Shattered Gods (Dark Olympus, #10)(23)

Now that she mentions it, I remember Zeus looking haggard when he returned from his honeymoon. The city chalked it up to grief. I blamed it on guilt; I really should have known better.

“He was more patient than I was.” She shakes her head. “He waited until most of his strength came back and suggested we go swimming. ‘Suggested’ being a deceptive word because I didn’t have a choice. When we were in the water, he did his best to drown me.”

I close my hand around hers. “He’s dead now. Peitho, too. Your vengeance has been served.”

She jumps a little and gives me a resigned look. “You really are recovering too quickly. It’s inconvenient.”

“Sorry,” I say.

“No, you aren’t.” She doesn’t take her hand from mine. “I had the presence of mind to play dead when he tried to drown me, though I’ll admit I panicked at first. Floating there as he swam away was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” She shudders delicately. “From there, the rest is history.”

It is most assuredly not history. Not when she somehow managed to take a part of the barrier with her, ensuring that it was only a matter of time before it fell and made the entire city vulnerable. Not when she came back to the city all these years later to kill all those responsible.

“I’m sure you suspected the truth,” she continues, still watching me with those intense green eyes as if she’s measuring my every breath. “Everyone did. Zeus the wife-killer, as if it’s some kind of joke instead of the lives of three women cut short too early.” And no one did anything.

The unsaid words stand between us, the reason we’re in this place, occupying these roles. With his violent acts, Zeus set us on our respective paths, and then had the audacity to die before either of us had a chance to finish him off ourselves. I hope those final seconds while he fell to his death were filled with terror and hopelessness. Not enough, but nothing would be enough.

“Hades killed him.” It was an accident, at least partially, but it’s still true enough.

“Demeter told me.” Circe looks away. “It changes nothing. He held the position while Zeus rampaged, all while he sat in the lower city and did nothing to challenge it.”

She’s not wrong…at least not entirely. “The system was designed that way. Hades was practically groomed by Zeus from the time he was a child to be helpless in the lower city. He couldn’t—”

“Hecate.” She sets my hand on my stomach. “I don’t care. He could have done something. Poseidon could have done something. Any of them could have acted at any time to stop Zeus. How many people had he killed, directly or not? How many had he harmed because he was too powerful to fight?” She narrows her eyes. “How many of those instances occurred while you held the title of Hermes?”

“Too many,” I whisper. Only the knowledge that killing Zeus would be a bandage—and not even a good one at that—stayed my hand. He had to die, but not until the right time. I’m still not certain it was the right time when the fight with Hades resulted in his death, but if Hades hadn’t done it, then Demeter would have the moment he laid hands on Persephone. There was no way they’d have made it to their first anniversary.

For the first time since seeing her again, Circe actually seems troubled. The calm mask flickers, revealing the fiery woman I fell in love with a lifetime ago. “How could you stand it, Hecate? I’ve seen the pictures, the many articles in that farce you call a gossip column. You were near enough to slip a knife between his ribs countless times over the years. Why didn’t you?”

My mouth is far too dry. I wish I could blame it on the drugs, but shame is the true source. She’s right; I had plenty of opportunity to kill the last Zeus. The others, too. There isn’t a locked door in Olympus that can keep me out. I could have murdered my way through the Thirteen and kept doing it until the legacy families stopped trying to put people into those positions…or I died. The only reason I didn’t do that was because Atalanta. She pulled me back from the brink, ensured I had a slip of a soul left to save.

I tell Circe the same thing Atalanta told me all those years ago, when vengeance was the only thing I could see. “He’s a symptom of the problem, not the source. Killing him wouldn’t have brought you back.” My voice cracks. “I had to make sure there’d never be another you in the future of Olympus.”

Her sympathy falls away as if it’d never been. “But there were others like me. Lamia. Leda. Persephone herself would have numbered among them, and not a single person stepped forward to stop it.”

“Hades did.”

“Hades had an opportunity dropped in his lap and took advantage of it.” She scoffs. “If she hadn’t fled to the lower city, he wouldn’t have lifted a hand to save her.”

I hate that she’s right. The concept of acceptable losses has become far too familiar to me. “That doesn’t make your way better.”

“Yes, it does.” She rises, taking her warmth with her. I can actually see her slipping her mask back into place. “Because, unlike you, the only losses I find acceptable are those of my enemies.”

“Circe—”

“No.” She slashes a hand through the air, still graceful in her anger. “You don’t get to tell me about the high road you’re taking. You’ve stood by while the Thirteen committed untold amounts of harm to those who couldn’t defend themselves. To people like you were before you became that. People like I was. Zeus is the worst offender but hardly the only one. Peitho had plenty of indirect blood on her hands, which she’s now paid for. The last Apollo went after teenagers. Athena tried to have a woman killed simply because Odysseus found his mistress inconvenient—and that’s not the first time it happened. The list goes on!”