Interlude III Hermes
Interlude III
Hermes
“There’s no sign of her.”
I swallow down a sigh. I’m so bloody tired, I can barely see straight.
I’m in the best shape of my life, but even someone of my unparalleled athleticism needs to sleep and rest occasionally.
Rest has been in short supply lately. “Things are going a little better on my end. Hades isn’t going to work with the rest of them. I made sure of it.”
Atalanta hums a little under her breath. “Athena is furious Circe keeps evading us. Even I’m starting to get irritated. No one can be that good.”
Circe is. She always was. Even when we were kids, her mind and ambition were fearsome things. As we grew up, those traits were refined by a life lived hard. She became ruthless. Unstoppable.
But I can’t say as much to Atalanta. She’s already giving me worried looks when I speak with a little too much enthusiasm about Circe.
Atalanta is a good woman, the best woman, but even with the struggles she’s faced, she was born into a life of privilege.
She might believe the system needs to shatter in order to be rebuilt, but she doesn’t possess the deep desperation constantly clawing at my insides.
“She’s in the countryside. It’s the only thing that makes sense. ”
“Poseidon did mention the possibility to both Demeter and Zeus. He’s worried she’ll come in through the mountains.
It’s a quick hike to the civilian camp from the foothills, but there have been no reports suggesting strange activity in the area.
Though I don’t know what would qualify as strange with the majority of the Olympian population there. ”
“I know.” I rub my eyes. They feel so heavy. Everything feels so heavy. Damn it, I’m not going to get away without sleeping another night. “I’m going to crash for a few hours and see if things are clearer when I’ve got fewer cobwebs taking up space in my head.”
“You can use my place if you want.” The offer is a study in casualness.
A step toward our path to something more.
To spend my vulnerable time sleeping wrapped up in the fantasy of her, of what it would be like if it was our place and not just her place.
It’s absurd that I haven’t even kissed Atalanta yet and I’m practically picking out wedding rings, but I live for the absurd.
And what I feel for her isn’t. It’s soft and sweet with just enough hard edge to make things interesting.
And I can’t have it. Not until we accomplish what we set out to do. Grabbing at a happy future too soon is a good way to end up pacified and making excuses to keep the status quo. We’re so close. We can’t afford to slip. “Next time.”
Her voice betrays no hurt. “Next time. Get some sleep, Hermes.”
“Never fear, darling. I’m the best sleeper to ever sleep.
” I keep the injected cheer in my voice until I hang up.
Then I let my smile fall. I want what Atalanta’s offering with a desperation that borders on frenzy.
She’s so damn interesting and intelligent and capable, and she smells so sweet.
Sometimes I catch myself fantasizing about finding out if she tastes just as sweet as she smells.
Not tonight.
Not until this is over.
I fully intend to spend the night in one of the safe houses I have scattered about the city, but when I look up, I realize my feet have made a different decision for me.
Blasted feet. I stand in front of the iron gate that leads into the first property I ever purchased after I became Hermes and got access to a truly spectacular amount of knowledge and wealth.
I spent the next year getting it exactly perfect, recreating something that only existed in my mind—in our minds.
A romantic little house surrounded by greenery.
Yes, the greenery here is half-fake, but I’m not a perfect person and it’s pleasing to see plants and flowers even in the darkest part of winter.
Or that was the theory. In reality, I haven’t been back here since renovations were completed.
I walked through the house and realized it was a tribute to a future I would never experience. A future spent with Circe.
I key in the code and slip inside, making sure the gate is closed behind me.
It’s late enough in the year that most of the live bushes have lost their leaves, but there are still a few dozen sharing their artificial brightness.
It’s strange to see them against their hibernating neighbors.
Maybe I shouldn’t have “planted” the fakes. Maybe…
Well, I made a lot of mistakes back then.
I was young and foolish and part of me truly believed building this tribute to a dead woman would be enough to ease the pain of losing her.
I was wrong on both counts. She’s not dead, and it still hurts as much today as it did the moment Zeus came back from their honeymoon and announced Circe had passed.
A loss opened up inside me when I heard those words and nothing I’ve done since has come close to filling it.
Maybe that’s the reason I’ve held off on pursuing the interest Atalanta and I both feel. I don’t have a whole heart to give her, and she deserves nothing less.
I key open the door and step inside, refusing to take the time to brace myself.
Barely a week ago, I sent Ariadne and Icarus to this house to hide.
Naturally, Atalanta was clever enough to follow them here, but she didn’t catch them.
An intentional mistake. I needed the Minotaur to help me with a tiny little task and he would have gotten unruly if something happened to his precious love or her brother.
I expect to see the dust disturbed and the house to feel like someone had been here recently—because someone was, in fact, here recently. What I don’t expect was for it to be spotless.
The wooden floors gleam under my feet as I walk slowly down the hall. The first room—a parlor—is more of the same, the sheets covering the furniture nowhere in evidence. It looks just like it did the one and only time I walked through before closing it up for good.
“What the fuck?” But I know, don’t I? Maybe I’ve always known.
I find her in the bedroom. Circe reclines on the bed, reading a paperback novel with two people clutched tight together on the cover, the woman’s dress looking like something with claws got to it.
For a moment, I’m convinced I wandered into another world, one where she wasn’t ripped violently from me, one where this is our life—where she still reads those titillating novels and then kisses me as if she never needs to breathe.
