Chapter 28 Zeus
Zeus
I don’t fight the guards as they muscle us out the back of the tent and to a series of low buildings I hadn’t noticed in my walk-through with Helen…
Helen.
She should be on her way back to the city now, but she has no idea Demeter betrayed us.
She’ll report whatever findings to the woman…
I twist to look behind us, earning a shove from the taller guard, a woman with a short shock of bright-red hair and a scar down the side of her face.
They don’t say a word, but they don’t need to.
The threat is clear. If we dig in our heels, they’ll drag us to our destination. Violently.
If it was only me… But it’s not only me. I have Callisto to watch out for, my pregnant wife walking next to me with a shell-shocked look on her face. If Demeter’s betrayal surprised me, it seems to have devastated her.
The low buildings have obviously been constructed in a hurry, the smell of the sawdust lingering in the air.
Another series of guards—all women—ring around it, each hardened in a way I don’t know how to put my finger on.
It’s clear these are more of Circe’s people.
Whether that means she doesn’t fully trust Demeter or something else remains to be seen.
We’re shoved into a dim room with only a small window high on the opposite wall, and the door is slammed behind us.
Antigone takes a few extra seconds to rattle the lock, checking it and reminding us that there’s no easy escape.
I waste no time going to Callisto and pulling her close.
She resists for the barest moment, and then her arms are around me and her face is against my chest.
I rest my chin on her head. “You should have taken the deal.”
Her nails dig into my back through my shirt. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I’m pregnant.”
“I already knew.” There’s no point in hiding anything anymore. “I figured it out a couple days ago.”
She pulls back enough to look up at me, searching my expression.
I don’t know what she sees; I barely know what I’m feeling right now.
Callisto worries her bottom lip, looking unsure for the first time in our marriage.
“I originally only let it happen so I could kill you and act as regent until the para—baby grew up.”
“I know,” I say gently.
“You know about the pregnancy. You know about the assassination attempts. You seem to know a lot.” Her mouth twists into something that’s almost a smile, but she doesn’t quite pull it off. “It’s a wonder you didn’t toss me off the balcony.”
How can she say that after everything? I frame her face with my hands.
“I would never hurt you, Callisto.” Even with our current dire circumstances, I appreciate the way she shivers when I say her name.
There’s one last untruth hanging between us, and I want it gone.
“I haven’t been with anyone else—not since we agreed on the engagement and marriage. ”
She stares up at me. There’s so much going on behind her pretty eyes. She worries her bottom lip. “I…haven’t, either. I know you think Ixion and I… But we haven’t. It’s only been you.”
I had already decided that it didn’t matter, but hearing her confession after giving my own delivers a cruel kind of hope. We’re trapped and have been outmaneuvered by our enemies, and yet I’ve never been surer of what I’m feeling. I frame her face with my hands. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she whispers. She closes her eyes. “Too little, too late. No matter what Circe told my mother, these trials are a sham. She’s going to kill us all. The Thirteen, the legacy families, anyone who might threaten her power.”
I hug her closer again. I wish I had a solution or a clever plan to get us out of this, but even with everything she’s done, I didn’t see the betrayal from Demeter coming.
If it hadn’t put my wife firmly in the crosshairs, I might even admire Demeter for being so savvy.
It’s a clever play, no matter how ruthless. “That was always her aim.”
Callisto sniffles a little and slips from my arms. “Damn hormones. I hope my mother has a plan for Persephone. She’s not one of the Thirteen and we aren’t a legacy family, so putting her on trial won’t go the way Circe wants.
Persephone is all but universally beloved and she’s visibly pregnant.
That will inspire sympathy.” She shudders.
“There will be an accident. That’s the only way. ”
I can’t stand being this close to her and not touching her. I catch her hand and lace my fingers through hers again. “We’ll figure it out.”
“How?” Callisto gives a ragged laugh. “If you didn’t notice, we’re in a cell in the middle of what is essentially an enemy camp.
Circe has integrated her people with ours, and while we may have the majority, she’s right about the greater population not being happy.
