I smile. “It’s time we had a chat.”
9Hermes
I’m getting really fucking tired of being drugged. My head feels too large on my shoulders and my body isn’t obeying my commands tomove. Circe closes the door softly behind her and walks toward me, every inch a goddess taken human form. I’m so angry at her, I shouldn’t be fighting not to whimper at the sight of her beauty. I contain multitudes.
She sinks down on the couch next to my reclined body, making the cushions dent and sliding me toward her. I try to fight it, but I might as well be a human doll for all I’m successful.
“I must have gotten the measurements wrong,” she murmurs. I can’t feel the fingers she brushes down my cheek, but heat blooms in their path all the same. “It’s for the best. We’re running out of time.”
I want to blame the new tension in her body on guilt that she just gunned down two people in cold blood, but I know better. She wasn’t shaky after she shot Eros—gods, he’s really dead—so something else must have happened.
She keeps stroking my face almost absently, her mind clearly focused on other things. “I meant my offer to Hera, you know. I’ll kill her if I have to, but it brings me no pleasure to remove a Hera from this world. I can’t let her keep the baby, Hecate. We both know too well how the desire for vengeance can taint a life. I have no desire to turn around in twenty years and find some fresh-faced young thing with my murder in their eyes.”
There’s no reasoning with her, even if I could talk, but I’m a damned fool for this woman because I want to try. My lips work, the effort to press out one word leaving me exhausted. “Ex. Ile.”
“How well did that work for me?” She smiles sadly. “I realize it’s not the same. Zeus truly thought I was dead, otherwise he wouldn’t have rested until he ensured the rumor was truth.”
All these years, and I still don’t know the details of what happened. Zeus returned from their honeymoon claiming she was swept out in a riptide, only to drown trapped against the barrier. Her body was never found, but there are plenty of sea predators who could have done away with her. It didn’t matter, though. The most powerful man in Olympus wasn’t interested in recovering her remains, and so there was no search conducted.
“I can see from your eyes that you want the story.” She sighs and glances at the door. “We have a little time, so I suppose it doesn’t hurt to share it now.”
Once I realized she was alive, it was simple enough to take a trip to Aeaea and find out everything I could about her time there. How she came to the island with little but managed to draw in and manipulate all the rich and powerful who wanted more than their island home offered. How she spun her plan for vengeance expertly, a spider in the center of her web until it was time to strike.
What I couldn’t find out was where she spent the year between her “death” and her arrival to Aeaea.
She picks up one of my limp hands and traces a finger over my palm as if she can truly tell my future from the lines fracturing there. “It’s more or less what you’d expect. He wanted me for my beauty, and the fact I didn’t return his desire only made me more attractive prey. If I had been smart, I could have used that to my advantage, but I was young and scared, and you know how I was back then when I got scared.”
She got angry. The Circe I knew never allowed herself to sit in fear. Not when she could act out instead.
“He started beating me the night he took me.” She says it flatly, simply reciting the facts, as if she’s not tearing my heart out of my chest with her words. “Aphrodite had an awful time finding a wedding dress to cover up the bruises.”
“Circe,” I rasp.
“Shhh.” She keeps up her methodical stroking of my palm, over and over again. “I couldn’t stop fighting him. I didn’t know better. All I wanted was to escape and get back to you.” She smiles almost fondly. “I tried to kill him the first night we were on the coast. I dosed him with rat poison I found in one of the outbuildings. I was too hasty, though,and didn’t get the dosage right. He was violently ill, but not enough to call in outside help, and certainly not enough to kill him.”
Now that she mentions it, I remember Zeus looking haggard when he returned from his honeymoon. The city chalked it up to grief. I blamed it on guilt; I really should have known better.
“He was more patient than I was.” She shakes her head. “He waited until most of his strength came back and suggested we go swimming. ‘Suggested’ being a deceptive word because I didn’t have a choice. When we were in the water, he did his best to drown me.”
I close my hand around hers. “He’s dead now. Peitho, too. Your vengeance has been served.”
She jumps a little and gives me a resigned look. “You really are recovering too quickly. It’s inconvenient.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“No, you aren’t.” She doesn’t take her hand from mine. “I had the presence of mind to play dead when he tried to drown me, though I’ll admit I panicked at first. Floating there as he swam away was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” She shudders delicately. “From there, the rest is history.”
It is most assuredlynothistory. Not when she somehow managed to take a part of the barrier with her, ensuring that it was only a matter of time before it fell and made the entire city vulnerable. Not when she came back to the city all these years later to kill all those responsible.
“I’m sure you suspected the truth,” she continues, still watching me with those intense green eyes as if she’s measuring my every breath. “Everyone did. Zeus the wife-killer, as if it’s some kind of joke instead of the lives of three women cut short too early.”Andno one did anything.
The unsaid words stand between us, the reason we’re in this place, occupying these roles. With his violent acts, Zeus set us on our respective paths, and then had the audacity to die before either of us had a chance to finish him off ourselves. I hope those final seconds while he fell to his death were filled with terror and hopelessness. Not enough, but nothing would be enough.
“Hades killed him.” It was an accident, at least partially, but it’s still true enough.
“Demeter told me.” Circe looks away. “It changes nothing. He held the position while Zeus rampaged, all while he sat in the lower city and did nothing to challenge it.”
She’s not wrong…at least not entirely. “The system was designed that way. Hades was practically groomed by Zeus from the time he was a child to be helpless in the lower city. He couldn’t—”
