Shattered Gods (Dark Olympus, #10)(40)

The worst part is that I believe her. “It doesn’t matter.” Saying it breaks my heart. “Not while she stood between us. It was hard enough to believe we had a future with the ghost of her haunting you. Now that she’s here in the flesh? I don’t stand a chance. I was a fool to think I ever did.”

At that, she finally looks at me, really looks at me. “Don’t say that. I love you.”

Over the years, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit fantasizing about the moment when we could finally speak our truth and actually be together. That she’d speak those three little words and everything would be different. Now it’s happening and Circe ruined it, tainted everything with her bloody perfection.

“I love you, too.” I climb to my feet, feeling a little unsteady but unwilling to let that slow me down. “I’m going back to the lower city.” Somehow.

“What?”

“She’s too calm about that barrier.” My shirt is gone, but someone left me a spare set of clean clothes that I waste no time changing into. I register Hermes’s sharp intake of breath as I strip down, but I refuse to look at her. “Hades needs to find her team in the lower city and kill them before they have a chance to endanger the people behind the barrier. He can’t do that if he doesn’t know their intentions. He thinks they’re aiming for Persephone, so he’s focused there instead of wherever the machinery for the barrier is.”

“Atalanta.”

The agony in her voice makes me pause in the middle of lacing up my boots. I hate to hurt her. It feels like taking a blade to my own skin. Too bad she did it first. I make myself ask the question I’m not sure I want an answer to. “If I killed her today—yesterday—would you have forgiven me?”

“What?”

I finally look at her. Fool that I am, I can’t help drinking in the sight. Even tired and exhausted, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Sharp chin, cute little nose, a mouth I’ve imagined spending hours worshipping.

I scrub a hand over my face. I’m so fucking tired. “If I’d stabbed Circe instead of the other way around, if I’d been smart enough to finish the job and kill her instead of walking away…” I take a deep breath. “You couldn’t have forgiven me. You would have tried, but it would have been the end of us.” Her mouth works, but for once, Hermes doesn’t have a quick reply. That’s answer enough. I nod. “Yeah, I thought so.”

“Circe’s faltering. She—”

“Killed Eros.” I hold her gaze as I say it. “She shot him dead while you watched. She killed him, Hermes. If that wasn’t enough to prove how little she cares for the people you value, then I don’t know what will be enough. She would have killed me if she were less sloppy.”

“Circe isn’t sloppy,” she says softly. “She left you alive on purpose.”

I refuse to think about that statement—or the strange sensation it draws forth inside me. That knife fight was… I exhale slowly and turn away. It’s been a long time since I’ve been tested so thoroughly, and I’m not liar enough to pretend my blood didn’t sing through the whole combat.

So, yeah, I guess a part of me understands Hermes’s inability to stay away from that woman. Circe is a flickering flame, beckoning the unwary and wary both, overriding hard-won survival instincts. A promise of warmth and pleasure, a delivery of pain and death.

“Do what you need to do,” I say finally. “If we both survive it, I guess I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Atalanta.” She shoves to her feet. “I’m sorry, okay? When I get close to her, my mind goes all soft and goofy. It was a mistake.”

All the right words, but she’s forgetting I know her better than anyone else on this earth. I match her soft tone, injecting gentleness I don’t feel. “It might have been a mistake, but it will happen again and again and again. She didn’t break down the door to this safe house last night. You went to her.”

“Not on purpose.” The worst part is that I believe her. Their shared history is a thread neither of them can break, even if they wanted to. And they clearly don’t want to.

She slept with Circe.

Jealousy lashes me again, sharper this time, biting deep. “You know what? I’m done with this conversation. I might love you, but it doesn’t mean a single damned thing. I have no claim on you.”

“I want you to have a claim on me,” she whispers.

“I know.” Without another word, I turn around and walk out of the room. She doesn’t follow me. I expected it, but it hurts all the same. Everything hurts.

I should be used to it by now. Loving Hermes is a lesson in pain and patience. Even so, I’m not fool enough to believe she’s a slot machine I can put energy and caring into and get out sex and love. She does love me. She wasn’t lying when she said it. That just makes this whole thing all the more tragic.

Because she will always choose Circe.

I press a hand to my chest, just below the stab wound. Ironic that both Circe and Hermes have hurt me in damn near the same place, if for wildly different reasons. I stop before the front door and let the emotions roll over me. They’ll potentially get me killed if I don’t deal with them now—or at least tuck them away safely to be dealt with later.