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)
So the very idea of allowing my husband, holder of the hated title Zeus, to care for me?
Unthinkable.
But my body isn’t quite obeying my brain’s reluctant commands. Since our family moved to the city proper, I’ve been harboring an inferno of rage that will likely never be extinguished. How can it when nothing ever changes? Over and over again, I’ve comforted myself with the belief that I’m not like the glittering vipers—that my sisters aren’t, either. That belief doesn’t ring quite as true any longer.
Psyche turned their game back on themselves, resulting in Eros’s mother being exiled. Persephone committed to a relationship with Hades that started as a way to ensure Zeus would never want to touch her again and ended with her becoming one of the most powerful people in the city in her own right. Even Eurydice, our precious baby sister, partnered with Eris to orchestrate Ariadne Vitalis betraying her father and her people. Through it all, I’ve schemed and manipulated and blackmailed as necessary to protect my family and secure my position of power.
I almost got my sister killed tonight with those schemes. I’m not that different from the legacy families after all. None of us are.
So I don’t hop down off the counter and flee from my husband. There’s no escaping the new truth nestled beneath my breastbone, a hot coal I want to claw out. I just sit there and shake as Perseus brings the shower up to a comfortable temperature and moves to stand in front of me. If he asked me if I need help, I would have choked on my own tongue before admitting that I do. But he doesn’t ask.
He simply sinks to his knees in front of me as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Just like he did in the hospital. Except this time, there’s no one else in the room with us. I’m not even sure where Imbros went, and that oversight should scare me. It will in the morning, but it doesn’t feel like anything can penetrate the numbing agent of my new awareness.
I’ve failed. I’ve failed so spectacularly that it’s almost laughable. It will be my sisters who pay the price for that failure—and my mother. Persephone loves Hades with everything she has. If something happens to him, I’m afraid it will break her. Not to mention she’s in the same position I am, pregnant with his heir. That means if he dies, she becomes regent until their child is of age. Her children aren’t any safer than her husband is. She’s not any safer than her husband is. I refuse to allow my sister to be hurt. She’s making the wrong decision, but if I could just talk to her, could just make her see reason—
At my feet, Perseus pulls off first one boot and then the other, quickly followed by my socks. He slides his hands up the outside of my legs, under my dress, to grip my hips. “I’m going to need you to stand. Can you do that?”
“Of course I can.” I’m not so sure, though. Every part of me feels shaky, as if I’m held together by stubbornness and nothing more—and I’m all out of stubbornness. I ease off the counter and he tugs my panties down, waiting until I lift my feet to step out of them before he sets them aside in the growing pile of dirty clothes.
My dress is next, slid carefully over my head and dropped down next to me. The sports bra gets tangled around my neck, because of course it does. There’s never been a graceful undressing involving a sports bra in the history of the world. But he eventually manages to free me from its confines and then I’m standing naked before him.
He surveys me with a critical eye, his attention lingering on the butterfly bandages on my shoulder and the dried cut on my face. “You’re not supposed to get the bandages wet.”
“You just got me naked and the shower’s running. Figure it the fuck out. I’m getting in there and I don’t give a shit about the bandages.” The words are right, but the tone is wrong. It’s almost pleading. I’m shattering before his very eyes and I don’t know how to stop it. Normally, in the rare moments when weakness sets in, I have a private room to retreat to and no one to stand as witness. There’s no opportunity for that now. It’s come on too fast, and I’m out of control.
I don’t see a way out of this. Both Hermes and Circe, have put me in an impossible position, trying to dismantle legacy titles that have existed since the founding of this city. No single person can do it. If they could, Hermes would have accomplished her aims long ago. She hasn’t. She knew I would fail. Circe too. And still they let me flounder. Maybe they think it’s funny. It doesn’t feel very funny right now. It feels like despair.