Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
In a perfect world, they would do my work for me, would turn on the woman who put this mess into motion. But the Thirteen have sown the seeds of their destruction too thoroughly. There’s little empathy for them in this crowd.
Circe won’t risk leaving the campus herself. I’d bet good money on it. She’s proven herself to be the type to let her people do the dirty work. First Minos, sent to Olympus to create chaos by revealing the assassination clause. Then, carefully curated strike teams aimed at undermining Hades and Zeus, all while a blockade lurked in clear sight of anyone who cared to look.
The first time Circe stepped into the light was a few days ago when she announced her march on Olympus and her intention to hold trials for the Thirteen and the legacy families. Setting herself up as the beacon of the future. Clever. Very fucking clever.
The university campus is technically open to the public, its sprawling grounds containing dozens of buildings beyond the auditorium. It’s impossible to lock down when anyone can walk in, which seems a calculated gamble on Circe’s part.
She wants to be accessible to the public—or at least be perceived as accessible. No doubt the main building has some level of security in place, but she’s got a looser grasp on the rest of campus. Good for me, bad for her.
I enter the university through the gardens, long since gone dormant. In the summer, this space is a dizzying experience, a riot of color and scents and sounds. In late October, the leaves have already fallen, the branches bare and bushes almost threatening.
There’s no one around to notice me. The focus of both Circe and the civilians is elsewhere—the docks, the city center where the various homes of the legacy families are clustered. I force myself to walk slowly, to inject an amble into my stride, just another civilian wandering the area, until I reach the back of the main building that contains the auditorium.
The university has been here nearly as long as the city itself, and this particular building has been expanded dozens of times since the first founding. As a result, it’s a warren of halls and classrooms and faculty offices, all laid out in a strange, almost spiral pattern.
When I worked for Artemis, one of her many cousins was dealing with a bullying situation, and she had the brilliant idea of sending me to accompany them to their classes for a week to intimidate the perpetrator. Because why go to their parents—another legacy family—and deal with it directly when she could play games and show off her power?
That week ended with me getting my ass beat by the same rich kids fucking with Artemis’s cousin. Because they were legacy family members, I couldn’t raise my hands to them, even to defend myself. That wouldn’t have been enough for censure—I was only a soldier, after all, and soldiers are dispensable—but the cousin tried to defend me and got their nose broken for their trouble. Artemis was forced to step in the way she should have from the beginning, and the bullying ceased to be a problem for the cousin.
I learned a lot in that week of shadowing her cousin. They were a quiet kid and kept their head down and had gotten into the habit of taking roundabout paths to their classrooms and lecture halls to avoid their bullies. I utilize one of those back ways now, walking to a side door that never locked properly all those years ago. By all rights, the lock should have been fixed in the intervening time, but it opens soundlessly when I pull on the handle. I’m in.
Most of the doors I pass lead into classrooms set up in a variety of styles. All empty. With each step I take toward the auditorium, I curse Hermes for letting her emotions get the best of her now, when we need her to remain coolheaded the most.
I turn a corner and nearly trip over my own feet as a white woman with short dark hair steps out of a room. Circe. Surely not. Surely it’s just someone who looks like her… But as she turns to speak to the short woman at her side, her profile stands out clearly. The sharp nose, the full lips, the pointed chin. It’s her.
She heads down the hallway at a quick clip, turning right at the end. The woman she was talking to takes up position in front of the door, clearly a guard. There’s a damned good chance Hermes is behind that door. With only one guard between me and her freedom…
But Circe is right there. I remember enough of these halls to cut through a different path to get ahead of her. I can end this now, before the conflict has a chance to spin even further out of control. All I have to do is kill Circe.