34 Ariadne

34

Ariadne

I don't know if I believe in curses, but nothing has gone right since we came to Olympus. Since before that, even. Maybe things started to go wrong the moment my father threw his ambitions in with Circe and turned his eye on this city.

And now look at us. I have my father's blood literally staining my hands. My brother will never forgive me, even if he doesn't realize it yet. And for what? Our escape from the city is closing before my very eyes.

Poseidon's people approach slowly, cautiously. It's then that I realize I still have the gun in my hands. I start to lift it, but Asterion gets there first. He plucks it from my hands as if taking a toy from a toddler. I thought I had a good grip on it, and he doesn't hurt me in the taking, but one moment the metal warmed by my palms is a comforting weight, and the next it's gone.

This time, at least he doesn't push me behind him. But he does step forward to face Poseidon, raising the gun to point at him. "Not another step."

Poseidon ignores the order and moves forward. "Shoot me if you must, but my people will open fire on your companions the moment you do."

Asterion glances at me, his eyes wild with the desperation coursing wildly through my body. He shifts his stance to point at the person to the right of Poseidon, their body clothed in black with his distinctive crest on their shoulder. "Maybe you're willing to die, but are you willing to let them die? You care about them more than the others. Every one of them can walk away from this confrontation if you make the right choice. Stand down."

I search Poseidon's face for some sign of weakening resolve. There is none. "Every one of them knew what they signed up for and agreed to the risks."

Fuck, fuck, fuck . We're not getting out of this. My brain scrambles, frantically spinning in circles, but there are no answers to be found. There's no clever way out of this. "Please!"

Everyone is so focused on me and Asterion that they don't see Icarus move. Truth be told, I don't either. It seems like one moment he's cowering on the other side of Asterion, and the next he darts forward, too quick to stop. Poseidon doesn't see him coming.

He kicks out the bigger man's legs and then slips behind him. We all freeze at the metal glinting in the low light cast by nearby boats. My brother is holding my father's discarded gun to Poseidon's throat. His eyes are wild and reckless, his voice panicked. "No one move or I blow his head off."

"Icarus, no!" I lurch forward, but Asterion catches me around the waist and pulls me back to his chest. I'm struggling and I can't seem to stop, but he holds me effortlessly.

Poseidon's people have frozen. The man himself seems shocked by the turn of events. My brother has a fist in his dark-red hair, and he's holding the gun so closely that the muzzle dents the skin at Poseidon's temple.

Icarus looks around wildly at the black-clad people gathered around. "No one move or he dies." He jerks Poseidon back a step, closer to us. "I mean it!"

This has all gone so wrong. "Icarus…"

But he's not listening to me. "Throw your guns away. Now ."

Poseidon's people don't hesitate. There is true fear on their faces as they carefully set their guns down and kick them away. Asterion might have been right about Poseidon caring about his people, but it's obvious that they care about him just as much.

"Move, Ariadne. We don't have much time." Asterion tugs me back a few steps, and Icarus follows, muscling an unresisting Poseidon along as we retreat down the dock. Poseidon's people carefully shadow our steps, but they keep well back. Too far away to help, and yet…I don't see how we're getting out of this. Even if we make it to the boat.

Eventually, the dock runs out, and Asterion pulls me close to a white sailboat with Daedalus written across the bow. "Up."

I'm afraid of what will happen if I leave the dock. "But—"

"Trust your brother." He lifts me and all but tosses me onto the boat, quickly following behind.

I stumble and scramble to the edge. The deck is a little higher than the dock so I have a perfect view of the standoff happening below.

"Give me a few minutes, Icarus." Asterion takes my shoulders. "I know you're scared, sweetheart, but I have to focus on getting this thing running. I need you to untie the lines keeping us at the dock. Can you do that for me?"

He's coddling me, but I can't stop shaking. "How much time do we have?" Surely the barrier is about to come down. If it does before we're ready…I don't know what happens.

"The lines, sweetheart." He lifts his voice. "Icarus. Get Poseidon up here. We can toss him into the water once we've made a clean escape, and he can swim back to shore." A neat solution. One that doesn't require yet more deaths tonight.

I scramble to the first line on the side opposite where my brother is. The boat seemed absurdly large standing next to it, but now that I'm onboard, I wonder how we'll manage the seas on it. I have to trust Asterion. He said he can sail, and I believe him. We just have to get the fuck out of this marina.

