Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
“I’m not Hecate anymore.” I buried that foolish version of myself the moment I took the Hermes title. I had to in order to survive.
“You’ll always be Hecate to me.” She shifts her touch to trace her fingers along my cheek. “All you had to do was stay out of the way. I fully intended to leave you alone until I finished my work here, but now you’ve made a mess of things and riled up both the citizens and my people. I’ll fix it, but I can’t let you leave.”
“I made a mess of things?” I jerk back, breaking contact. “You killed Eros.”
“Yes,” she says simply, though her green eyes are troubled. “It wasn’t part of the plan, but if he had gotten his hands on me, you know exactly what he would have done. Would you have preferred that outcome?”
My mouth works, but no sound emerges. Of course I don’t want her dead. I’ve barely come to terms with the fact she’s alive. And yet it can’t change anything. I can’t allow her to rampage through my city, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wasn’t supposed to be conflicted. There’s no space in the future I’m trying to carve out in her name for the woman herself to bust in and fuck up all my plans. Circe is the same woman I fell in love with all those years ago, and yet, she’s a stranger to me.
She cups my face, so damned gentle that I could die from it. “I truly am sorry. I know he was someone you valued.”
“Don’t.” I jerk back again, meeting the wall. There’s nowhere to run. She’s not attacking me, not in an identifiable way. Her gentleness is pure cruelty, but I can’t think clearly enough to stop myself from craving it. “You can’t do this.”
“Darling, I already am.” She doesn’t try to touch me again, but she’s too close. It would take nothing at all to tip forward, to let her catch me before I hit the floor. Even after all this time, after becoming strangers to each other, I have no doubt she’d never let me touch the ground.
I close my eyes. “This is beyond fucked.”
“Yes.” Some of the carefulness bleeds out of her tone. “You’re not one for captivity, but it’s a necessary measure—and a temporary one.”
My eyes snap open. “There isn’t a cell in this city that can hold me.” I’ve made damned sure of that.
She smiles sadly. “Not even if you want to be held?” Circe leans in, very carefully maintaining a laughably small distance between us. “Don’t you want to be held by me, Hecate? You always did before.”
I don’t make a decision to move. I’m a lodestone and she’s my truth north. With her breath feathering over my skin, I’m helpless to do anything but close that hint of space and press my lips to hers. She opens for me immediately, one hand coming up to clasp my neck as she takes control.
Gods, but she tastes like home. I thought I was mistaken after the last ill-fated kiss, but this one only cements the truth. She’s always been so sharp, but she’s soft for me. She nips my bottom lip and inhales my gasp, her free hand sliding down my spine to urge me to press tightly to her. Well over ten years separate us from the people we were and the people we are, but this is still so familiar I could weep. I know her, her body, know what she likes, what she craves. Just like she knows the same for me.
I’ve been chasing the high of being in Circe’s arms for so fucking long, and now she’s right here and I can touch her to my heart’s delight. Except she’s standing on the opposite side of a line I can’t cross. Not without losing my soul.
It rips away a part of said soul to shove her back. If I can get out of this room, even her small army of soldiers can’t stop me from leaving campus. I know every nook and cranny of this place—of every place. When one wants to play a trickster ghost, it behooves them to know every escape route available. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Then don’t.”
As if it’s that simple. I glance at the door again. I should run, but that would leave her at my back. I might have plenty of conflicting feelings about this woman, but I know better than to do that. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t.” She holds out a hand. “Stay with me, Hecate. We can do this together.”
My instincts are all discombobulated. I don’t want to fight her, but I have to. There’s no chance of reconciliation, not without one of us compromising the very thing we’ve been working toward for a third of our lives. It won’t happen. It can’t happen.