Chapter 7 Hermes
Hermes
Circe’s people haul me into a private room. I barely have the capacity to register the path we travel. My bones feel loose and fluid, my muscles lacking the strength required to move them. I…didn’t think she’d do it.
Circe has always had the capacity for violence.
Executing Peitho, who had a direct hand in the abuse she suffered?
That makes sense. But Eros? He was another person who the system of Olympus failed: abused and manipulated by his bitch of a mother, groomed to be the bloody knife against her enemies.
No, he wasn’t innocent—not by a long shot—but he was finally moving past all the bullshit and into a truly disgustingly perfect happily ever after.
“I can’t believe you killed him,” I whisper. “You didn’t even hesitate.”
Circe nods to the woman at my back. “Release her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Antigone,” she snaps. She’s lost some of the smoothness she seems to cultivate these days, her tone sharp and filled with the promise of rage. “I am more than capable of handling this by myself. Leave us. See to the cleanup with Nerissa. We’ll speak about next steps tonight.”
A pause as if this Antigone will defy her further, but then the harsh grip on my arms is gone, leaving me to slump to the floor. I’ll get up in a minute, will become the person—the weapon—I need to be in order to keep moving forward. In a minute…
Circe crouches before me. I hate that she looks even more perfect up close, her beauty only having been sharpened in the years since I saw her last. We were so fucking naive, filled with hope and fear and rage in the way only someone young enough to be sure they’re immortal can be.
She smooths back my braids. “Oh, Hecate.” It would be so much easier—maybe—if she spoke to me with the same hate she reserves for the rest of Olympus.
But she doesn’t. When Circe talks to me, it’s with the same love and fondness she felt the last time we spoke, before both our worlds crumbled down around us.
I can see the woman she was, mixed in with the woman she’s become.
She’s not a stranger to me. This would be so much easier to navigate if she was.
“I’m not Hecate anymore.” I buried that foolish version of myself the moment I took the Hermes title. I had to in order to survive.
“You’ll always be Hecate to me.” She shifts her touch to trace her fingers along my cheek.
“All you had to do was stay out of the way. I fully intended to leave you alone until I finished my work here, but now you’ve made a mess of things and riled up both the citizens and my people.
I’ll fix it, but I can’t let you leave.”
“I made a mess of things?” I jerk back, breaking contact. “You killed Eros.”
“Yes,” she says simply, though her green eyes are troubled. “It wasn’t part of the plan, but if he had gotten his hands on me, you know exactly what he would have done. Would you have preferred that outcome?”
My mouth works, but no sound emerges. Of course I don’t want her dead.
I’ve barely come to terms with the fact she’s alive.
And yet it can’t change anything. I can’t allow her to rampage through my city, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I wasn’t supposed to be conflicted. There’s no space in the future I’m trying to carve out in her name for the woman herself to bust in and fuck up all my plans.
Circe is the same woman I fell in love with all those years ago, and yet, she’s a stranger to me.
She cups my face, so damned gentle that I could die from it. “I truly am sorry. I know he was someone you valued.”
“Don’t.” I jerk back again, meeting the wall. There’s nowhere to run. She’s not attacking me, not in an identifiable way. Her gentleness is pure cruelty, but I can’t think clearly enough to stop myself from craving it. “You can’t do this.”
“Darling, I already am.” She doesn’t try to touch me again, but she’s too close. It would take nothing at all to tip forward, to let her catch me before I hit the floor. Even after all this time, after becoming strangers to each other, I have no doubt she’d never let me touch the ground.
I close my eyes. “This is beyond fucked.”
“Yes.” Some of the carefulness bleeds out of her tone. “You’re not one for captivity, but it’s a necessary measure—and a temporary one.”
My eyes snap open. “There isn’t a cell in this city that can hold me.” I’ve made damned sure of that.
She smiles sadly. “Not even if you want to be held?” Circe leans in, very carefully maintaining a laughably small distance between us. “Don’t you want to be held by me, Hecate? You always did before.”
I don’t make a decision to move. I’m a lodestone and she’s my truth north. With her breath feathering over my skin, I’m helpless to do anything but close that hint of space and press my lips to hers. She opens for me immediately, one hand coming up to clasp my neck as she takes control.