My fingers are clumsy with fear. It takes me three tries to get the first knot undone. I can't see what's going on. Someone is shouting, but it's hard to tell who over the roaring in my ears. I want nothing more than to rush back to the other side of the boat and see what's going on, but doing that won't help. It won't get Icarus and Asterion and me out of this alive.

Resolve steadies me. There are entirely too many things that I can't afford to think about right now. Action is easier. I get the second knot undone on the first try and then rush back to the other side of the boat for the last two.

The third knot is just as easy as the second, but on the fourth, I pause. If we're entirely unmoored, how likely am I to drift away before they can jump aboard? I don't fucking know. I don't know a goddamn thing about boats. If I do something to fuck up our ability to escape, I'll never forgive myself. And I already have more than enough to never forgive myself for.

Movement draws my attention just as I unravel the last tie. Poseidon elbows my brother hard enough to send him stumbling back a step. It's all the opportunity the big man needs to spin and level a punch to my brother's stomach, folding him in half. Even though he doesn't say a word, it's as if his people heard a rallying cry. They rush down the dock toward us.

"Icarus!" I scream.

Asterion rushes to my side. "Fuck!"

Poseidon turns to us. He's as composed as ever, as if he wasn't just held hostage by my brother. "Surrender. There's no need for more violence."

I can see Asterion weighing the growing distance between the boat and the dock. The engine hums softly behind me, but it's the water itself to blame. We're drifting. If he jumps, the space will increase dramatically, and I don't know how to sail. He could probably swim back to me, but it's a risk.

It's one I'm willing to take.

I get one foot on the bottom rung of the railing before Icarus sways to his feet behind Poseidon. "Go, Ariadne," he shouts. "I'll find you when this is all over." He ignores my scream of protest and takes Poseidon down in a flying tackle that sends them over the edge of the dock and into the dark water.

They surface almost immediately and then go under again, fighting in the water. My brother knows how to swim, but he's not a fighter, and he's nowhere near as large as Poseidon.

He's going to drown.

"Asterion! We have to go back for him."

But Asterion isn't listening to me. He grabs my arm and pulls me away from the railing toward the steering wheel or whatever it's called on a boat. "He made his choice, sweetheart. He'll find us when this is all over."

I stare at him in disbelief. "You can't be serious. My brother—"

"Made his choice," he repeats firmly. He does something to make the engine's sound increase, and suddenly we're moving with purpose away from the dock. "Just like you did when you made your deal and left us wondering what happened to you. Let him have this, Ariadne."

My knees give out and I sink to the floor. "But…" But he'll be hurt. Maybe killed. Even as the thought crosses my mind, the boat eases around the dock so I can get a straight line of sight to where Poseidon hauls himself onto the dock, dragging a soaked Icarus behind him. My brother falls to his hands and knees, his head bowed. But he's breathing.

A sob wrenches from my chest. He's alive, but for how much longer? "This is a mistake."

"Trust him." Asterion guides us away from the docks and out toward the bay. Even in the dark, I can see the faint shimmer of the barrier still in place.

It makes me laugh, the sound gaining a hysterical edge. We've come so far, sacrificed so much, and yet we're still trapped. "What if it doesn't come down?"

"It will."

We sit in silence as we cut through the water, sailing closer and closer to the barrier. I don't know how much time has passed, but surely we're beyond the hour Hermes promised. It defies belief that so much tragedy could be packed into such a short time. "I killed my father."

Asterion looks down at me, his dark eyes sympathetic. "You were saving your brother. He was going to shoot Icarus. Maybe I would've got there in time. Maybe not. But you made sure your brother was safe."

My throat goes tight and hot. I hadn't been thinking when I pulled the trigger. I just wanted all this to stop. "Only for Icarus to end up hurt anyway."

" His. Choice ." He crouches down in front of me and grips my chin. "I would've done the same damn thing to protect you if he hadn't gotten there first. You're allowed to have your feelings about that, Ariadne. But at least they have reason to keep him alive. Poseidon's too smart and cautious to kill him out of hand. Icarus is smart enough to work any situation to his advantage eventually."

I don't know if he's telling the truth or giving me a comforting lie. I don't know if it matters. Going back now defeats all the sacrifices my brother made. Asterion is right about that, at least. "I'm not happy about any of this."

"I know, sweetheart."

