They bob their head to a beat only they can hear. “I also have a report from the lower city team. They found the place, but there’s a lot of security around it—more than we expected. Either Hades was tipped off, or he’s naturally a cautious kind of guy.”
“Likely both.” Hecate is being unforgivably sentimental in her defense of the very people who would stand by and repeat history. She let herself get too close, and she’s always cared more than most. The moment she got free of the university, she would have called Hades and conveyed what information she could.
It’s a token of his intelligence that he trusted her…and damnedinconvenient at that.
I tap a finger to my bottom lip. We already planned on bringing the trials to the public in a way that’s not possible in the university. Might as well get on with it. “I want a full list of Artemis’s sins by tomorrow morning. The more details you can provide, the better.”
“Will do.” Zita taps a few keys. “As soon as I plugged into their network, I started expanding on the information we already have. Having access to Apollo’s system would be nice, but I’m managing well enough on my own since he locked things down.”
Locked things down and retreated to the lower city and out of our reach. We can do well enough without a perfectly complete list of violent acts committed by the various members of the Thirteen, but I prefer to be thorough. “Thank you.”
“Seriously though, Boss. Not sure where you spent last night, but you should get some more sleep. Antigone is, and Nerissa won’t rest until you do. Can’t afford to falter now, and all that.”
“I’ll take that into consideration.” I walk out of the tech center and move through the hallways almost at random. I won’t be sleeping anytime soon. Every time I close my eyes, the nightmares come. The water closing over my head. Zeus’s hands around my throat, shoving me down, down, down. Blackness eating at the edge of my vision, but not enough to blind me to the hate in his blue eyes. I shudder. The few hours I got last night will be enough to get me through the next couple of days, no matter what Zita thinks.
I have no desire to interact with Artemis or the legacy family before it’s time. The former will be the trial in the morning. The latter? I think back to the children in that locked room. To their fear,so familiar that it makes me ill.
Maybe there’s something to Hecate’s plan of exile. It can’t be an option for the Thirteen or the bloodlines of Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon, but we could wait for the worst of the civilians’ anger to die down and then quietly ship the other legacy families out of the city. They can’t take all their riches, of course, but there’s no reason we couldn’t allow them enough money to settle anywhere else…
Ah, Hecate. Even after all this time, you still have a way of softening my sharp edges.
***
Atalanta
“The truth,” I say slowly.
Athena watches me closely. She’s always been beautiful, but the hardship of the past year has sharpened her into something beyond beauty. It tastes almost like desperation. She leans forward. “You may not have worked for me for a particularly long time, but you’re a smart woman, Atalanta. Give me credit for being the same. No matter what information you returned with, you didn’t go to the university in some misguided attempt to win back a position with me or Hades or any other member of the Thirteen. You went there for Hermes.”
I’ve spent ten fucking years being duplicitous, but right now, confronted with the truth, my mouth works and no words emerge. I clear my throat and try again. “The information I brought back is true—and useful.”
“That’s not even a good attempt to change the subject.” She leans back. “Eurydice told us about your conversation. You weredesperate to save Hermes, and since I was under the impression you two only know each other in passing, that means I missed something important. I don’t like missing important things, Atalanta.” Her cool, dark eyes flick over my face and land on my shoulder. “She give you that?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” She exhales slowly. “Don’t lie to me again. My patience has never been legendary, and this pressure cooker of stress isn’t helping. How long have you been working with her against the Thirteen?”
The instinct to lie and keep lying rises, but I muscle it down. The time for that has passed, and I’m so fucking tired I can barely see straight. “The people of Olympus deserve better than the Thirteen.”
She shakes her head slowly. “Well, I can’t argue that, especially these days. I don’t know if I ever could.”
“Then why did you take the position?” I snap.
Athena has always had an ageless quality about her, as if something as mundane as time can’t touch her. That doesn’t feel true in this moment, where she suddenly looks every inch of her forty-seven years. “I wanted power.” The statement lands between us, the flat truth.
“That’s worked out really well for you.” I shouldn’t antagonize her, but I’m so fuckingtired. “You got your power, but at what cost? How many lives are you responsible for taking? How do you live with that?”
“It’s quite easy. One compromise becomes a landslide of them, then you wake up one day and wonder who the fuck it is looking back at you in the mirror.” She snorts. “It doesn’t matter. What’sdone is done. No matter how naive and honorable your intentions, I don’t see how you have a path forward, and I’m not interested in being a martyr for Circe’s vengeance, no matter how much I might deserve it in this case.” At my look askance at her, she shrugs. “I could have tried to pressure the last Zeus into letting her go. I didn’t. When Zeus was happy and distracted with a new spouse, he wasn’t causing problems for the rest of us. Acceptable losses.”
The very idea leaves me cold. “I don’t believe in acceptable losses.”
“That’s because you’re young and idealistic.” She stands abruptly. “You’re also lying again. You’ve already made your peace with acceptable losses, even if you don’t see it that way. What else can you call Hermes working with Minos? Pan was injured at that party. Artemis would have been killed alongside Hephaestus if Cassandra and Apollo hadn’t uncovered Minos’s plot. She knew his intentions and did nothing to stop him.” She holds my gaze. “Youwere injured at that party. It’s sheer luck that you weren’t killed. She put you in that danger knowingly.”
“Hermes wasn’t…” I let my voice trail off and swallow hard. “She needed information from him.”
“Uh-huh. And the people he killed? Hephaestus? The others?”
“She had nothing to do with that,” I say flatly. I can’t help defending her, even now. “She—”
