Shattered Gods (Dark Olympus, #10)(47)

“No.”

“Hmm.” She exhales slowly. “Don’t lie to me again. My patience has never been legendary, and this pressure cooker of stress isn’t helping. How long have you been working with her against the Thirteen?”

The instinct to lie and keep lying rises, but I muscle it down. The time for that has passed, and I’m so fucking tired I can barely see straight. “The people of Olympus deserve better than the Thirteen.”

She shakes her head slowly. “Well, I can’t argue that, especially these days. I don’t know if I ever could.”

“Then why did you take the position?” I snap.

Athena has always had an ageless quality about her, as if something as mundane as time can’t touch her. That doesn’t feel true in this moment, where she suddenly looks every inch of her forty-seven years. “I wanted power.” The statement lands between us, the flat truth.

“That’s worked out really well for you.” I shouldn’t antagonize her, but I’m so fucking tired. “You got your power, but at what cost? How many lives are you responsible for taking? How do you live with that?”

“It’s quite easy. One compromise becomes a landslide of them, then you wake up one day and wonder who the fuck it is looking back at you in the mirror.” She snorts. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. No matter how naive and honorable your intentions, I don’t see how you have a path forward, and I’m not interested in being a martyr for Circe’s vengeance, no matter how much I might deserve it in this case.” At my look askance at her, she shrugs. “I could have tried to pressure the last Zeus into letting her go. I didn’t. When Zeus was happy and distracted with a new spouse, he wasn’t causing problems for the rest of us. Acceptable losses.”

The very idea leaves me cold. “I don’t believe in acceptable losses.”

“That’s because you’re young and idealistic.” She stands abruptly. “You’re also lying again. You’ve already made your peace with acceptable losses, even if you don’t see it that way. What else can you call Hermes working with Minos? Pan was injured at that party. Artemis would have been killed alongside Hephaestus if Cassandra and Apollo hadn’t uncovered Minos’s plot. She knew his intentions and did nothing to stop him.” She holds my gaze. “You were injured at that party. It’s sheer luck that you weren’t killed. She put you in that danger knowingly.”

“Hermes wasn’t…” I let my voice trail off and swallow hard. “She needed information from him.”

“Uh-huh. And the people he killed? Hephaestus? The others?”

“She had nothing to do with that,” I say flatly. I can’t help defending her, even now. “She—”

“The time for riding the line is over, Atalanta. You have to pick a side.” Athena holds my gaze. “Can you trust her fully? Are you sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she won’t turn on you and stand at Circe’s side before this is all over?”

I want to say I’m sure. I want to grind out the doubt that came in the wake of realizing where she spent the night. I’m so tired. It weighs on me, as if all the sleepless nights over the years have come due in this moment. I swallow hard and then do it again. “I trust her.” Even as I say it, I don’t know if it’s the full truth.

“I don’t,” Athena says flatly. “But it’s a moot point, I suppose. We play the hand we’re dealt. Even if the barrier stands indefinitely, we have to worry about keeping everyone fed without the supply lines from Demeter and Poseidon open. Better to deal with this as quickly as possible.”

“Athena.” I’m weaving on my feet. “We can’t go on like this. You have to understand that.”

“I know.” She turns toward the door. “Get some rest. I’ll have food brought to you, so no need to wander the halls. In a couple hours, I’ll be back to go over everything you saw while in the upper city. If we can get an idea of the forces Circe has under her command, that will help. You’re right about the mob being a problem, but ultimately, a mob can be guided with the right hand. Trained soldiers cannot.”

My throat suddenly feels too tight. “Okay.”

“Get some rest.”

My phone buzzes in my back pocket as Athena walks out of the kitchen. I already know who it is even before I pull it out. Except…I don’t? I blink at the unfamiliar number on the caller ID. “Hello?”

“You know, you actually forced me to change my plans. Not many people can say the same.”

My body goes tight and hot, pure rage flowing through me and whiting out my vision. Circe. I have to concentrate on keeping my phone to my ear instead of throwing it across the room. “Yeah, well, you fucked up my plans, too, so I guess that makes us even. Except it doesn’t. Not by a long shot.”

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Atalanta. What Hecate and I have is special. I’m sure she loves you very deeply.” She laughs, the sound slipping through the phone and seeming to wrap around me.

Her charisma is terrifying. I shiver. “Fuck off.”

“I understand what she sees in you, though.” Some of the pure charm fades from her tone, turning almost contemplative. “You’re a victim and survivor, just like us.”