I don't know what else I might say because I never get the chance. There's a rumble, too low for me to determine whether it's a sound or a feeling. It grows and grows, making my teeth ache. That's when I notice that the waves have gone choppy and angry.

Asterion grips the wheel with white knuckles and puts his other hand on my shoulder, keeping me in place. As if I'm about to do anything. I wouldn't be able to stand without falling. It's as if a storm rolled in, but the skies are clear and there isn't so much as a hint of wind.

And then the barrier comes down.

It's more energy than physical reaction as the glitching rainbow of light cascades down toward the surface of the bay, as bright as fireworks but in an almost uniform pattern. It's…beautiful. I start to stand, but the boat heaves violently beneath my feet.

"Fuck. Shit. Fuck . Get down!" Asterion grabs my shoulder and shoves me into the small space between him and the half wall by the wheel. I understand why a breath later when it feels like we're sucked down into a crater. My stomach heaves, and I press myself as tightly to the wall as I can.

Asterion somehow manages to keep his feet, his expression fierce as if he can will us to stay afloat. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm laughing hysterically at the thought of surviving to this point, only to capsize and drown in the very event we worked so hard to make happen.

The boat veers sideways, tipping violently, and then swoops up, sending my stomach in the opposite direction. Oh gods, I think I'm going to be sick.

"Almost there, almost there." It's strange how I can hear him clearly. It seems like there should be screaming wind and roaring rain, but for all the noise of the waves themselves, it's still remarkably quiet.

The next dip the boat battles through is smaller. The next smaller yet. By the fourth, it's mostly choppy water that's sickening but survivable. Only then do I fight to my feet and look back the way we came.

The barrier is no more.

Olympus is sprawled out along the coastline, a glittering, poisonous creature that's caused so much grief for so many people. A creature that still holds my brother in its clutches.

Asterion barely waits for the boat to steady further before he's moving. He rushes around the deck, doing stuff to make the sails come down and then returning to the wheel to guide us farther out to sea.

There's barely any sound at all as we cut through the waves. I half expected us to angle to follow the coastline, but Asterion cuts a direct line toward open water. I understand why after about thirty minutes. There is a trio of massive ships heading toward the bay of Olympus. I don't have to see the banner they're flying to know that they belong to Circe. It's notable that they're flying her colors, not Aeaea's.

Bitterness bubbles up inside me. "All this loss. All this violence and destruction, and for what? I know she was hurt by Olympus, but she's hurt so many others."

I want to hate her for the man my father was, but that poison resided inside him long before he ever met her. She gave an avenue to his ambitions; she didn't create them. I have so much anger and nowhere to send it.

We pass through the ships without conflict, and only then does Asterion turn south. He glances at me, and I know him well enough to read the worry there. "There are no easy answers, sweetheart. Olympus has had a reckoning coming for generations. Maybe as far back as its founding. The way they run shit is fucked up, and you can't deny it. They would've hurt you just as quickly as Circe did."

He's right. I know he's right. But I can barely focus past the loss of my father…and my brother. I want to ask Asterion for reassurance that Icarus will be okay, but any words he gives me would feel like a lie. He can't guarantee my brother's safety. Even if we turned around right now and went back, it would be for nothing.

Without thinking, I pull up my phone and type out a text.

Me: You have to be okay, Icarus. We always promised we'd meet in Rio for Carnaval someday and I'm holding you to it. I'll be there waiting.

Even knowing that his phone went into the water with him and there's no way for him to respond to my text, I stare at my screen until light peeks over the horizon. Only then does Asterion wrap a blanket around me and ease my phone from my grip. He doesn't take it far, though. He sets it on the seat right next to me, screen up.

Then he pulls me into his arms and hugs me close and tight. For the first time in hours, I draw a full breath. "Am I going to be okay? Are we?"

"Give it time, sweetheart. You haven't had the space to feel your shit for a very long time. It'll probably come in waves. I'm here and I'll ride them with you. Whatever that looks like."

For someone who acts like he's not good with words, he sure knows the right thing to say. I wouldn't have believed a promise that everything would be okay. But a journey? That I understand.

I nestle tighter against him and bury my face in his throat. "I love you."

"I love you, too." He presses a kiss to the top of my head. "We have a couple stops to make to get money and our papers in order. But then we have the whole world in front of us, sweetheart. Where do you want to go first?"

My smile is faint and feels bittersweet. "Everywhere."