Shattered Gods (Dark Olympus, #10)(85)

“That will take months to set up properly.”

“Yes,” she says simply. “But we start today with implementing reform through the proposed policies and selecting temporary delegates from every territory.”

Clio shifts, drawing attention to her. She’s a short Black woman with light-brown skin and box braids. “The upper city already picked our temporary delegates. They will be me, Pan, and Bellerophon.”

We’d hoped this would happen. By giving them plenty of time ahead of the meeting, they had the opportunity to meet first and decide on who would lead them—and what they wanted from these reforms. It’s a good sign our hopes seem to have played out.

The older white man who spoke for the countryside nods. “We’ve picked as well.” He names three people who lift their hands, their faces deadly serious.

I glance at Bellerophon, but it’s Juliette who steps forward. She’s a gorgeous Black woman with short hair and dark-brown skin, tall and just as lean as she was during her modeling years. “The lower city chooses Gayle.” She nods at an older Black woman. “Matthew.” A white man in his thirties. “And me.”

It’s well done, across the board. I can’t speak to the country’s choices, though from the way people move around those three, they must be leaders in their community. And the lower city choices are all pillars of their community. Even the upper city has a good range of people who have spent time working among the population. They’re not divorced from the reality of Olympus for its civilians.

The hope inside me gets stronger. This might actually happen. This is happening.

“Perfect.” Hecate motions to the neat stacks of papers placed on the table in front of her. “Let’s move on to the reform.”

And so it begins.

The rest of the day is spent in hot debate as the delegates advocate for their respective territories, with Hecate offering careful friction to guide them to unite against her instead of fighting among each other, but never enough resistance to stall negotiations.

By the end of the week, they’re making solid progress in carving out a new government that might actually work. Hades brings down the lower city barrier and we’re able to spirit Circe and her people out of Olympus on a ship. All of the Thirteen and the legacy families have disappeared as well; it surprised the fuck out of me that no one tried to go back on their word, but Circe’s executions of Peitho and Artemis were enough to scare everyone. We’re doing it. We’re finally seeing our plan, a decade in the making, coming to fruition. It’s exhausting. It’s exhilarating. And yet…

I spend hours every day watching Hecate’s back as she argues and manipulates and flatters by turn. I can see the active progress we’re making, the future we’re making better for all Olympians. It’s just…

“It’s good we’re not staying in the city,” Hecate says one night, sprawled across my chest in loose exhaustion. “I can keep up this energy because I know there’s an end date. It’s a lot more fun to topple a government than it is to set one up.”

“Yeah.” I smooth back her braids. “It’s a lot of talking and not a lot of action.”

She lifts her head to look into my eyes. “You don’t have to stay, you know. Circe found that house and is getting it ready for us. If you want to leave early—”

“No.” I’m not someone who was meant for a desk job or really any job that requires me to hold the same still position for hours at a time, but I’m not about to leave Hecate undefended. Nothing bad has happened yet, but that isn’t a promise for the future. “When we leave, we leave together.”

She huffs out a breath. “It’s safe enough.”

“We didn’t come this far to lose you now.” I press a light kiss to her forehead. “Besides, without you in the mix, Circe and I are liable to end up sniping at each other until we get irritated enough to go for our knives again.”

“Uh-huh.” She props her chin on her folded hands over my chest. “When you said that, there was a little thread of excitement in your voice. I didn’t know you were such a kinky bitch, Atalanta.”

I roll us, ending with her on her back and me braced over the top of her. “And I did know you get your rocks off by being a little instigator.”

“Guilty.” She wraps her legs around my waist, as loose and relaxed as I’ve ever seen her. “I don’t know how to tell Circe this since she seems happy enough setting up house, but I don’t know if I’ll ever fit into a normal life.”

I settle on top of her. It feels like this conversation has been coming for days, but I’m still not ready. “Are we going to get jobs? Pay a mortgage? Is Circe?”

We exchange a look and burst out laughing. Hecate twines her arms around my neck. “We don’t have to have any answers now. First, we need to get Olympus to a stable enough place that they don’t need me generating issues to unify them. Then, we’ll go to Circe and see what she’s been up to in the meantime.”

I lift a single brow. “So you caught that strangeness in the last phone call?”

“Oh yeah.” She grins. “She’s absolutely not telling us something, but for once, I’m not actually worried it will hurt us. She’s probably just, like, bought an entire street and set up her people in all the houses around us.”