30
HEPHAESTUS
I meet Pandora at a coffee shop a few blocks from Dodona Tower. She’s sitting at a corner booth tucked out of sight of the windows to the street. I slide carefully into the seat across from her. “Why here?” It would be more secure to talk in Minos’s penthouse… Unless she doesn’t want him to overhear this conversation.
Honestly, that works for me.
My head is still spinning from the meeting with the rest of the Thirteen and my wife’s concern for me. I want to say she’s totally off base with it, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am.
“I didn’t want to deal with going back there.” She passes a cup of coffee across the table to me. “This is a mess.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
That’s the question, isn’t it? The fact that it’s a question at all is a problem. I haven’t wavered in fifteen years, and I can’t waver now. I close my eyes and inhale deeply. It never used to be tricky to remember everything I owe Minos. It never felt like a burden instead of a blessing. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Theseus.” She bumps her foot against mine. “You know I’m in your corner, no matter what, right?”
“Yeah.” It’s never been a question, even if we butt heads on a regular basis. “I know that.”
“Good.” She sighs. “I’m worried. This plan doesn’t make sense. Even if Minos was able to replace the entirety of the Thirteen—which he doesn’t have enough people to do—it doesn’t change the fact that that ridiculous clause means every one of them will have a target on their back. The people won’t follow them.”
She’s not wrong. The growing unrest in the city almost feels like a physical weight in the air. It’s dangerous, and a shit ton of people are going to get caught in the cross fire if these individual attempts on people’s lives turn into a mob.
I’ve only seen a mob once before and that shit gave me a lifetime of nightmares. People stop being people and the violence is enough to make even me sick. If the citizens of Olympus become a mob, there won’t be much left of the city.
“He’s not trying to replace the rest of the Thirteen. The house party was a one-shot.” He’s a good enough liar to fool the Thirteen this morning, but what he said matches the conversation I overheard a few days ago. “He’s got something else going on. Some shipment coming in through the port. I don’t know the details.”
She looks at me, her dark eyes troubled. “That doesn’t worry you? I know he’s the type to keep things close to his chest, but why are we just dancing to the tune he sets? I don’t want to see Eris hurt. I don’t think you do, either.”
“She’s the enemy.” The words don’t have the same ring of truth they did even a few days ago.
“Are you sure?” She presses her lips together. “And even if she is, don’t lie and say you consider Adonis an enemy, too. I see the way you look at him.”
There’s no point in lying. Even if I was good at it, I don’t lie to Pandora. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
I curse. “No, Pandora, it doesn’t. If Adonis isn’t smart enough to get out of the way of whatever Minos is planning, then it doesn’t matter how I feel about him.”
She searches my face. “Are you really okay with that?”
No. “Yes.”
“Liar.” She drains the rest of her coffee. “How did the meeting go?”
“I don’t know how they get shit done in this place. They’re like a pack of jackals tearing into each other.” Surely they know the threat the city is facing. I’ve watched Minos deal with similar, smaller-scale conflicts over the years. He simply makes people disappear. It’s what they should have done to us the moment the Ares competition ended.
Instead, they offered us citizenship, and half the ruling body showed up to Minos’s damned house party without their security and all but offered him their throats.
They deserve whatever comes to them.
The reasoning feels flimsier than ever. I might not like most of those fuckers, but I can’t exactly fault them for panicking now that every person on the street could be poised to murder them.
Could be poised to murder Aphrodite.
I drag my hand through my hair. “It’s a mess.”
“Yes, we’ve established that.” She sighs. “Something has to give, Theseus. She won’t be the one to fold.”