30. Hephaestus

30

HEPHAESTUS

I meet Pandora at a coffee shop a few blocks from Dodona Tower. She’s sitting at a corner booth tucked out of sight of the windows to the street. I slide carefully into the seat across from her. “Why here?” It would be more secure to talk in Minos’s penthouse… Unless she doesn’t want him to overhear this conversation.

Honestly, that works for me.

My head is still spinning from the meeting with the rest of the Thirteen and my wife’s concern for me. I want to say she’s totally off base with it, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am.

“I didn’t want to deal with going back there.” She passes a cup of coffee across the table to me. “This is a mess.”

“Yeah.”

“What are you going to do?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? The fact that it’s a question at all is a problem. I haven’t wavered in fifteen years, and I can’t waver now. I close my eyes and inhale deeply. It never used to be tricky to remember everything I owe Minos. It never felt like a burden instead of a blessing. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Theseus.” She bumps her foot against mine. “You know I’m in your corner, no matter what, right?”

“Yeah.” It’s never been a question, even if we butt heads on a regular basis. “I know that.”

“Good.” She sighs. “I’m worried. This plan doesn’t make sense. Even if Minos was able to replace the entirety of the Thirteen—which he doesn’t have enough people to do—it doesn’t change the fact that that ridiculous clause means every one of them will have a target on their back. The people won’t follow them.”

She’s not wrong. The growing unrest in the city almost feels like a physical weight in the air. It’s dangerous, and a shit ton of people are going to get caught in the cross fire if these individual attempts on people’s lives turn into a mob.

I’ve only seen a mob once before and that shit gave me a lifetime of nightmares. People stop being people and the violence is enough to make even me sick. If the citizens of Olympus become a mob, there won’t be much left of the city.

“He’s not trying to replace the rest of the Thirteen. The house party was a one-shot.” He’s a good enough liar to fool the Thirteen this morning, but what he said matches the conversation I overheard a few days ago. “He’s got something else going on. Some shipment coming in through the port. I don’t know the details.”

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.

Fear.

I might have protected her up to that point where that fucking priest got ideas, but who’s to say I would have kept being successful? We were kids. Too weak to do more than drown in the waves made by people more powerful than us.

Minos changed that. I’m not a complete fool. I know he sees me as a tool to be used. Not a son. Never that. But I’ve seen the way Minos treats his only son. Better to be a tool than an eternal disappointment.

I stop short. What the fuck am I thinking? I’ve never doubted him. Not like this. Yeah, I haven’t been a naive innocent, dancing to the tune he sang, but I’ve never questioned him. Not really.

If you’re going to suffer because of him, you should at least know why.

“Damn it, Pandora,” I mutter. “Damn it, Adonis. And damn it, Eris.” One of them, I could ignore, but all three?

I flag down a taxi and give Minos’s address. We make it two blocks before the driver’s increased focus on me makes my skin prickle. I stop looking out the window and start watching him. His hands shift restlessly on the steering wheel and he’s studying me as much as his eyes are on the road. Not in a curious way, either. There’s intent there. It’s happening. He’s a nobody, some random citizen, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a danger.

I lean forward, getting right in his space. “Yeah, I’m Hephaestus. You might have heard the news about that nasty little clause, which means you know why that news was released.”

He licks his lips, his temples damp with sweat. “You’re the reason we even know about the clause. You killed the last Hephaestus.”

Yeah. I did. And I’ve been regretting it ever since. “That’s right.” I don’t touch him. He’s jumpy enough to drive us right off the road, and I don’t want to waste my morning with that bullshit. I lower my voice, injecting as much threat as possible. “So you’re going to drive me where I need to go, and you’re not going to try anything funny. If you do, I’ll snap your fucking neck.”

He swallows hard. “Yes, sir.”

I sit back, but keep my eye on him as he drives the rest of the way to Minos’s place. It’s only now, sitting here in the back seat of a man who considered killing me to further his own power, that I can’t deny the truth any longer. They were right. All of them. And I was fucking naive.

