Shattered Gods (Dark Olympus, #10)(10)

The auditorium has half a dozen entrances to the public and another two or three for staff. Circe’s people guard each one, women dressed in deep amber with watchful expressions on their faces. I could get past them, but not without causing a scene.

For a moment, I consider it. A scene may very well distract Circe…but even as the thought crosses my mind, I discard it. There’s too much noise in the auditorium. It won’t be enough to stop her, even if I start killing my way through the crowd to get to her.

Stealth it is, then.





5

Circe




I have the crowd right where I want them, frothing at the mouth and slavering for violence. Peitho kneels before me, her face pale and terrified, none of the cold calculation she showed earlier in evidence. Good.

I hold up a hand, silence falling immediately at the simple gesture. “I won’t have it said I’m without mercy.” I sweep my gaze over the crowd in a way designed to ensure every person feels like I’m looking at them specifically. I expected to feel more victorious to be here, enacting the final stages of my plans. My chest is an empty, echoing space just like it has been since Antigone pulled me from the water all those years ago. “You have heard the list of her crimes, have witnessed many of them yourselves. Will you speak on her behalf and beg for mercy?”

The silence thickens, gaining weight and intensity. No one moves. No one seems to breathe. I fight down a shiver. A mob is a terrifying beast, unable to be controlled, even by those who set it into motion. We’re not quite past the tipping point, but we’re getting close.

I can’t afford to rein them in. Not without them turning on me.

Eros sits in the front row, so tense he’s practically vibrating, his gaze jumping from his mother to Demeter to me. Only Psyche’s hand on his arm seems to keep him leashed, and it’s unlikely to do so for long. Even if she manages to keep him in his seat, she’ll lose him in the end for asking him to sit by and watch his mother be executed.

No one makes it out of Olympus unscathed.

I let the silence stand for several more beats. “No?” I smile. “Very well.” I pull my gun from the holster tucked into the small of my back and point it between those weeping blue eyes.

“No!”

I flick a glance to Eros a bare moment before a weight hits me from above. Above? I slam into the floor hard enough it snatches the breath from my lungs. The impact threatens to daze me, but I’ve trained too damned hard to be laid low by a surprise attack. I start to shove the attacker off me but stop short when I catch sight of familiar dark eyes lined with thick black lashes. There was a time in my life when I swore those eyes contained all the mysteries of the universe and whatever future awaited me—because it would be with her.

“Hecate,” I hiss.

“In the flesh.” She goes for the gun.

I had my people prepare for the eventuality that someone may try to do something foolish and heroic. I didn’t expect Hecate, but it makes no difference. Antigone and Nerissa are there in a heartbeat, grabbing Hecate—because I refuse to call her Hermes—under the arms and hauling her off me. Too easy. She never would have let herself be taken so easily.

Something metallic flashes in her hand. “Knife!” I cry out, forgetting to keep my tone modulated to my public persona.

Antigone dodges a split second before Hecate makes contact. It’s enough for her to break free, though. She dances back, twirling her knife in a careless way. “You know, there’s a reason public executions went out of style ages ago. Murder is deeply distasteful and all that.”

It takes effort to rise gracefully to my feet instead of scrambling, but I force myself to do it. To tilt a smile to the audience who are roaring their displeasure and confusion. “Since when has Olympus frowned upon murder…Hermes?”

She sidles to the side, not moving toward Peitho but getting between me and…Eros and Psyche?

Demeter finally rouses herself from whatever disassociation she’s indulged in. “Circe, you’re about to lose the crowd.” She doesn’t speak loudly, but she’s close enough for me to pick up the words all the same.

She’s right. Hermes is beloved by the people of Olympus. I have no intention of killing her, but they don’t know that. If they think she’s threatened, the tide may turn against me. I can’t allow that to happen. The moment requires decisive action. I resolutely turn away from Hecate and focus on my current intention. Peitho. I lift my voice, my microphone ensuring my words will cut through the chaos. “Peitho, for your crimes during your reign as Aphrodite, you are sentenced to death.”

“Damn it, Circe!”

Movement as Hecate tries to throw herself at me again. Too late. She’s too damned late. It’s the simplest thing in the world to pull the trigger three times, taking the bitch twice in the chest and once in the forehead. Peitho slumps to the ground, blue eyes blank and unseeing.

A roar goes through the crowd, but I can’t begin to tell if it’s in support or denial. Calm settles in my bones. This may not have gone off as seamlessly as I initially planned, but it did go off. The Aphrodite who presided over my kidnapping and forced wedding, who I begged for freedom only to be denied, is dead.

One down.

There are a few dozen trials to hold once I get my hands on the rest of the Thirteen and the legacy families, but only a handful of them are ones I personally care about. Poseidon. Hades. Athena. Zeus, even if he’s not the same man who hurt me. Sins of the father, as the saying goes.