27. Pandora

27

PANDORA

Eris disappears to get ready. I wait until I’ve slipped plates of food in front of both the men to lean against the counter and say, “So, who had the brilliant idea to fuck the traumatized woman?”

Adonis chokes, spitting out coffee. “What?”

“It was me.” Theseus meets my gaze steadily. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, and she’s steadier on her feet now. It wasn’t a bad idea.”

I roll my eyes. “You would think that, wouldn’t you?” He’s not entirely wrong, though. She must have been in a bad state to make him so panicked last night, but I’m not sure I want to address that right now.

Theseus cares about her. I can’t tell if he knows it yet, but if he didn’t care at least a little bit, last night he would have turned around and walked out of her apartment and never looked back.

That should comfort me—I care about Eris—but I know him too well. He won’t let something as small as caring get in the way of following orders. Minos has his claws in too deep. If he tells Theseus to murder Eris, Theseus might feel a little bad about it, but he’ll do it.

It feels like we’re on a runaway train heading straight for a blown-out bridge. I don’t know how to slow us down, don’t know how to get off the tracks.

The only option is to ride it directly to our ruin.

I shift to look at Adonis. “I expected such nonsense from him. What’s your excuse?”

“I don’t have one. It just kind of happened.” He ducks his head in a really charming way. I understand what they see in him. There’s something about Adonis that draws everyone around him. It was evident at Minos’s house party, to the point where not even Theseus was unaffected. He’s certainly affected now.

I eye him. Yeah, he’s downright smitten. It’s there in the way his body seems pulled in by a gravitational pull Adonis is putting out. Their shoulders keep brushing, and he grabs Adonis’s mug to refill when he gets his own coffee.

I’ve only seen him like this once before, with a guy he had a summer romance with right after Minos brought us into his household. He’s soft with me, but it’s a different kind of intimacy, born of our shared trauma. We’re best friends and I’m closer to him than anyone else in the world, but it will never be romantic.

It will never be Theseus looking like he looks right now, like he’s not entirely sure what to do with his hands. He’s a warrior. I’ve seen him move through a series of opponents—one of the training exercises Minos insists on—as if he’s water and untouchable. He might not be able to move quite so fluidly now, but he’s still graceful in his way.

Not right now.

He’s moving like he did when he turned fourteen and grew six inches in a few months. His body was new and strange and he had to relearn how to move through the world without slamming into things.

I press my lips together. This is a recipe for disaster. I don’t know if the other three aren’t aware of it, or are intentionally ignoring it, but there’s not much to be done if they are determined to see the course through. I’m not sure they are determined to see it through, though. The whole mood this morning feels very unreal, as if it’s a bubble just waiting for someone to pop it.

Really, I’m a hypocrite. I have no intention of putting distance between me and any of these people. It’s just going to hurt when things blow up in our faces. “Theseus.” I wait for him to look at me. “Minos was looking for you this morning.”

He meets my gaze steadily. “I’ll call him once I’m done with the meeting.”

Something like hope flutters in my chest. A month ago, he would have dropped everything to rush for his phone and apologized the moment his foster father picked up. Still, I know better than to believe Minos’s influence is waning.

“I see.” My best friend is many things, but fickle isn’t one of them. It will take more than a pretty face and charming smile to pull him from that poisonous household.

Adonis looks between us. “Should I give you a minute?”

“It’s fine.” Theseus leans back. “Pandora is worried about my priorities.”

I snort. “Only because your priorities are suspect.” If I knew what Minos was up to, I might be tempted to go straight to that golden asshole in his tower and use the information to leverage Theseus’s freedom.

Except, no, I’m still being a hypocrite. No matter how little I like Minos, I won’t do anything to endanger Theseus. There’s not a single reason for Zeus to honor his word about not harming Theseus if he married Eris. In fact, there are half a dozen reasons off the top of my head to make his enemy disappear and stick someone he trusts into the Hephaestus title.

“It’s no use trying to talk sense into him.” Eris appears, looking more put together than she has a right to after being gone such a short time. She’s pulled her hair back into a slick ponytail and gone with a minimal makeup look…except for her crimson lips. She picked a fitted black dress that shows off her lean frame, and black heels high enough to make her the tallest person in the room.

