Chapter 13
Atalanta
I lose a little time. Circe didn’t hit anything vital with the knife, but I’m still bleeding steadily and it hurts like a bitch. Exhaustion weighs me down, promising sweet oblivion if I’d close my eyes, just for a little bit.
The next thing I know, Hermes is pushing me into the back seat of a car and climbing in after me. Her face is worried, so fucking worried, her dark-brown eyes containing so many things we’ve left unsaid over the years. “Don’t you dare go to sleep.”
“I’m not dying today.” I’m just tired. So fucking tired, as if all the energy spent in the last decade has drained out of me all at once.
She looks to the front seat. “I don’t suppose you have a doctor on call.”
I follow her gaze a few beats too slowly to find Dionysus behind the wheel.
He looks like shit, but that seems to be the new normal for everyone in this cursed city.
His pale skin is nearly green, his dark hair greasy, and his impressive mustache drooping.
His clothes look slept in, too, the purple suit rumpled and somehow dim, as if the very color has leached out of it.
“I do, in fact.” He puts the car in gear and pulls out perfectly slowly, as if we’re not running for our lives. “They’re already waiting for us.”
“Dionysus, I appreciate you more than words can say. Thank you.” Hermes laces her fingers through mine, gripping my hand tightly.
I peel my eyes open to find her expression relaxed and cheerful, none of her tension present to be witnessed.
The fact she’s giving me even a hint of what she’s feeling is a privilege I’ll appreciate when every breath isn’t agony.
“Circe’s people are combing the city. It’s creating an unfortunately hostile environment.”
She huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, you can say that again. Why haven’t you gone to the lower city? Hades would shelter you. He wouldn’t even mind because he likes you.”
“You are being very generous with saying he likes me.” He’s silent for a beat.
“I can’t leave them, Hermes. It doesn’t matter if Circe is focusing her efforts on the legacy families and the Thirteen themselves.
My people are scared, and even if I haven’t always been a good leader to them, I’m not going to abandon them to save my own skin. ”
It strikes me in a strange sort of way that all the Thirteen have people.
Hades with the lower city, Zeus with the upper city, yes, but each of the Thirteen has a section of the city that they see as theirs.
Some take that responsibility more seriously than others.
Demeter and Poseidon have always been aware of how their communities surrounding the commerce of the city are vital and need to be protected.
Apollo’s team is smaller, but he is incredibly protective of them.
Ares and Athena look to their soldiers and assassins with a level of responsibility they take seriously.
Hephaestus and Aphrodite keep smaller staffs, but they’re handpicked.
Hera has her orphans and her trio of bodyguards.
Even Artemis has people, though she loads her team with her cousins.
Hermes is the only one who stands alone, an island to herself.
Except for me.
I squeeze her hand back, earning a surprised look. “You’re not alone.”
She raises her brows. “You’ve lost more blood than I thought. You’re talking silly.”
“No, Hermes…Hecate.” Her real name feels strange on my tongue, but in the perfect clarity of agonizing pain, I finally realize how I’ve intentionally looked away from that part of her.
I met her as Hecate, but it was only a short time later that she became Hermes, and then it seemed important to focus on the future instead of the past haunting her.
A mistake, and one that might cost me a future with the woman I love. “I’m serious.”
“I know.” She says it softly, as if trying to placate me. She still doesn’t get it, but I don’t have the energy to get through to her. Not when I’m not sure if I understand it, either.
Another too-long blink and Hermes is helping me out of the car, Dionysus coming up on my other side to support me. We’re in some kind of warehouse, large and echoing, and then a smaller room where they lay me out on a bed.
Hermes looks around and whistles. “Nifty.”
“Quite a few of my employees don’t trust the rest of the Thirteen enough to go to a hospital in the event of an accident.” He’s still speaking stiffly, though it seems like he’s softened a little. “They’ll be here shortly.”
“Who is they?” I manage.
“Iaso. They have plenty of experience dealing with accidents in the workplace.” He runs a hand through his hair and winces. “They might not have a degree, but they’re experienced.”