Gods, but she tastes like home. I thought I was mistaken after the last ill-fated kiss, but this one only cements the truth.
She’s always been so sharp, but she’s soft for me.
She nips my bottom lip and inhales my gasp, her free hand sliding down my spine to urge me to press tightly to her.
Well over ten years separate us from the people we were and the people we are, but this is still so familiar I could weep.
I know her, her body, know what she likes, what she craves. Just like she knows the same for me.
I’ve been chasing the high of being in Circe’s arms for so fucking long, and now she’s right here and I can touch her to my heart’s delight. Except she’s standing on the opposite side of a line I can’t cross. Not without losing my soul.
It rips away a part of said soul to shove her back.
If I can get out of this room, even her small army of soldiers can’t stop me from leaving campus.
I know every nook and cranny of this place—of every place.
When one wants to play a trickster ghost, it behooves them to know every escape route available. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Then don’t.”
As if it’s that simple. I glance at the door again. I should run, but that would leave her at my back. I might have plenty of conflicting feelings about this woman, but I know better than to do that. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t.” She holds out a hand. “Stay with me, Hecate. We can do this together.”
My instincts are all discombobulated. I don’t want to fight her, but I have to. There’s no chance of reconciliation, not without one of us compromising the very thing we’ve been working toward for a third of our lives. It won’t happen. It can’t happen.
I stare up into her beautiful face. “Circe, you just killed one of my only friends in this fucked-up city.” I don’t want to spin through likely eventualities, but my brain doesn’t care what I want.
Helen—now Ares—might not consider me on her side, but if she dies…
And Cassandra. Gods know she won’t abandon Apollo, and she’s even more protective of him than Eros was of his mother.
She’ll be cut down just like the rest of them.
I’ll lose them all.
“I truly am sorry.” Circe even looks it. That’s the most fucked-up part. She might be able to lie as easily as breathing, but she’s never been able to lie to me. She’s never bothered. She isn’t now, either. “But I have no intention of playing the martyr. It was him or me.”
I swallow hard. “You have to stop this.”
“I can’t, love. We passed the point of no return a long time ago, well before I ever set foot back on Olympian soil. All that’s left is to ensure the pieces fall where I need them to.”
That’s the problem. The pieces are people I’ve come to care about over the last decade.
Not all of them—Olympus has more than its fair share of monsters—but enough.
If I flee this room, then I’m allowing Circe to be driven by her grief and anger.
More people will die, and I can stop it, even if I can’t stop her permanently. If I can restrain her…
I’m moving before a plan fully forms, grabbing her wrist and spinning her around so I can wrap my arm around her throat. If I can knock her unconscious, I can—
Something pricks my neck. I jerk back, taking the needle she just stuck in my neck with me. “Drugs. Again. How original.” I pull it from my body with shaking hands, but she’s already pressed the plunger. Warmth rushes through my body, thick and liquifying. I’m going to pass out. Damn it.
“You don’t get to take that tone when you attacked me.
” She’s a little breathless, a little shocked, but Circe catches me as my legs turn to molten wax.
As I suspected, she doesn’t let me hit the ground.
“It would simplify my life if I could bear the thought of you dead—but I can’t. I also can’t let you kill me.”
“Wasn’t going to.” My lips and tongue feel strange and heavy. It’s not the same concoction she drugged me with last time. “Kill you.”
“I wasn’t going to take that chance. This drug won’t harm you.
It will just keep you from moving until it wears off.
I can’t let you be hurt, Hecate. Even now.
” Circe half carries me to the couch and gently sets me down.
She pulls a cotton swab from somewhere and presses it to my neck.
Or I assume she does; I can’t feel a thing.
“Bullshit.” My lips are going numb, but I still manage to make my disbelief known. “Had it ready.”
She smiles, quick and sharp. “You know me, always prepared.” The smile fades away. “It wasn’t for you specifically. I’m back in Olympus. I won’t be caught unawares again.”
My mind is still racing even as my body goes completely limp and my head lolls against the couch. “Why not kill me?”
“You know why. You’re just being stubborn about admitting it. It’s easier to paint me as the villain than admit we want the same things. We’ve always wanted the same things. But I suppose that’s not the full truth, is it?”