Shattered Gods (Dark Olympus, #10)(18)

She smiles, quick and sharp. “You know me, always prepared.” The smile fades away. “It wasn’t for you specifically. I’m back in Olympus. I won’t be caught unawares again.”

My mind is still racing even as my body goes completely limp and my head lolls against the couch. “Why not kill me?”

“You know why. You’re just being stubborn about admitting it. It’s easier to paint me as the villain than admit we want the same things. We’ve always wanted the same things. But I suppose that’s not the full truth, is it?”

She lifts my head carefully and arranges my braids around my shoulders. I don’t have to feel her touch to know it’s devastatingly gentle. Circe shakes her head ruefully. “It’s because I love you, you little fool. It will take you some time to forgive me for what I need to do, but I truly hope you will in the end.” She smiles sweetly, looking so much like the girl I gave my heart to all those years ago that I might die from longing. “Because you never stopped loving me, either.”

***


Atalanta

I want to sprint directly to the university and fight my way through the apparent mobs of people to get to Hermes. The only thing stopping me from attempting something so reckless is knowing I’ll just end up captive alongside her. Or, more likely, that I end up dead. Circe doesn’t have a history with me.

As much as it kills part of my soul to turn south from Juniper Bridge and head into the center of the upper city, it’s a necessary step. There are only two people on this side of the river who might help me—Dionysus and Apollo—and I know exactly where to find Apollo.

I don’t bother to search for a car. It’s a thirty-minute walk, but I need the time to get my head on straight. Apollo isn’t the biggest fan of Hermes under the best of circumstances, and since Minos’s party, he downright hates her. The only thing that might convince him is Cassandra. She’s where I place my hope.

I’ve gotten so used to the mostly empty streets that it’s jarring to see people out and about. Not only because of the number—unusually high for this time of day, even before the blockade—but because of the intensity on the faces of nearly everyone I pass.

The promise of violence hangs in the air. It makes my skin crawl. I’m no stranger to getting my hands dirty when the situation calls for it, but a tactical assault and a mob are two wildly different things. For someone who’s shown every evidence of being three steps ahead of the best minds in Olympus, Circe is taking a huge risk. Once a mob gets going, there’s no controlling it. You can attempt to direct it, but it’s just as likely to turn on you as your enemies.

How many more executions will it take before we have bands of people roaming the streets, looking for anyone they recognize from MuseWatch?

I tug my hood a little lower. There were a lot flashier champions in the Ares tournament, but it got me noticed for the first time in my life. With my scars, I’m more identifiable than most. I want to believe things would have gone differently if I’d won Ares instead of Helen, but Minos was already in the city at that point. Circe still would have come, and the Thirteen would remain fractured, even if I had a vote. Maybe it would have been better to stay in the shadows behind Artemis but…

That wouldn’t have lasted beyond Minos’s party. I can’t stop myself from shuddering. I knew something was up the moment we arrived, but I didn’t expect that bitch to try to kill me. It was only Hermes’s quick thinking that kept me among the living, trapped in Minos’s basement until the party’s end. I still would have made the jump to Athena, and Athena is much more popular with the public than Artemis could dream of being. All roads seem to lead to this point, to Circe and Hermes in a fraught battle for the heart of Olympus, with me scrambling to act as support.

I haven’t sacrificed all personal happiness only to have us fail now. We’re supposed to have a future. One we’ve never discussed openly, but the promise has floated between us since we started down this path. I’ll be damned before I allow Circe to take Hermes’s future the same way she took her past.

Apollo has his building locked down tight, but it doesn’t matter. If I can’t make myself as invisible as Hermes, it’s easy enough to use Athena’s override to get through the door and up the elevator. I swiped the card off her in that little scuffle in the hallway. She has no reason to check for it in the lower city—she doesn’t have override access there—so it should get me where I need to go for a little while longer.

The sight that greets me as I step out of the elevator makes my stomach drop. “Hector, what the fuck are you still doing here?”

Hector is a large, rugged-looking white man with sandy blond hair and kind eyes. He’s also one of the few legacy scions I can tolerate. The man is honorable enough to make him foolish, and he’s deeply in love with his wife and their new daughter. He shouldn’t be here, where anyone hunting Apollo will find him. He should be at home with his beautiful family—or, better yet, across the River Styx and claiming sanctuary.

He frowns at me. “We can’t leave any avenues open for Circe. It’s all hands on deck.”

“That’s not true. I told your stubborn ass to get out of here a dozen times.” Cassandra steps out of Apollo’s office, looking more tired than I’ve ever seen her. She’s a plus-sized white woman with flaming red hair and a nasty temper. She and Hermes dated some years ago, and though it never got serious, she’s set my teeth on edge ever since. Hermes still cares deeply for her, even if it’s as friends instead of lovers.