“Very well,” said Calliope, but despite the fact that she was getting everything she’d ever wanted, there was an edge in her voice, a hardness I didn’t understand. She should’ve been celebrating. I was broken. I had nothing, and she had it all now. “I swear on the River Styx that I will not harm this baby, nor allow harm to come to him, so long as you stay with me.”
“So be it.” There was soft thunder in Henry’s voice, and my vision blurred. There had to be a way out of this—this couldn’t be what Henry had intended. He wouldn’t leave me like that.
But hadn’t I been willing to leave him?
“Perfect,” said Calliope, and without tearing her eyes from Henry, she said to Ava, “Do it.”
“But—” said Ava, her earlier courage failing.
“Do it.”
Do what?
It didn’t take long for me to get an answer. The magenta aura around Ava grew until it touched Henry, and like lightning, it hit Calliope. Instead of crying out, however, her smug smile only expanded.
“There,” said Ava, her voice trembling. “Now let Kate and the baby go.”
“You heard Father,” said Calliope. “The baby stays with Henry. But if you insist, I will give him a choice. Henry, darling.” She stepped toward him, and my heart pounded. “Who do you want to stay with? Me or Kate?”
Was this some kind of joke? Of course Henry wanted to stay with me, especially when we could all be a family. Henry stepped closer to Calliope though, and my eyes widened. He set his hand on her cheek in the familiar way he always touched me, and then—
His eyes fluttered shut, and he leaned down to kiss her.
What had Ava done?
Stupid question. I knew exactly what she’d done. And no matter what her reasons were, no matter what Calliope was holding over her head, no matter how many times she cradled my crying son, I would never, ever forgive her for making Henry fall in love with Calliope.
Cronus moved backward, taking me with him. Panic seized me, leaving no room for rationality, and I clawed at his hands, desperate for him to let go. I couldn’t leave, not now. Not when my husband thought he was in love with someone else.
Pulling away from Henry, Calliope eyed me with distaste. “No, do not leave yet,” she said in a regal voice that would have had Cronus smiting her two minutes earlier.
“And why is that?” said Cronus.
Calliope smiled sweetly. “Because I’m not finished with her yet.”
With no hand to guide it, the dagger rose in the air between us until it lined up with my throat. And in a blur of silver and steel, it flew straight toward me.
Chapter 13
Wicked Games
I didn’t have time to think or breathe or worry about whether or not Milo would remember this moment. All I did was close my eyes. Time was supposed to slow down in the seconds before death—and I would really die now, with no Underworld to catch me and no Henry to save me—but nothing changed.
This was it.
A great crunch of metal against metal echoed throughout the palace, and for one horrible second I thought Henry or even James had been stupid enough to jump in front of it. My eyes flew open, but they both stood several feet away on either side of the door.
And floating in front of me, half an inch from my neck, was the dagger.
“I believe in the midst of forcing the Lord of the Underworld into your alliance, you have forgotten one important fact,” said Cronus in a deadly voice that seemed to be everywhere at once. “Your fate is tied to Kate’s. If she dies, so do you. Surely you are not ready to fade, my dear daughter.”
Calliope’s arms trembled so badly I feared she’d drop Milo. Henry gently took him from her, and for a moment I was sure she’d fight. He could disappear as soon as he touched the baby; all it would take was a blink, and Henry would be gone, safe back in Olympus with our son. But she willingly let him go.
I held my breath, waiting for Henry to leave. He stayed put though, a strange smile on his face as he gazed down at Milo. My heart sank. She had Henry now. She really, truly had him.
But the way he looked at the baby, the way his shoulders relaxed as he held him—Henry loved Milo. Ava hadn’t taken that away from him, which meant a small piece of him, no matter how buried, still loved me, too.
“Here I was thinking you no longer had any interest in the little traitorous bitch,” said Calliope to Cronus, her words choked with fury. “How silly of me to think you wouldn’t fall prey to human emotion.”
“I am King of the Titans,” said Cronus coldly, and he straightened to his full height, drawing me with him so my toes barely grazed the floor. “I have fallen prey to nothing.”
“Yet here you are, protecting a mere goddess, and a brand-new one at that,” said Calliope. I glared at her. Not very formidable, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. “What has she done to deserve your loyalty? Was she the one to free you? To stand by your side as the gods lined up to fight against you? All this time, she has been working for the enemy, discussing the secrets you have shared, planning a defense based on the strategies you have so willingly shown her.”
Terrific. Now she was trying to get him to kill me. Calliope had it wrong though—Cronus was the one who’d fooled me for so long. He was the one who’d gotten me to spill the council’s secrets by making me think he was Henry. And without realizing it, she was confirming what their arguments had already implied: Cronus didn’t care about her. She was a pawn, exactly like the rest of us. Whatever his plans were, he wasn’t sharing them with her.