Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
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.