Their story is no longer mine. I’ve done what I set out to do all those years ago. The Thirteen are gone, scattered to the world with their loved ones. The legacy families followed, just like we’d hoped.
Atalanta slips her hand into mine as our ship cuts through the waves, following the shoreline south. There’s a plane waiting to take us to Circe. I’m still not entirely sure what she’s been up to over the last few months. We talked regularly, but all I know is that she’scome alive in the last week or so, her grief over Olympus changing into excitement.
She’s got a new plan. I can’t wait to hear it.
Fourteen hours of tedious travel later, we’re standing in front of a charming brick house on a quiet street in a normal city. It’s so…mundane. I check my phone for the third time, but the address matches the golden numbers running vertically down the front porch beam. “This is it?”
“Huh.” Atalanta crosses her arms over her chest. “I didn’t think this was Circe’s vibe. She’s like you—surrounds herself with nice shit.”
“Atalanta, this is a nice house.”
She shoots me a look. “Yes, it is. Nice and cozy and just needs a white picket fence to finish the pretty picture. It’s alsonormal, and that woman is not normal.” She straightens a little. “Maybe it has a sex dungeon.”
The image of Atalanta in a sex dungeon is almost enough to distract me from the very real need to walk up and knock. Oh well. I can do this. I didn’t participate in the downfall of an entire city-state just to be too cowardly to ring my no-longer-ex-girlfriend’s doorbell.
Even as I try to talk myself into taking that first step, the door opens and Circe leans against the frame, looking good enough to eat in a pair of leggings and a loose tank top under a silly apron. “Are you coming in? The neighbors are going to start to gossip if you stand outside for too long.”
“Can’t have that,” Atalanta murmurs. She touches the small of my back, nudging me into motion.
Inside is just as charming as the outside. It looks like a grandmalives here, and smells absolutely divine with some kind of cookies. It’s verynormaland I don’t know what to think. We follow Circe into the kitchen, where she pulls a sheet of cookies out of the oven. They’re perfect.
I blink. “I didn’t know you could bake.”
“It’s beenmonths, love. After I picked up the pieces for my surviving people, I needed a hobby.” She makes a face at the cookies. “I despise being bad at things, but I despise quitting even more.”
“So, naturally, you had to conquer the cookies,” Atalanta murmurs. She laughs. “Gods, I think I actually missed you.”
Circe’s irritation at the cookies melts away, leaving her vulnerable and hopeful. “I missed you, too.” She turns those intoxicating green eyes on me. “Both of you.”
“It’s been really hard not seeing you.” I manage a smile. I’mhappy. Truly. It’s just the blank future spreading out before me that is intimidating. “I guess our new lives start now.”
Circe is still watching me closely. “This is what we’d always talked about. A cozy house in a nice neighborhood.” She chuckles. “It took me some time to win over the neighbors, but the cookies help. Ralph next door and I trade off shoveling the sidewalk when it snows. He’s a grumpy old asshole, but he’s got good stories.”
She’s right. This is exactly what we talked about—what we dreamed about—when we were young. That dream is why I bought and remodeled the house in the upper city, a tribute to a future burned as a sacrifice on the altar of the mission.
The mission is gone now, and I feel strange in my skin, strange in this place. It’s everything I ever wanted—more than I ever could have wanted because in no scenario could I have dreamed havingboth Atalanta and Circe looking at me with love in their eyes.
And, ungrateful wretch that I am, I can’t help thinking,Is this it?
I turn and move through the doorway into the living room. The matching couch and love seat set are new enough to still hold their shape perfectly, and the rug on the floor is a muddled gray pattern. It looks like a thousand other living rooms in a thousand other homes. Except for one key difference. “Circe?”
“Yes, love?” She sounds so sweet and innocent. The little liar.
I toe the rug back a little. The stain I had barely glimpsed extends well under the rug. “Why is there blood on your nice hardwood floors?”
She curses. “Damn it.”
I turn back to find Atalanta glaring at her. “What did you do? Whose blood is that?”
“Would you believe me if I said it was here when I moved in?” We both shake our heads and Circe waves that away. “Fine, fine. Look, the housing market is truly outrageous, even if you have money. It’s just a bad investment to buy at these prices unless the house is practically unlivable.”
“So youkilled the owner?” Atalanta shouts.
Circe props her hands on her hips. “That would be shortsighted in the extreme.” When she realizes neither of is buying this innocent act, she sighs dramatically. “The city had a bit of a Russian mob problem when my people and I moved here. Now it doesn’t.”
I blink. “Circe.”
“Don’t say my name in that tone. I did a good thing by any definition of the word.”