I barely wait for the car to stop at the curb outside Minos’s building before I toss money at him and climb out. My knee is stiff and painful, but I try to keep my limp minimized as I walk into the lobby and take the elevator up.

Luck—if that’s what you want to call it—is in my favor. Minos and the Minotaur sit in his office, their heads together as they examine a tablet between them. They both look up when I walk through the door. Minos opens his mouth to speak, but I get there first. “When were you going to tell me that I was a necessary loss?”

“Excuse me?”

I shut the door and lean against it. “Something’s been bothering me.” No reason to tell him where that doubt comes from. It doesn’t matter for this conversation. “You aren’t behind the attacks, but the second you had one of us trigger that clause, it put a target on every single one of the Thirteen’s backs—including mine.”

“You knew that would be a risk.”

Yes, but I hadn’t thought I’d face it alone. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I didn’t quite believe Minos when he said he wasn’t behind all the attacks. Oh, I don’t think he’s had a hand in the recent ones, but why wouldn’t he look to place more of his people among the Thirteen? The days after I took the title were rife with uncertainty; it would have been the perfect time to strike.

Unless he has no intention of a second strike.

Unless he never had an intention for a second strike.

“No putting that cat back in the bag, is there? Everyone knows it’s a thing now, which means the Thirteen will be hunted for the rest of Olympus’s future. Kind of hard to enact plans when you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.” He doesn’t contradict me, just watches me work through it with a small smile on his mouth. Holy fuck, I’m right. “You don’t plan on replacing the rest of the Thirteen with your people, do you?”

“Our people, Son.”

There was a time when, even though I damn well knew better, hearing that word from him was enough to override anything else I could possibly say. A weakness, and one he exploited. “There’s not going to be a Thirteen when you’re through,” I say softly.

The Minotaur gives Minos a long look, but that fucker always plays his cards close to his chest. Even knowing him for years, I can’t say for sure if he knew about this before or if he’s only hearing about it now.

Minos leans back. “Don’t you worry about my plan. I—”

“I think it’s time you shared that plan with us.” I glance at the Minotaur. “You would have been in the crosshairs, too, if you’d managed to kill Artemis and take that title. Don’t you want to know what he’s up to?”

He crosses his massive arms over his equally massive chest. “Yes.”

Minos narrows his eyes. “All right, boys. I suppose I can let you in on some of the plan you’ve both managed to fuck up repeatedly.” The words sting, but not as much as they used to. He shakes his head slowly. “Olympus is a ripe fruit to be plucked. They have little experience with anything resembling war; peace has made them soft.”

“We’ve heard the spiel.” I’ve never talked to Minos this way before, but the events of the last couple days keep compounding in my head. Adonis’s uncertainty. The vulnerable look in Aphrodite’s eyes that she wasn’t quite able to hide. Pandora’s fierce words. The worry all three of them share for my safety.

When I came to Olympus, the only thing I cared about was Pandora’s happiness and Minos’s approval. Now, things feel more complicated.

Minos glares. “One of you was supposed to take Ares. The other was intended to use the assassination clause to take another title. With two in the Thirteen, it would have been enough to start the destabilization process. You failed.” He turns that furious look on the Minotaur. “As a result, we had to take a different route. The end outcome is the same. The Thirteen fall, and a new leadership rises in its place.”

A different route. Something having to do with shipments in the harbor. What is he importing? I glare at him. “You mean you’ll rise in its place.”

Minos blinks, true surprise on his face. “Is that what you think, my boy?” He laughs, the sound filling the room. “No, I prefer proximity to power to taking it myself.” He gives me a sly look. “Fewer targets on my back that way.”

Targets like the one currently on my back. Not that he cares. I’ve obviously served my purpose, and he doesn’t give a shit about the potential fallout. I’ve never felt more like a fool than I do in this moment. “If not you in a leadership position, then who?”

“My benefactor.” His smile widens. “Olympus owes her a debt, and she means to collect.”