Chapter 32
Atalanta
As we wait in the university to see if the leaders and potential delegates are actually coming, tension is a live thing inside me. I know this is the turning point for all our plans, the moment when we might actually see all our hard work and sacrifices come to fruition… But at what cost?
If they demand Hecate’s head, I’ll cut through every single of one of them, damn this new world order.
“It will be fine,” she says softly. “You’ll see.”
It’s strange to realize that, at her core, Hecate is the optimist of our little threesome. Circe and I have plenty of fears about what happens next. Hers are worse because she’s not able to stand at Hecate’s side while we find out if it was all for nothing.
The door creaks open and people begin to stream into the room in ones and twos.
I can’t help holding my breath as I take in these strangers.
From their clothing—mundane and serviceable and showing signs of repair—I suspect they’re from the countryside.
My suspicions prove true when a white man with gray hair steps forward.
“We’re willing to listen. We won’t promise more than that. ”
“It’s enough,” Hecate says softly.
More people filter into the room before anyone can say more. These, I recognize. They’re from the upper city. Pan, the owner of the Dryad, who was nearly killed at Minos’s party. Clio Mousa, one of the main writers for MuseWatch. And Bellerophon, Athena’s second-in-command.
Bellerophon catches my eye and peels off from the others to approach. They’re a tall Black person with broad shoulders, warm brown skin, and a head full of curls. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Atalanta.”
“Just making sure everyone is on their best behavior.” There. That’s noncommittal enough.
They raise their brows. “Not at Athena’s behest.” I attempt to fight down my flinch, but they see it all the same. They chuckle. “I’m not explicitly here at her behest, either. I’ve been released from service. All her people have.”
The implications stun me. If Athena is releasing her people, that indicates Zeus is leaving Olympus and she’s following his lead. She wouldn’t flee the city if he stayed…and if he’s leaving, then Ares must be as well. Apollo, too. The dominos continue to topple, but this time in our favor.
Hope unfurls in my chest, displacing dread for the first time in what feels like years. “She’s leaving.”
They nod. “The lower city faction should be here shortly. Hermes—Hecate—gave a good speech, and whatever she did behind the scenes was even more convincing.” They look away. “But it was really Demeter’s death that changed everything.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t really know the woman, and I certainly didn’t like much of what I saw, but I can’t deny she chose well in the end, even knowing the likely outcome. Turning her back on Circe for the sake of the city took bravery I can’t help but admire, no matter what else she was capable of.
The lower city faction arrives then. I recognize some of them from the various reports Athena kept on key players across the River Styx.
There’s Charon, Hades’s second-in-command, and Juliette, a designer who was essentially exiled from the upper city but continued to hold sway despite that.
Or maybe because of it. I’m surprised to find Calypso and Medusa among the small crowd.
I would have assumed they’d use the opportunity to leave the city behind forever.
Hecate lifts her hands, and after a moment of murmuring, silence descends. I study the crowd for any sign of violence, but despite being overtly guarded, every person here appears ready to listen.
“Thank you for coming.” She lowers her hands. “I’ve taken the liberty of preparing some documents for you to look over. It will give us a place to start.”
“Us.” A white woman, her red hair going gray, steps forward. I don’t recognize her, but she came in with the lower city group. “Even if this impossible task manages to succeed, surely you can’t expect us to let you stay in the city.”
Hecate smiles. “I’ll leave the moment the first set of delegates are sworn in—after a fair election process.”
“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.”
As much as I want to say Hecate is being dramatic, the truth is that is exactly something Circe would do.
More than that, I can’t blame her for wanting security in any way she can get it.
She gets to take care of her surviving people in the process, and that’s not a bad thing.
Some of them decided to go back to Aeaea, drawn by the news of changes Icarus Vitalis is making there, but most followed Circe to… wherever she is.
“I don’t know what normal looks like either, Hecate.
” It’s easy to admit this in the intimacy between just the two of us.
“I don’t know if we can be normal after what we’ve lived through, what we’ve done.
” I brush a kiss to her lips. “But we’ll have each other and we’ll have the future, no matter what it looks like. That’s a win from where I’m sitting.”
“I feel the same way,” she whispers. “I didn’t dare hope we’d all survive this, and even now it feels like the rug is going to get pulled out from beneath my feet at the last moment, but…”
“We survived.” I kiss her again. “We will continue to survive. We’ll get Olympus back on its feet, shaky though it is, and then we’ll go see what our murderous girlfriend has been up to.”
“And then?”
“And then we take it day by day.” Another kiss, this one deep and searching. When I finally break it, I’m breathing hard. “We have so many days, Hecate. Weeks, months, years.”
She smiles against my lips. “Well, shit, it’s hard to be morose with you kissing me like that. Do it again.”
I do. Again and again, tugging her back from the dark place she’s gone, anchoring her in the here and now with my body and my touch.
I don’t know what the future holds, and I might be bored out of my damn mind with all the paperwork forming a new government generates, but I’m content.
Once we reunite with Circe and start the next chapter, I’ll be happy.
It’s more than I could have ever dreamed. More than I even dared hope for.