We can’t count on any help from that direction.
Hades has even more reason to stay behind the barrier in the lower city, and the rest of the Thirteen couldn’t even unify to vote to act when Circe was on our doorstep.
With Hades, my mother, and us out of the equation, there’s no way they’ll manage it now. We’re fucked.”
“When you put it like that, it does sound bad.”
She blinks. “Did you just make a joke?”
I can actually feel the ice cracking around me. It only happens with her. It’s only ever happened with her. “A small one.”
She shakes her head slowly, a grin pulling at her lips. “Now is not the time for jokes, Husband.”
“Might as well go to the gallows laughing, Wife.”
“Of course you would have gallows humor.” She chuckles a little before her smile fades away. “We’re in trouble.”
“I know.”
“I don’t see a way out.”
I hate to admit it, but… “I don’t, either.”
We stare at each other for a long moment.
“Well…shit.” She walks to the wall opposite the door, tugging me behind her, and slides to the floor.
I follow her down, close enough that we’re pressed together from shoulder to thigh.
I wrap my arm around her and we sit in silence as the light through the small window changes.
By the time it’s dark enough that I can’t make out her features clearly, I still don’t have a plan or answers.
We are well and truly fucked.
I don’t realize I’ve shut my eyes until Callisto goes tense beside me. “Do you hear that?” she whispers.
“Hear what?” But as soon as I voice the question, I register the faint sound of a scuffle outside the door.
It sounds like a fight. Has Circe decided that she won’t risk a trial for Callisto?
Surely she noticed the way Demeter hesitated, ever so briefly.
It would be hard to frame an attack in a locked cell as an accident, but I’m sure she has some fiction ready to spin. “Get behind me.”
“Perseus?” For once, even as Callisto questions me, she obeys, slipping between me and the wall. I move until we’re just to the side of the door. If someone comes in here with the intent of violence, they’ll be looking ahead, not in either direction.
What will you do, fool? You have nothing.
I have my hands, my body, my determination that no one will lay a single finger on my wife. We’re in an impossible situation, with no way out, but I’m not about to stop fighting.
The sounds on the other side of the door cease. For a moment, I wonder if it was nothing, but then the door swings silently open. I tense, ready to spring.
“If you jump me the moment I walk through the door, this is going to be quite the botched escape. I’m hardly at my best right now, thanks to a little friendly poisoning. We don’t have time for heroics. We have to move.”
Hermes.
“What trap is this?”
“No trap.” She speaks quietly and quickly, and even though I can’t actually see her, she sounds absolutely exhausted—a condition I didn’t know could affect her.
“Did you say poisoned?” Callisto whispers.
“I did, in fact. Don’t worry, I’m fine. You don’t survive in Olympus without building up an intentional immunity to a whole boatload of poisons.
” She laughs faintly. “Or maybe I’m just a paranoid type of person.
Anyway, there’s a shift change in seven minutes.
We have a lot of ground to cover and very little time to do it. Are you coming or not?”
I open my mouth to argue, to point out that she wants the same thing as Circe, that she’s no doubt leading us out of a cell and into certain death.
Before I have a chance to, Callisto takes my hand and squeezes.
A silent urge to listen to Hermes, to take this opportunity.
No matter how strange. I suck in a breath and squeeze back.
She’s right. Even if Hermes is somehow competing with Circe on who gets to kill us, she’s offering an opportunity to escape.
It’s more than we had ten minutes ago. “We’re coming. ”
“Then hurry up.”
I keep hold of Callisto’s hand as we slip out into the night to find the pair of guards on the ground, bleeding out from what appears to be several stab wounds.
Hermes stands just to the side of the door, dressed fully in black with her braids fastened away from her face.
She motions with the bloody knife in her hand. “Let’s go.”
I have so many questions, but they can wait until Callisto isn’t in immediate danger.
I pause to urge my wife in front of me and then we follow Hermes as she takes a nearly direct route to the edge of the camp.
Not the same way we came in, though. Instead of heading toward where the majority of the cars—and Demeter’s tent—are, she veers south.