Chapter 45

45

SELENE

H ector led me deep into the forest. I raced through the night, mud spraying onto my trousers. The trees blurred past me in dizzyingly shades of green and brown. We’d gone too far, and it worried me. I’d expected to find Orpheus somewhere near, hiding out with the mortals in some bushes. But I’d been chasing Hector for at least an hour. If Orpheus was all the way out here…

As the path narrowed, I suddenly recognized where we were. The squat House of Masks hunkered in the shadows, and Hector dashed straight for it. With a sigh, I followed after him. Why had he brought me back here? Surely this wasn’t where Orpheus was hiding.

Hector led me past the headless statues and into the depths of the house. Up ahead, a dim light filled the cavernous space where we’d found Hestia. Cawing, Hector suddenly darted down and settled on my shoulder. His talons gripped my arm.

I cut my eyes toward him, whispering. “Are you sure this is where you want me to go?”

He pecked my cheek.

“Ouch. All right.”

With a sigh, I crept forward. I had no idea what to expect. Hector would never knowingly lead me to danger, but my heart pounded my ribs all the same. Something didn’t feel right. There was a prickling on the back of my neck, as if the magic of this place was warning me.

When I reached the end of the corridor, I inched inside the vaulted room. A flickering torch hung along the wall that hadn’t been there before. Orange light spilled across the floor, illuminating a hunched, pale figure chained to the wall.

Blearily, Orpheus cracked his eyes and peered at me.

“Selene,” he choked out.

“Oh my god, Orpheus.” I rushed to his side and fell to my knees. My hands fluttered across the bloodied cuts and puckered red patches that covered his bare chest. Swollen purple bags hung below his eyes, and he trembled, even when I barely touched him.

“What happened to you?” My heart twisted as I looked at the chains that trapped him to the wall. Those hadn’t been there before. Ares had ripped the old ones out of the stone.

“The lycanthropes,” he said.

I stood, my hands fisting. “The lycanthropes did this to you? How?”

“They came for me during the day when they were in their human forms. And then they brought me here. Because I planned on telling you everything I know.” He hung his head, his chin his brushing his blood-soaked chest. “I am so sorry, Selene.”

A rushing filled my ears. “What do you mean, tell me everything you know?”

I hated to demand answers from him when he was like this, but he’d already started talking, his words scraping from his raw throat.

“It was your mother’s plan,” he said, looking up at me with pained eyes. “High Queen Theia, she’d been plotting this for months. Years, even. Medea discovered a way to manipulate humans and transform them into animals, with the magic Circe brought from here. From Aiaia. You knew that part, though. About the lycanthropes. What you didn’t know was that your mother encouraged it. She planned to use them against Zeus.”

Stunned, I lowered myself to the floor and sat on the hard stone. Nothing he said made sense. It was incomprehensible. My mother would never do something like this.

But then a little voice whispered in the back of my head. Wouldn’t she?

My mother had hated Zeus, despised him. When she spoke of him, I often caught her staring off in the distance with a hard look in her eye. And then she would suddenly stop, refusing to discuss him any longer. I always thought it was because she felt hopeless, but perhaps it had been far more than that.

Orpheus continued. “The power of transformation for the lycans, it comes from a full moon. No matter what Medea tried, she couldn’t find a way for the humans to turn into their beastly forms without it. So…your mother, she came up with a way to get you to the island, so that it would be a full moon when the beasts attacked.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine, and the meaning I saw in them speared me. “You know why. As long as you’re on this island, the full moon will rise.”

I sat back, my heart pounding. “You can’t mean all this.”

But it explained so much. It explained everything . I’d always wondered why my mother had insisted we split up when she’d taken me to see Olympia. Now I knew why. She’d always planned to sacrifice herself…for this . And she hid it from me. All this plotting, all this scheming. All to use me without my permission.

I would have done it, too. I would have brought the lycanthropes here so they could kill Zeus. Gladly. But instead, everything about this plan felt like a violation. She’d never given me a choice.

“Why didn’t she tell me?” I whispered, tears dripping down my cheeks. Quickly, I brushed them aside. “Why didn’t you ?”

“I was going to, but then…” Orpheus reached for me, but the chains stopped him short. “I decided we shouldn’t go through with it. It was too much of a risk, and you are far too precious to me, Selene. I love you as if you were my own daughter.”

