Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 107826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
“What if the purpose is wrong?”
I sink down next to her on the couch. We’ve had variations of this conversation for months. Longer, even. Pandora doesn’t feel beholden to Minos the way I do. She doesn’t understand that I will do anything to keep us from going back to a place without power, helpless to the whims of those around us.
Even if lately I feel more in common with that child in the orphanage than I do with the man I’ve worked so hard to become. “It’s not for us to question the purpose. Minos has a plan.” A plan that seems to require sacrifice from everyone but him.
He hasn’t felt the weight of all the strings that tie me in place.
Or if he does, he hides it significantly better than I do; another lesson he never bothered to teach me.
“You have more faith in him than I do.” Pandora shakes her head, her dark eyes holding things I’m not ready to see. “I wish you would listen to reason, Theseus.”
No matter the shared history we have, Pandora will never look at Minos the way I do. To her, he’s a vicious man who ruthlessly adopted two teenagers to enact a plan fifteen years in the making. And she’s not wrong. But what she fails to acknowledge is where we would’ve ended up if not for Minos. He saved us, whether she wants to admit it or not. Without him, we would’ve been turned out onto the streets the second we turned eighteen.
And the streets of Aeaea would’ve eaten us alive.
I don’t know if I could’ve protected Pandora, not at eighteen, not without the skills that I’ve learned since joining Minos. She doesn’t want to hear that, though. We’ve had this argument more times than I care to count. I know exactly how it will go from here. We will circle round and round until we’re yelling at each other, and then one of us will storm off, only to crawl back and apologize within an hour or two.
Instead I change the subject. “Where is everyone?”
Pandora shrugs as if it doesn’t actually matter. “Icarus is off doing…whatever it is that Icarus does when no one else is around. I saw Ariadne typing away at her computer awhile back, but that’s all she seems to do these days.”
“I wasn’t asking about them.”
She gives me a look filled with censure. “You never ask about them.”
Why would I? They’re soft, coddled creatures. Even with Minos as their father, they haven’t acquired the hard edge that Pandora and I were born with. And the Minotaur? Well, he’s another story altogether. But Ariadne and Icarus have been kept safe and sheltered, and it’s spoiled them to the reality of the world. Ariadne spends all her time online, indulging in the privilege of a digital life and ignoring the blood staining the hands around her.
Icarus doesn’t hide, but his relationship with Minos is complicated. Instead of keeping his head down and obeying, he flounces and makes passive-aggressive comments, dramatic to the bitter end.
“If you’d just—”
I shake my head sharply. “No. They aren’t like us.”
“Theseus.” She touches my forearm. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You have the title now. I might not love the way you got it, but it’s done. You don’t have to keep doing the awful things he asks of you.” She hesitates. “Aphrodite isn’t all that bad. If you’d stop fighting her and start working with her, maybe we could put a stop to all this before it truly spins out of control.”
Hearing my wife’s name on Pandora’s lips banishes the warmth in my chest. I straighten, shifting my arm from her touch. “She’s using you. I thought you were smarter than that, Pandora.”
“Oh no, you don’t get to do that.” She narrows her eyes. “I grew up in the same place you did, and I learned the same hard lessons surviving that nightmare. You do not get to act like I’m some naive fool being led along by my curiosity. The Thirteen as a whole are monsters. I’ve never argued with that. But they are still made up of people. People with scars who have seen things just as horrible as what we grew up with. And that’s not even getting into the people who don’t live in the center city. There are people like us here, Theseus.”
“We’re not going after the people like us.”
Pandora tosses up her hands. “I wish you would stop and think. If Aeaea had the equivalent of the Thirteen, then Minos would sit on that board. He’s the very thing you claim to hate. You are, too, now that you’ve become Hephaestus.”
I push to my feet, driven by the need to get the fuck away from this conversation, from hearing that name on my best friend’s lips. “Whatever. I’m going to find Minos and update him.”