“What do you mean they don’t have a degree?” Hermes’s voice goes low and dangerous. “If they hurt Atalanta further—”
“They won’t.” He holds up his hands and takes a step back, his blue eyes wide. “You and I might have fallen out, but I’m not a butcher, Hermes. Atalanta has been wronged by the Thirteen more than she deserves. I wouldn’t add to that if there’s another option.”
“Lying right here,” I mutter. “Can hear you.”
Dionysus pats the air right above my head. “Yes, you are, and you’re doing a great job breathing. Keep it up.”
I narrow my eyes, irritation temporarily overriding the pain radiating through me. “The doctor will be fine, Hermes. We don’t have a better option.”
“Sure we do. We could…” She trails off under twin glares from me and Dionysus. “Okay, fine, but if this doctor moves wrong, I’m going to slit their throat.”
Dionysus flinches. “Please restrain yourself. They’re a friend, and I take it poorly when my friends fight.”
“Are we?” Hermes holds herself so still. She thinks it means no one can see what’s going on behind those luminous dark eyes, but there’s a brittle edge to her stillness. “Friends? Even now?”
“Friends fight, Hermes.” He sighs and glances at his phone. “I’m very angry with you for a number of reasons, but that doesn’t mean I stopped caring.”
I would very much like to be excluded from this conversation.
For many reasons. I hate seeing Hermes so lost; it makes me want to dunk Dionysus’s head in a bucket of water.
But, even more than that, I hate the intimacy they share.
They are friends. He wasn’t a mark she got close to because she needed information.
He might never have seen the truth of her, but she doesn’t show that to anyone. Not in full. Not even to me.
Hermes. Hecate. The same and not the same. Circe’s laughter circles my head, again and again, promising that no matter what happens, I’ll lose Hermes in the end. Because I will kill Circe. And that just might be the one thing Hermes won’t forgive me for.
A knock on the door has everyone tensing, but Dionysus checks his phone again and waves Hermes down. “It’s Iaso.”
I blink at the device in his hand. It’s a testament to how fucked up I am that I didn’t register what it means. “Get rid of that. Right now.”
He blinks. “Excuse me?”
“Circe is hunting the Thirteen and the legacy families. You think she won’t have hacked into the necessary systems to track their—your—phones?
” I’m so tired. I just want to close my eyes for a little while.
“It’s too late to toss it, at least here.
You have to lead them away, pull out the SIM card, and circle back.
” Even that might not be enough, not when we’ve lingered in one place for a little while.
Hermes curses. “She’s right.”
“Darling, I’m wounded that you think I would wander about with my main phone when members of the Thirteen are being executed.” He rises and walks to the door. “This is one of several burner phones. I left my main one at the penthouse.”
The doctor who walks through the door is a short white person with a shaved head, tattoos up their thick neck, and a barrel body that looks like they could bench-press a car.
They barely glance at Dionysus before setting down their bag by the bed I’m currently trapped on.
“Well, the good news is that if the knife hit something vital, you’d already be dead. ”
“Great, they can state the obvious,” Hermes mutters. “And have a shitty bedside manner, too.”
“I don’t get paid for smiles and sweet words.” They glance at Hermes. “You’re hovering. Back off.”
I don’t see if she obeys because they slap on a pair of gloves, pull a few more things from their bag, and then tug the knife from my body. I don’t make a sound. There’s no air for screaming, just blinding, white-hot pain flashing a panicked rhythm against the backs of my eyes.
Iaso peers down at the wound. “Lucky.”
“I hate you,” I wheeze.
“I get that a lot.” They pull out a set of bandages and take my hand to press them to the wound.
“Hold this. We’re going to stitch you up, get some clean bandages on you, and then you’re going to ignore all my advice about resting and taking it easy until this heals.
” They start laying out the stuff to put me back together.
They’re quick and capable as they begin to stitch my wound.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been stabbed.
Not by a long shot. I suppose, on the bright side, at least this injury won’t fuck up my face even more.
Not that my facial scars are something I think about overmuch.
I’ve had them for so long—since I was sixteen and still charging into fights I knew I couldn’t win because at least I’d feel something.
They’re a sign of strength, of what I’ve survived and overcome.
