Circe’s smile fades a little, leaving her looking so much like the girl I fell in love with all those years ago. I don’t know if I can stand it. It’s on the tip of my tongue to offer to run away together, to leave this all behind, to chase down the future we always promised each other. It’s far too late for that.
We part ways there, me slipping into the bathroom and closing the door, and her moving to the bed.
I avoid my reflection in the mirror as I pace. My body stillthrums with the pleasure of her hands and mouth. Each step threatens my resolve, tempting me with the memory of what we just did. I do my best to distract myself by counting down from sixty, over and over again, until it’s been fifteen minutes. Not so long in the grand scheme of things, but an eternity in this place filled with the promise of memories I’ll never get to create. Not with Circe. Not with Atalanta, either.
Guilt wraps thorned vines around my throat and digs deep. I wasn’t thinking about Atalanta when I kissed Circe. Or during anything that came after. I might have walked through this door with fury in my heart, but Circe’s presence chased it from me the way it always seems to eclipse the thousands of other things I should be focused on.
When I finally emerge from the bathroom, Circe is sleeping in the bed I bought for a future I was still mourning. It’s unspeakably cruel to see her there now, her face relaxed in sleep, her arm thrown over her head and leaving her fully exposed.
I could end this now.
Without Circe, her people will crumble and falter. The mobs will continue to be a problem, but without someone escalating things, eventually their energy will fade. Maybe that will be the moment to finally reach victory, to dismantle the Thirteen and set up a new form of government that servesallthe people of Olympus instead of just the few at the top.
I actually take a step toward the bed. Circe gives a faint cry that makes my body lock up. I’ve heard this woman happy and devastated and angry. I’ve never heard her terrified…until now. Because that’s what she’s feeling right now as she shifts on the bed, tangling the sheets around her body. Terror. Her beautiful face furrows as she whimpers,clearly trying to get away from whatever haunts her dreams.
My heart wants to climb into bed, to wrap my arms around her, to pull her away from the nightmare plaguing her. Circe never had nightmares when we were together before. I didn’t, either.
My mind, spinning and planning and plotting, whispers that this is my chance to end things once and for all. She’s helpless. She trusts me, at least enough to fall asleep. All it would take is to grab a pillow and shove it over her face. A quick, brutal death. I’ve delivered that before. I can again. It won’t solve the problems plaguing Olympus right now, but it would…
I can’t do it. I stare at my shaking hands. I can’t hurt her, even knowing how much devastation she’s caused—how much she intends to cause. Even with all the years between the woman I knew and the one in the bed before me, I can’t look at her andnotsee the Circe I loved enough to bring Olympus down. She’s still there, beneath the scars and pain and rage.
And that scares me more than anything else.
16Atalanta
I wake up to the throbbing pain in my shoulder, but the wound has lost the sharp sensation suggesting it’s about to get worse. That’s good news, enough to make me feel slightly positive in perspective. At least until I lift my head to see Hermes slumped in the chair next to my bed. She’s not sleeping—hasn’t slept all night, if I don’t miss my guess—and there’s a distant look in her eyes. A very recognizable look.
A pit opens up in my chest, a great sucking wound threatening to pull in everything around it. There have been more than a few occasions over the years where I wished I didn’t know Hermes as well as I do. This beats them all. “You fucked her,” I say numbly.
Her head jerks up. “What? No, I—”
“Don’t lie to me.” I fight my way to sitting. My shoulder is stiff, but it’s nothing compared to the agony ripping through my heart right now.
“I’m not. It’s not…” She huffs out a breath. “It’s complicated.”
I search her expression. I’ve memorized all of Hermes’s tells, and every single one of them says she’s trying to think of a better lie. Godsdamn it. “How long after I passed out did you wait before running into her arms? Five minutes? Ten?”
“That’s not what happened.” Her tone is low and fierce, but there’s too much conflict in her dark eyes for me to believe it. “It was more—”
“I don’t think I want to hear this.” I’m suddenly tired, so fucking tired. I lean back against the wall for the barest moment, gathering my strength. “I’ve watched you flirt and fuck and date your way through so many beautiful people during your time as Hermes.” The promise ofmaybekept me afloat for years. Pathetic. She’s been tossing me crumbs, and I was grateful for the famine. “I never tried to stop you, never let my jealousy slip its leash, never said a sideways word about it. I understood that isn’t my place.”
“It could have been,” she whispered, not quite looking at me.
“Don’t you fuckingdaredo that.” The harshness of my tone surprises her. Well, fuck, it surprises me, too. I’ve kept a tsunami of emotions dammed up for far too long, and I have no one to blame but myself. I want to blame Hermes, but I was a willing participant in the con. “We both know the moment I tried to turn this into something more, you would have flitted away. The mission always came first. It had to come first.”
“Maybe.” She appears so miserable that I have to muscle down the instinctive desire to comfort her. “I care about you, too,Atalanta. I have since the beginning.”
The worst part is that I believe her. “It doesn’t matter.” Saying it breaks my heart. “Not whileshestood between us. It was hard enough to believe we had a future with the ghost of her haunting you. Now that she’s here in the flesh? I don’t stand a chance. I was a fool to think I ever did.”
At that, she finally looks at me,reallylooks at me. “Don’t say that. I love you.”
Over the years, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit fantasizing about the moment when we could finally speak our truth and actually be together. That she’d speak those three little words and everything would be different. Now it’s happening and Circe ruined it, tainted everything with her bloody perfection.
“I love you, too.” I climb to my feet, feeling a little unsteady but unwilling to let that slow me down. “I’m going back to the lower city.” Somehow.
“What?”
“She’s too calm about that barrier.” My shirt is gone, but someone left me a spare set of clean clothes that I waste no time changing into. I register Hermes’s sharp intake of breath as I strip down, but I refuse to look at her. “Hades needs to find her team in the lower city and kill them before they have a chance to endanger the people behind the barrier. He can’t do that if he doesn’t know their intentions. He thinks they’re aiming for Persephone, so he’s focused there instead of wherever the machinery for the barrier is.”
