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)
She looks at me, her dark eyes troubled. “That doesn’t worry you? I know he’s the type to keep things close to his chest, but why are we just dancing to the tune he sets? I don’t want to see Eris hurt. I don’t think you do, either.”
“She’s the enemy.” The words don’t have the same ring of truth they did even a few days ago.
“Are you sure?” She presses her lips together. “And even if she is, don’t lie and say you consider Adonis an enemy, too. I see the way you look at him.”
There’s no point in lying. Even if I was good at it, I don’t lie to Pandora. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
I curse. “No, Pandora, it doesn’t. If Adonis isn’t smart enough to get out of the way of whatever Minos is planning, then it doesn’t matter how I feel about him.”
She searches my face. “Are you really okay with that?”
No. “Yes.”
“Liar.” She drains the rest of her coffee. “How did the meeting go?”
“I don’t know how they get shit done in this place. They’re like a pack of jackals tearing into each other.” Surely they know the threat the city is facing. I’ve watched Minos deal with similar, smaller-scale conflicts over the years. He simply makes people disappear. It’s what they should have done to us the moment the Ares competition ended.
Instead, they offered us citizenship, and half the ruling body showed up to Minos’s damned house party without their security and all but offered him their throats.
They deserve whatever comes to them.
The reasoning feels flimsier than ever. I might not like most of those fuckers, but I can’t exactly fault them for panicking now that every person on the street could be poised to murder them.
Could be poised to murder Aphrodite.
I drag my hand through my hair. “It’s a mess.”
“Yes, we’ve established that.” She sighs. “Something has to give, Theseus. She won’t be the one to fold.”
No, my wife doesn’t know how to give up. She’ll put on a brave face and keep going until someone successfully kills her. The thought shouldn’t bother me, but it feels like sandpaper under my skin. Fucking wrong. Frustration makes my voice rough. “So I’m supposed to fold?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
“Whatever you think you owe Minos, you’ve paid that price ten times over,” she says quietly. “I don’t want you to pay with your life, too.”
There it is again, that worry that I’ll be one of the Thirteen struck down. I want to argue with her. I am not some pampered rich person who doesn’t know how to defend myself. But the doubt planted with Adonis this morning is blooming into something ugly inside me.
I glance at her empty cup. “You done?”
“Yes, Theseus.” She sighs again. “I’m done.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
Neither of us says anything as I pay the tab and we head out to the street. I call Pandora a car and wait with her while it arrives. She stares at the people walking down the sidewalk, all intent on getting to their destinations. “You should ask him.”
No need to ask what she’s talking about. I bite back a curse. “Even if I did, I’m not going to tell you what the fuck he’s planning. You say you see the way I look at Adonis, but I see the way you look at my wife.”
She gives a faint smile. “I like her quite a bit.”
I do, too.
I shake my head. Where the fuck did that thought come from? “It doesn’t matter. I’m loyal to him. I know better than expecting that same loyalty from you, but fuck, Pandora. Switching sides?”
“Mmm.” Her ride pulls up and she steps off the curb. She opens the door and looks back at me. “I don’t want to be any more involved in this than I already am. I’m in this city for you.” She pauses, dark eyes worried. “But you should know what he’s planning, Theseus. You’re paying the price for his ambitions—not Minos. If you’re going to suffer because of him, you should at least know why.”
She’s gone before I can form an answer. Really, there’s no answer. Pandora’s always had faith in me. That I’d stand strong against whatever the fuck the world threw at us. That I wouldn’t buckle under the pressure of keeping us safe. For how well she knows me, she’s never seemed to notice how fucking scared I was when we were kids.
She was the only thing I ever cared about. Not the beatings. Not being deprived of food. Not the agonizing work they put us through. Pandora. Every day, I saw her fight to keep her light shining, and every day, I was terrified that I’d wake up and see the same haunted look on her face that every other kid in that place wore. I went without to make sure she had what she needed, and if she noticed that, she never seemed to register what drove it.