So, yeah, they don’t bother me much, but I can’t get Circe’s freakish perfection out of my head.
I knew she was beautiful, of course. Even without a digital footprint to speak of, Hermes has let comments slip over the years.
But seeing the delicate features, the big green eyes, the cruel tilt of her lips…
And she can fight, too. I didn’t expect that, though I should have.
It’s all making me feel extremely inadequate.
Iaso finishes their stitches and wraps my shoulder in a bandage.
“The longer you can go without doing something dangerous and athletic, the better. I can see you’re ignoring me, so I’ll lay it out like this.
You lost a lot of blood, almost enough to need a transfusion.
Reopen this wound and you’ll probably end up unconscious and as a burden to whoever you’re fighting with. ”
I blink. “Noted.”
“Thank you, Iaso. I’ll arrange your payment…” Dionysus hustles Iaso out of the room, shooting a worried look at Hermes as he does.
And then we’re alone. Me, lying here helpless and vulnerable. Hermes, staring down at me with her heart in her eyes. A heart that I’ll never have, not in full.
She sinks down next to the bed and takes one of my hands in both of hers. “I can take it from here.”
“What?”
“You have to go to the lower city. Athena won’t want to lose you, and she’ll ensure you’re on light duty until you heal. This will be over by then.” So reasonable. So damned stubborn.
I give her the look that goofy-ass statement deserves. “Because you’ve been handling it so well for the last day? Because things are going so well for all of us?”
She flinches and looks away. “When we set this plan in motion and I successfully became Hermes, I didn’t think it would be so difficult to keep from caring about…
all of them. The Thirteen. The legacy families.
I didn’t expect to make friends.” She takes a deep breath.
“Eros was my friend, Atalanta. He might have hated me at the end, but he was my friend.”
And now he’s dead.
I sit up, ignoring her protests, and pull her down on my uninjured side so I can wrap my arm around her. Hermes is larger than life in all aspects; I forget she’s such a tiny thing, so easy to tuck against my body. Or maybe I never knew. We haven’t exactly sat like this before.
She relaxes by increments until she slumps against me. “He’s really gone.”
“I’m sorry.” Those words are so damned inadequate. Meaningless, even. I can’t rip apart the fabric of time and go back to save him and spare her this pain. I can’t do anything but put one foot in front of the other.
“Me too.” She shudders out a sigh. “It’s not going to stop.
Hades won’t back down. I was a fool to think that could even be a possibility.
And now that his wife and child are on the line, any chance of Zeus listening is gone too, which means Ares will go down with him.
” She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes.
“If we could have convinced them to step down…”
“It doesn’t matter.” She tenses, but I keep speaking before she can rip my head off. “Circe was always going to come. We didn’t know that when we put this whole thing into motion, but it is fact. Our plans were never going to go off without a hitch.” Though Circe is one bitch of a hitch.
And her expression as she stabbed me… It was almost reluctant.
As if she’d just shattered a priceless artifact instead of conquered an enemy she was intent on killing.
She could have killed me. I was utterly helpless in that moment, shock and pain overwhelming everything.
Instead, she walked away. Whether she knew she was giving me the opportunity to escape or not…
“She’s not what I expected.” The words emerge from my confusion even though not talking about Circe has been something of an unspoken rule, at least until recently.
“I know.” Hermes slowly sits up, taking her wonderful heat with her. She gives me a sad smile. “She’s wonderful, isn’t she?”
Yes. I stifle that response before it gets past my lips. “You have a strange definition of the word.”
“I’m a complicated woman, Atalanta.” She gives me a long look. “We need to get moving. I know Dionysus is using a burner phone, and he’s very good at not being found when he sets his mind to it, but there’s no reason to tempt fate…or Circe.”
“I’m ready when you are.” The words contain so much.
I know better than to pressure her, especially now with everything going on, but there’s a part of me that wonders if this is all pointless, if it’s always been pointless.
We’re trying to save people who don’t want to save themselves.
Maybe we should have left Olympus to rot.
“I have somewhere safe where you can get some rest.” She helps me to my feet. “Things will look better in the morning.”