“Wife.” For once, I can’t read the expression on Theseus’s face. Or, to be more accurate, there are too many conflicting expressions. Lust, anger, something like tenderness, maybe the tiniest hint of vulnerability. Theseus doesn’t know how to feel about his wife.

That makes two of us.

“I’ll walk you out.” I say.

She looks at me. “That’s really not necessary. None of this is.”

There it is. The first crack.

Theseus crosses his arms over his chest. “I don’t know. Felt pretty necessary to me.”

Surprise pulls me up short. Now is the time when he should snarl something and storm out. Not stand there calmly and stare his wife down.

“Fine. It was a little necessary. Your sacrifice has been duly noted, but I have to leave now. You should do the same if you don’t want to be late.” If I hadn’t heard the panic in Theseus’s voice last night and then seen the fragility in her eyes this morning, I never would have known what happened yesterday.

Good.

She’s too stubborn to show weakness to the rest of the city, and I’m glad of it. Enemies looking for a fracture to exploit will find none.

That doesn’t mean I’m content for her stubbornness to apply to me, too. “You and your husband have more in common than either of you will admit. Both of your priorities are misguided.” I shake my head. “And you’re both too stubborn by half. Let’s go.”

Eris catches up to me as I reach the door. She’s remarkably subdued as we take the elevator down to the parking garage. The doors open and she reaches out to hold them that way. “My priorities aren’t misguided. I realize this city doesn’t mean anything to you, but—”

“This city will kill you and move on to the next Aphrodite without blinking.” I speak too harshly, but it’s the truth.

“Maybe.” She shrugs. “Sometimes that’s the price of being a person like me.”

“You’ll die for nothing, then.” I don’t normally let my feelings get the best of me, but she’s speaking so reasonably, as if the danger to her is barely worth mentioning. “Surely your life is worth more than being some footnote in Olympian history.”

Eris gives me a long look. “What did you think would happen when you came to my city, Pandora?” She says it gently, which somehow makes it that much worse. “Even if you didn’t know Minos’s plans, you had to know he meant harm to the people who live here. Did you really think the Thirteen wouldn’t step up to get between our city and the one who threatens it?”

Guilt flares. Truth be told, I didn’t care about the people in this city, any more than I cared about the people on the island we left. The only person I cared about is sitting back in Eris’s kitchen, probably flirting with Adonis.

I know what kind of person that makes me, but I made my peace with that a long time ago. I lift my chin. “How many people have you hurt for the good of this city? Including the ones back in your apartment?”

She doesn’t flinch. I don’t honestly expect her to.

Eris shrugs. “You’re just proving my point. The good of the many will always outweigh the need of one person.” She makes a face. “I’m not eager to throw myself in front of a bullet, but there’s been risk associated with being me since I was born. It’s just more explicit now.”

“I hate this,” I whisper. “I hate that you’re in danger and that you’re at odds with Theseus.”

Her expression goes contemplative. “Maybe we’re not quite the enemies we were a few days ago. I don’t know if last night actually changes anything.” Eris narrows her eyes. “What are my odds of turning him?”

I wish I had better news for her. She might see Theseus as a tool the same way Minos does, but it’s not the same. As husband and wife, he and Eris are closer to being on the same footing than him and the stand-in parent he feels he owes everything to. Her turning Theseus and having him dancing to her tune wouldn’t be ideal, but it’d still be preferable.

It’ll never happen.

I turn and look out into the parking garage. It’s full of wildly expensive vehicles and shadows. No one around to hear me tell the truth. “Not good. In his mind, Minos saved us. He swept in after a really traumatic event and seemed to give Theseus everything he could have ever dreamed of.”

“After that priest tried to hurt you and Theseus killed him, but not before he almost disemboweled Theseus. Made him quite the perfect little soldier-victim for Minos, I imagine.”

“What?” I spin back to face her. “How do you know about that?” I had given her the bare details before, but I purposefully kept things back.

“He told me.” She’s still got that look on her face, the one that says she’s seeing a thousand puzzle pieces and considering the best way to put them together. “After I was attacked.”

The story of how we came to be in Minos’s household isn’t exactly a secret, but Theseus doesn’t share private stories. Especially not ones that involve me. The people who know why he killed that priest number in the single digits. “Eris.”

