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)
I don’t know how to feel about the jagged ways Perseus and I cut each other. It should mean we’re perfectly incompatible, but the worst part is that I think we could be a solid match if we got out of our own way. I hate even considering that, because it means that…maybe I don’t hate him at all. Something changed yesterday. If I were more courageous, more fearless, I would have embraced that change instead of running from it.
But I did run from it. I take another deep breath. It’s a little silly to sit here talking to myself, but with my words settling into the space around me, I can almost imagine I’m talking to one of my sisters. “I deal in facts, not fantasies and not dreams. I can’t know if something changed for him, so I have to continue to operate as if it hasn’t.” That’s the easy part. The bit that’s not easy, that I can’t even bring myself to voice… Things did change for me.
Not knowing where his head is at…it wasn’t the wrong call to flip off the lights and turn away from the intimacy we might have been able to achieve. Cowardly, yes, but we’ve made our beds. It’s too late to try to change his mind now.
My husband is going to die. Circe may be willing to let my family—and even Hades—walk away from Olympus, but there’s no possibility she’ll extend the same offer to Zeus. He’s not the man who hurt her, but he’s part of the institution responsible for the harm she experienced. Zeus has to fall for Olympus to fall, and she’s too smart not to know that.
My stomach lurches, and I barely scramble out of the car in time to dry heave onto the dirty pavement. I don’t care if he dies. I can’t care if he dies. I already have the lives of my sisters and mother—and their fucking partners—sitting on my shoulders. One more person will break me. I can’t save him, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. I can’t weigh my husband’s life against my family’s. There’s no scenario where that comes out in his favor.
No, the path is permanent and set beneath my feet. There’s no space for regrets or dreams. I have to keep moving.
I drag myself back into the driver’s seat and muscle through my nausea to back out of the parking spot and leave the garage. The spot where Persephone and I are supposed to meet is a little rocky spot just south of Juniper Bridge. I’m not even certain it can be called a beach. It looks more like a broken-up slab of concrete. It’s nothing like the beach on the lake in the foothills where we spent so much time in our youth. Perfect sand, perfect temperature, perfect childhood.
The wind is cutting enough to make me wish I grabbed one of my longer coats, but it’s too late to worry about being cold now. Even in the late morning, the fog swirls heavily along the surface of the river and up onto the banks, creating a gloomy and eerie atmosphere. It’s thick enough for anyone to be hiding just out of sight, watching. My skin prickles and I wrap my arms tight around myself.
Persephone, when she arrives, does so with all the dramatics of the queen of the lower city. It makes me smile despite myself to watch the small boat cut through the fog, my sister standing at its prow, straight and confident. She appears massively pregnant, for all that I’m technically further along than she is. Twins will do that. She’s also not alone, which is about what I expected. I’m not certain how she convinced her husband not to attend, but she’s flanked by Medusa and…Orpheus.
The boat crunches up against what passes for the beach, but I’m already moving. I grab Orpheus by the front of his shirt and drag him splashing into the shallows. I barely feel the icy river cutting through my boots and dress as I punch him in the face. “You motherfucker.”
“Callisto!”
I punch him again, sending him staggering back into the water. It’s satisfying to see a bruise already blossoming on his perfect fucking face. His brother, Apollo, is handsome, but Orpheus got all of the pretty genes of their Korean mother. She was a model once upon a time, and used that fame to leverage a place for herself in one of the legacy families. He got all of his petty bullshit from her, too. He broke my sister’s heart, and even if Eurydice chose to forgive him, I have not.
Strong arms wrap around me, pinning my hands to my chest and hauling me out of the river. Medusa. She’s a tall, muscular white woman with short blond hair and the kind of good nature that makes everyone around her smile. She’s also one of Athena’s former assassins, which means she’s not to be fucked with. She carries me a few steps farther and sets me back on my feet. “That’s enough of that, Hera.”