Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
As the car rolls to a stop, my frustration blooms hot and sticky on my tongue. I want to scream, but if I start screaming now, I can’t guarantee I’ll stop. “Ares considers you a friend, or at least she did. Dionysus, too. Even Hades. I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
Hermes doesn’t look at me. “Sometimes friends have to hurt in order to help. They might have been my friends once I became Hermes, but there’s a whole life I lived before I claimed the title. A whole identity. The Thirteen took something—someone—from me, and I vowed I would live to see their downfall. You know how to play the long game, so I’m sure you’ll appreciate the patience I’ve demonstrated.”
None of this makes any sense. If she was going to orchestrate the downfall of the Thirteen, why wait until now to do it? She could have started at any point during the last… Realization dawns. “Every time someone said, ‘Hermes has her reasons,’ they had no idea, did they?”
“A lady never tells.” The words are right, accurate to the Hermes I thought I had come to know. The tone, however, belongs to a stranger. Hard and tight and filled with the kind of rage that has no end. A rage she’s been hiding since she became Hermes. Maybe even before that.
“If you do something to threaten my baby again, I don’t give a shit how fast you are, I’ll slit your throat.” I issue the threat calmly, enunciating each word carefully.
Atalanta snorts, but Hermes smiles slowly. “I always said you Dimitriou women are interesting. Don’t stop being interesting now, Callisto.”
The car stops, and the locks disengage. I waste no time getting the fuck out of there. My head is spinning, but for all that drama of her staging this conversation, I don’t really have much new information. Zeus has labeled Hermes a traitor for some time now. I don’t think anyone quite realized the depth of it—or her ultimate goal—but not that much has changed.
I stumble back to where my car waits, and Nephele opens the door for me. It’s only when I’m back inside the dim interior that I start to shiver. All three of them look at me with worried expressions, but I shake my head. “Not now.” Maybe not ever.
As much as I trust them to watch my back and protect me, can I trust them with this? There’s a reason I held back telling them what Circe plans. Their loyalty begins and ends with me as Hera. If I lose my title, I lose my trio. I can’t trust them. Not fully.
The city rises before us in all its glittering glory. It’s a little dimmer than it used to be, but no less beautiful. Strange how, despite my best efforts, it really does feel like home. I don’t want to see it razed to the ground.
Ixion finally clears his throat. “What did Athena want?”
I almost forget myself and ask him what the fuck he’s talking about, before it belatedly registers that I was supposed to be meeting with Athena, not Hermes. The implications of that are even more complicated than everything else. Atalanta is working with Hermes? How did those two even cross paths in a way that would orchestrate any kind of relationship? It’s not important in this moment to know the answer to that question, but the not knowing threatens to eat away at me. I believed I was getting a handle on all of the petty politics and backstabbing, and every time I turn around, it’s proven to me again and again that I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.
I don’t bother to smile. “The same old, same old. Threats, threats, and more threats.”
13
Zeus
It’s far too early to go home and I have far too much to do. I’m so fucking tired. When I was younger, there were whole days and weeks when my father wanted to ensure I had the endurance to be Zeus. I learned to go for a very long time without sleep—and to mask the symptoms that come as a result. Among other things. I don’t like to think about those times. I especially don’t like to admit that he might have been right, at least in this.
I make my way from the center city and out to the shipping docks. After the attack on Circe, I allowed Poseidon’s bleeding heart to convince me to have the Aeaean sailors escorted to a safe space instead of tried as enemy soldiers. It was a calculated decision on my part. I owe no loyalty to Aeaea. But after seeing them, Icarus’s claim that they are just people trying to provide for their families struck truer than was comfortable. Those defeated sailors kneeling on the deck weren’t warriors. Half of them seemed confused about why they were even there in the first place.