“You went rogue?” My heart kicks up a notch. It’s a silly heart. She shouldn’t have risked herself for me. She wouldn’t have been stabbed if she hadn’t.
“Not exactly.” She sighs. “Hera knows that I’m working with you. She made no secret of it when I initially came to the lower city. They let me go because Hades and Zeus weren’t interested in keeping captives, not when I’m a liability because of my training and knowledge. I’m honestly surprised they let me back into the lower city.”
“You’remade.” Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I should have thought about this after she drove me out into the country to intercept Hera a few days back, but I’ve been distracted. If I’d thought about it, I might have assumed Hera would keep her mouth shut since I saved her godsdamned ass. But Atalanta was made, andshe went back. “What the fuck were you thinking, going back there?”
Atalanta is quiet for so long, I find myself holding my breath waiting for her answer. Finally, she says, “I wasn’t thinking. I just had to get away, and my training kicked in. Hades and the others needed to know what Circe is planning, even if that meant they tossed me in a cell or dungeon or some shit in the process.”
She’s right, but I can’t help focusing on the first part of that sentence. She wasn’t thinking clearly because she was so hurt by my sleeping with Circe. I clear my throat. “I’m sorry. I know I said it, and it doesn’t change anything, but I’m sorry.”
“You’re right: It doesn’t change anything.” She hesitates. “But I think I understand why you did it. Her magnetism is…something else.”
The way she says it… I sit up in bed. “Did something happen?”
“No.” Atalanta laughs, but not like anything is funny. “At least not yet.”
20Atalanta
I spend the next couple of days recovering. Or that’s what I’m told I’m doing when I’m stuffed in a room, hooked up to an IV, and checked in on every fifteen minutes like clockwork. One of the people checking on me is even a doctor, so I guess that holds up. The rest are a combination of Athena’s and Hades’s people, ensuring that I’m not here in some elaborate double-triple-I’ve-lost-count cross. As if I have the energy for that shit. Or the desire.
I don’t think the search for Circe’s people is going well. Everything has been too quiet. I’m almost pathetically grateful when Achilles walks into the room with his usual rolling swagger. He’s a large man with golden skin, dark hair and beard, and an arrogance that has a tendency to fill a room to the point of suffocation. For allthat, I like the bastard.
He’s not smiling as he pulls a chair over to the side of my bed and straddles it. “This is some shit.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
He gives me a severe look, his dark eyes missing their normal charismatic shine. “You can do that with other people. Don’t do it with me.”
That startles a laugh out of me. “We’re not friends, Achilles. We never were.” Not with him coming up under Athena and me under Artemis. It was months after the Ares tournament—and everything that came as a result—when I switched from Artemis to Athena, so we never actually worked together. I liked what I saw of him in the tournament. He’s bold and arrogant, but he can back it up with skill. Even so, I don’tknowhim.
“You’re right. We’re not friends. Maybe we could have been under different circumstances.”
“Probably.” This conversation is awkward and weird, and I don’t like that I’m sitting down for it. There’s no room to move if he attacks. “Are you here to snip off a loose end?”
He laughs, the bastard. “I might have been trusted by Athena at one point, but I’m sure as fuck not now. No, if she decides to remove the threat you represent, she’ll probably do it herself. And sending me to murder an injured woman in bed isn’t exactly Ares’s style.”
He has a point. “Then whyareyou here?”
Achilles sighs, as if I didn’t already anticipate this being bad news. “You can’t stay in the lower city. No one is interested in tossing you in a dungeon—even though Hades keeps insisting he doesn’t actually have a dungeon—and we can’t spare the manpower to seta guard on you. It wouldn’t work anyway. I’ve seen what you’re capable of, which means it would have to be me or Patroclus watching you, and we can’t spare either of us right now. Ares needs us.”
I should have seen this coming. I suppose I did, but I wasn’t thinking clearly after waking up to discover Hecate’s betrayal. It doesn’t matter that I don’t actually have a romantic claim on her; knowing she fucked the woman who caused all this pain, the woman whostabbed me, hurts. It would hurt even if I only saw her as a friend, and it hurts all the more for me being in love with her. Knowing she loves me back only makes the pain spike deeper, hotter.
Achilles keeps going, watching me carefully as if he expects me to burst into violence. “This is shitty. I don’t like repaying loyalty with what is essentially exile.”
That draws a bitter laugh from me. “I’m not loyal, Achilles. That’s the whole point of this. I don’t kneel before the Thirteen. I think they should be abolished.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He shrugs when my jaw drops. “What? I listen when Patroclus talks, and he’s had his doubts about the system for a while, though he put them aside for me—and for Helen. Getting to see how the sausage is made?” He looks away. “When Helen became Ares, we got access to a number of files about past members of the Thirteen. It’s not as extensive as what Apollo and Athena must have, but it’s damning enough on its own.”
I have a moment where I almost ask for more details, but I already know what he’ll tell me, don’t I? Cheating, stealing, abuse, assault, murder—the Thirteen have done it all, and those are the stories Idoknow. I imagine the things they’ve covered up are evenworse. “If you understand—”
“I will back Helen until the day she dies or steps down.” There’s no give in his tone, all the softness gone from his face. “This whole thing is fucked, and while I’m sure as shit aware of the role you’ve played, you haven’t killed anyone unsanctioned, and I don’t like the idea of tossing you to the wolves. Helen and Patroclus agree.”
I blink. “But why? They have no reason to help me. None of you do.”
“We competed together. You helped Helen when you didn’t have to. If you hadn’t allied with her to get through the first trial, maybe things would have turned out differently and the three of us wouldn’t have ended up together.” He shrugs again. “The why doesn’t matter. We’re wasting time. I’m your escort back to the upper city. Take this.” He presses something into my hand.
I look down and frown. It’s a key. “What is this?”
“You fought Circe. She’s smart enough to have figured out who you are—if she didn’t already know—and she’ll be watching your place to snatch you up if you are fool enough to try to go home.”