“Yes?”

She doesn’t understand. How could she? I barely understand myself. What happened between them that things have shifted this much? I don’t know how to feel. I want him free of Minos, but I truly don’t want him to put on someone else’s shackles. Not even hers. “If he told you that story, then your odds aren’t as bad as I thought. They’re not good—Minos’s hold on him is too complete—but they’re not zero.”

She smiles suddenly. “I’ve worked with worse.”

“He’s not a toy to be fought over.”

“No, he’s not.” She pauses. “But if he doesn’t get out of my way, I will be forced to crush him. I won’t hesitate, Pandora. I can’t afford to.”

“Eris—”

She catches my hands, placing them on her hips. “Come over early.”

Nothing I say to either of them is going to change their paths forward. Theseus and Eris are well-matched in a number of ways, including their bullheaded stubbornness to dance to tunes set by other people. She won’t thank me for pointing that out any more than he does, and if I keep arguing, it will end things between us sooner than I’m ready to let her go.

So I don’t argue. I run my hands up her sides as she steps closer. In her heels, I barely come up to her shoulder, which puts me right at the perfect height to appreciate her breasts. They’re truly lovely breasts. I would very much like to get my hands and mouth on them.

I clear my throat, trying to focus. “You’re not going to have time for me if you’re running around the city putting out fires.”

“I’ll make time for you.” She skates her fingers up my arms and cups my face. “I’ll always make time for you. Thank you for breakfast.” She presses a kiss to my lips, light and teasing. “And thank you for being the voice of reason last night. Bringing in Adonis might not have gone how you’d thought it would, but it truly did help.”

I pull her close and kiss her properly. Eris tastes like mint and I’m smudging her lipstick, but I don’t care. I think my hands might be shaking, but I can’t be sure. When she finally eases back, I’m clinging to her. “I was worried about you. I am worried about you.”

“I know.” She wraps her arms around my shoulders and holds me close. “I know.”

Ironic that it feels like she’s comforting me when she’s the one who was hurt. I’ve known this woman a few weeks, and I have no business feeling like the world would be significantly dimmer without her in it, but I don’t make a habit of ignoring hard truths.

I care about Eris. A lot. Sometime in the last few days, I’ve slipped right over the edge of enjoying her company and fallen into…falling. Maybe that should bother or scare me, but there’s no use railing against fundamental truth. It simply is. And the fundamental truth of this situation is that I’m falling for Eris. “Stay safe today.”

“I promise that I’ll try.” She gives me one last squeeze and steps back. “Feel free to stay at my place if you’d like. As you found out this morning, you have access.”

Granting me access to her home was no doubt part of her ploy to seduce me, but it warms me all the same. “I might do that.”

“Good.” She pulls a compact and tissue from her purse and somehow manages to fix her lipstick in a few swipes. “You stay safe today, too.”

I’m about to point out that the entirety of Olympus isn’t after me, but I don’t get a chance before a trio of people in black tactical gear approach. I tense, ready to grab Eris and haul her back into the elevator, but she sighs. “My sister would send Achilles as part of my team.”

As soon as she says it, I recognize the unreasonably handsome white man in the center of the trio. He’s the one who fought the Minotaur in the final Ares trial. It’d been a fearsome fight, going well past the point when the Minotaur was eliminated.

For his part, he doesn’t seem any happier with the arrangement than Eris is. He gives her a cold look. “Aphrodite. We’re here to escort you.” His lips thin. “You were supposed to wait upstairs for us.”

“Oh, that.” She waves it away. “I needed to have a private conversation with my dear Pandora. I’m sure you understand.”

He turns that steely gaze on me. “What I understand is that any danger to you will be eliminated.”

I go cold. No mistaking the threat being directed at me. Eris steps between us and drawls, “Aw, Achilles, I didn’t think you liked me that much.”

“I don’t. But if you get hurt, it will make Helen sad. I go out of my way not to make my woman sad.”

“Lucky me.” She turns and presses another quick kiss to my lips. “See you tonight.”

I watch them walk away, my heart in my throat. There’s no denying that Ares set Eris up with the best people she had, but will it be enough? When every citizen of this city is a possible enemy, the chances of making it out of this without losing someone I love…

It feels impossible.