some way to keep ahead of the Dominion Sect and find my wife’s staff since you were incapable of paying your soul debt.”
“Fuck you,” Jono snapped out before Patrick could.
The Dagda ignored the insult as he entered his office. “I offered Tisiphone a place to ply her trade with no one the wiser in exchange for information on what Ethan was planning.”
“You let her murder people in New York City in exchange for spying on Ethan?” Patrick asked incredulously. “You knew what she allowed to happen to Jono and you didn’t try to stop her?”
“The wolf had yet to be given to you as a weapon. His life was inconsequential at the time.”
“Careful with your words, cousin,” Fenrir bit out in Jono’s voice.
The Dagda’s voice drifted back to them from his office. “We keep our kind close and our enemies closer, cousin. I did what had to be done. The risk was acceptable.”
Patrick scowled. “Not to me.”
Tisiphone struggled to her feet, wavering through the motions. “Hera and Zeus are not my keepers. I made my own choices.”
“Murdering us wouldn’t help you.”
She raised her chin to a proud angle. “We are not bound to the strictures of our myths when the world barely remembers us.”
“Choosing Ethan won’t save you.”
Tisiphone smiled, teeth cutting into her lips, turning her matte lipstick shiny like gloss. “I have never needed saving. Humanity has prayed to me with their darkest desires. I give what they themselves are not capable of with their own hands. Estelle could not wield the trishula that took her husband’s life, so I did it for her after the Dominion Sect coated it in your twin’s magic.”
Patrick jerked at her words. “Youstole the trishula?”
Tisiphone’s lips parted on words she never spoke, not when Hermes’ hand wrapped around her throat. The messenger god slipped free of the veil behind her, framed in the office doorway, his gold-brown eyes meeting Patrick’s over Tisiphone’s head.
“This is a dangerous game you play, Tisiphone,” Hermes said in a falsely gentle voice. “Persephone is highly displeased with your actions.”
“She is not Zeus. I do not answer to her,” Tisiphone forced out around his steely grip.
“She holds his attention better than you ever will.”
The Dagda came back out of his office, holding a portfolio on his hand. “Stay your hand, Hermes. I still need my aide.”
“You have plenty, and she is not to be trusted.”
“Which is precisely why I have kept her close all these years.”
Hermes stepped aside, dragging Tisiphone with him. “Hera has summoned her home to Greece.”
Tisiphone’s eyes widened at that statement, and she struggled in Hermes’ grip. The messenger god shoved her to her knees with a casual show of strength that sounded as if it broke bone.
“Her absence will not go unnoticed by Ethan,” the Dagda warned.
“Then your wife will need to find some other way to unearth clues on her staff’s whereabouts.”
Patrick didn’t flinch beneath Hermes’ glare when it was directed his way, but only because he was used to being the focus of a god’s heavy attention. He knew that Hermes was probably talking about the broken-off piece of the Morrígan’s staff. It seemed he was keeping that fact a secret for them still.
Patrick wondered what they’d owe him in the end for his silence.