She was very careful after her “death.” Even after Minos dropped enough hints that his sponsor was someone I knew intimately, I still didn’t quite believe it could be her.
No amount of digging found digital evidence of her—no pictures, no social media, no government documents.
I even tried to hack into several banking systems, but while I’m good, I’m not on that level.
I’m not prepared for her beauty. Oh, she was always gorgeous in the fresh-faced way young people tend to be, but it’s been almost twenty years. The girl who I loved bears only a passing resemblance to the woman who idly presses a bookmark into her book and closes it carefully.
Her short hair leaves her face in sharp relief, giving me nothing to focus on but her big dark eyes and her model-like cheekbones and, gods, her mouth. It’s as if the years have melted away what little softness she had and now her beauty is a weapon.
I belatedly realize I still haven’t spoken, but the air has been sucked right out of my lungs. I can only stand there and stare.
She rises slowly, wearing a pair of leggings and a knit sweater that shows off her athletic legs and her lean body. And, damn it, her breasts press against the thin fabric, tempting curves that my hands know the weight of, despite my being sure time had stolen the memory from me.
“Circe,” I finally manage, my voice mangled.
“Hecate.” She moves around the edge of the bed and stops before me. In her bare feet, she’s only a couple inches taller than me. She lifts an elegant hand, but stops short of touching my face. “The years look good on you.”
“You too.” Gods, I can do better than this. I’m no longer just Hecate, victim of the whims of the powerful. I’m Hermes, for fuck’s sake. There’s never been a situation I can’t find a way to backflip through—sometimes literally.
But standing here, held captive by her gaze, I’m not Hermes at all. I really am only Hecate, a woman with more dreams than I can contain alone.
Circe has new lines at the edges of her eyes, but they only enhance her beauty. She surveys me. “You know, when I realized you were the new Hermes, I hated you.”
My mouth is so dry, I can’t possibly dream of swallowing. “Hated, past tense.”
“Yes, hated, past tense.” Her full lips curve. “You were the one who taught me how to look. It didn’t take long to figure out you were on a revenge mission.” She glances around the room. “This house only further confirms it. You didn’t miss a single detail, did you?”
“How could I?” I whisper. “Those dreams were all I had left of you after…”
“Yes. After.” She cups my cheek the way she used to, all those years ago. “Join me. I’m so close to accomplishing more than we ever dared dream.”
I almost say yes. That word, those three letters, dance on the edge of my tongue. I have to concentrate to swallow them back. “What is your endgame, Circe?”
She shrugs, so elegant that I want to fall to my knees and weep. “Nothing more than what we always talked about. A dream, just like this house.”
I knew it to be true the moment I realized who Minos’s benefactor was.
I just didn’t want to believe it. I’m ruthless to a fault and I have blood on my hands—and will have more before this is over.
But being Hermes, moving through circles previously closed to me, made me realize something I never could have imagined all those years ago, when the downfall of Olympus was just a dream shared in the dark space between my lips and hers.
The legacy families are just people. There are good ones and bad ones and petty ones and selfish ones.
Some of them actually use their privilege to do good things.
The system of the Thirteen must be abolished, but I don’t have the stomach for wholesale slaughter.
Some of those people have become my friends, even if they don’t trust me much right now.
Even if they weren’t…there have to be lines.
Otherwise, we’re just as bad as the thing we’re trying to eradicate.
It kills me to take a step back, to put more distance between the love of my life and me. The next step feels like I’m being stabbed. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Her smile never dims. “I thought that might be your answer.” She looks around the room again, but her gaze is distant in a way that makes me think she’s seeing beyond these walls. “This place has changed you.”
I shake my head sharply. “Losing you changed me. That’s where it started.”
“You could have me again.” Her dark eyes go soft, just like they always used to before she’d kiss me. “I never stopped loving you—even when I hated you.”
“I never stopped loving you, either,” I whisper.
She closes the distance I tried to create, and I can’t stop myself from inhaling, taking her spicy scent as deep into my lungs as I can. It’s still the same, even if everything else has changed.
Circe kisses me. I make a sound that’s part desperation and part protest, but my hands are in her hair and I’m pulling her close. Gods, I missed you so much. I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t…
There’s a sharp pinch at the base of my neck. I jerk back—or at least I try. My limbs aren’t working properly. I stagger away from Circe, pressing my hand to my neck. My fingers come away with little drops of blood on them. “You…”
“Drugged you, yes.” She ignores my attempt to flee and catches me around the waist, tugging me to the bed just as my legs give out. Then she lifts me easily onto the mattress and lays me out. She even makes sure the pillow under my head is properly placed. “There you go.”
“But…” My tongue feels too thick in my mouth.
“Yes, that’s a valid point.” She shifts me onto my side, facing her, and props one of the pillows against my back to keep me in place. “It will wear off in a few hours, but you’ll be woozy for another few after that.”
“Hours.”
“Yes, sweet, hours. It’s one of my little concoctions.
” She crouches next to the bed, putting herself in my fading line of sight.
“I can’t risk you developing a sudden case of heroics.
I meant what I said, Hecate. I never stopped loving you, and it’d break my heart to kill you.
Don’t make me.” She presses a soft kiss to lips that I can’t feel.
“I’ll be back for you when it’s all over. Wait for me.”
I try to call her back, to tell her not to do this. In all my scheming, I never even considered that things could play out this way.
I pass out before the first word leaves my lips.