“Oh, Orpheus.” I slumped forward, palming the cold stone. My mind spun, remembering broken pieces of old conversations, hearing my mother’s song echoing in my mind. Orpheus said she’d been planning this for months, but it went back much further than that. When I’d been nothing but a child, she’d begun shaping me into this weapon. Her darling albatross, who carried a full moon wherever she went.

She should have told me.

Boots tapped the floor behind me. Instantly, I was on my feet, blocking the new arrival from seeing Orpheus. Ares stood in the doorway. He held his sword in his hands.

“Move aside, Selene,” he said with quiet resignation.

I lifted my chin. “No.”

“Then I’ll have to ask him from here.” He raised his voice, though he needn’t have bothered. With the deadly silence of the room, Orpheus was well aware of every word he spoke. “Who harmed Hestia? Was it the wolves?”

“Yes, yes. They’ve been behind it all, I’m afraid.”

“There,” I said. “Are you happy?”

“Was that part of the plan from the beginning?” Ares asked, ignoring me. “You thought you would take her and what? Make the monarchs distrust each other?”

A pause. “Essentially, yes. Theia thought if you blamed each other for something like Hestia’s death, you’d start a war between yourselves long before the lycans attacked. That meant there’d be less of you for them to worry about. I’ll admit, they did plan to murder her instead of abduct her, but I convinced them to wait until—”

“You convinced them to wait .” Ares’s hands tightened into fists, and his jaw went hard. “So you and Theia planned this. And part of that plan involved killing Hestia eventually .”

My heart throbbed. “Don’t answer that, Orpheus.”

“No,” Ares shot back. “If he has any measure of honor, he will tell me if he planned on my sister’s death.”

Orpheus heaved a sigh. “I am afraid so.”

“No,” I said, spinning around to face him. “Orpheus, please take that back. You weren’t involved in this. You tried to stop it. You—”

“I might have tried to stop it in the end, but it was only to keep you safe. For years, I schemed with your mother. No matter what I’ve done these past few weeks, I’m responsible for this.”

“Selene,” Ares said from behind me. “Move aside.”

I turned back to face him. “No, I won’t. I know you’re angry, but harming Orpheus isn’t the answer.”

He pointed a shaking finger at the chained man behind me. “He would have killed her in the end, but she wasn’t the only victim. We blamed Hera for her death, and Zeus put her on trial because of it. She died because of Orpheus. Poseidon, too. Now move aside.”

Ares went to move past me. And before I even understood what I was doing, I flipped up the blade he’d given me, and I pointed it at his heart.

“I can’t let you do this,” I whispered, even as tears brushed my cheeks. “He’s important to me. Please , I’m begging you, Ares. Please don’t kill him.”

An anguish look twisted Ares’s face. “You would choose him?”

The world seemed to tip sideways, and I finally understood why our entwined fate could only end in death. Even if we tried, even if we wanted everything to be different, we’d always been on opposite sides. We always would be. There was no fighting it or escaping that path. Only hours ago, I’d been in his bed, and he’d gazed at me with pure adoration. It hadn’t taken long for that to change.

Look at us now.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, failing to hold back the tears. “It turns out the Fates were right all along.”

“It seems so.” He reached out, caressing my cheek with his thumb. “And I want you to know I’m truly sorry for what must happen next. In a different world, I never would have done this. But you never would have chosen Orpheus, either.”

“What do you mean?” But the words were barely out of my mouth before his whistle filled the air.

The sound of footsteps answered, and Zeus walked into the room. The hard look on Ares’s face was nothing compared to the Archon’s fury. I backed up a step, still protecting Orpheus. Zeus must have been in the corridor this entire time.

He’d heard everything.

“I can’t kill you because you’re the only bloody Titan left in this world, and I won’t risk angering Erebus any more than we already have.” He motioned at someone behind him. Artemis emerged from the corridor, chains in hand. With a wicked smile, she roughly grabbed my arms and snapped the manacles around my wrists.

“High Queen Selene of Troy, I sentence you to a lifetime of imprisonment.” Zeus took my arm and shoved me toward Ares. My feet twisted beneath me, and I fell. Hard stone bit my knees, sending a flash of pain through my legs. “Do with her what you please.