“I guess I do,” Cassandra replied. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Thanatos said. “I find that I’m jealous. Maybe it’s leftovers from Calypso’s spell.”
He stood before her, a god dressed like a boy. She saw through it now. If Aidan were alive, and came knocking on her door, she’d know him for what he was in an instant.
“If I let you kiss me,” she said, “would you try to kill me?”
“No,” he said, and pushed his fingers into her hair. “If I kissed you now, I wouldn’t. But I would someday.”
Someday. But they would never have a “someday.” Their time would end when she did.
She pressed her hands to his chest.
Birds chirped loud in her ears. A hundred. A thousand. Too many to populate the elm trees on the sides of the road. It was the vision.
“Birds,” she said, and pushed away from Thanatos. “What are you trying to tell me? That you’re staying in an aviary?” But the chirping wasn’t birds. The wings coming toward her face flapped too fast, and dipped up and down. Birds didn’t have fur, or pinched little rat faces.
Bats. They screeched their way past calcite formations and subterranean waterfalls. Cassandra felt the breeze from their wings, felt the warm skin of them pass against her cheeks. If any of their claws caught in her hair, she was going to scream, vision or not.
“What is it?” Thanatos asked.
“Cave system. Adirondacks. There’s a newly opened entrance.” She could see them, too. The Moirae. Or more accurately, she could feel them, beating like a heart in the center.
28
WALKING STRAIGHT INTO AN AXE
“How’s Hermes?” Odysseus asked. He’d come out on the widow’s walk to stand with Athena in the dark.
“Sleeping. Ares is with him now.”
Odysseus squeezed the wood railing and it groaned. It was a wonder the balcony still stood, after all her pacing and pushing.
“How much longer does he have?” he asked, and her throat tightened.
“Not long.” Hermes’ breathing had been strained for the last few hours, and the fever was back. He was still conscious, but so weak he could hardly keep his eyes open.
“I’m sorry,” Odysseus said. “I know it’s hard.”
“It shouldn’t be,” she said bitterly.
“Letting go of anyone is hard.”
“No, I mean it shouldn’t be,” she said. “Aidan fell in battle. That was bad enough. But Hermes is just lying there. Wasting away while I stand here with my hands tied, waiting to serve the thing that’s killing him.” Her fingers gripped the wood and rattled it. “Why haven’t they told us where to go yet? Why couldn’t they have shown up a day earlier? And why do I wish he was already gone, so I wouldn’t have to do this knowing that my brother is dead and that wherever I am, I wasn’t with him when it happened.”
“However he’d die … it wouldn’t make it easier.”
“Stop saying stupid things!” she shouted.
“Why are you yelling at me?” he shouted back.
“Because they’ve already won. Don’t you get it? This isn’t a battle. They cost everyone everything. And they still win.” Athena twisted the railing in her hands and splintered it, wrenching the whole thing loose. It hit the walkway below and cracked. She stared down at it. In the dark, the wood looked like bones.
I wish they were mine. I wish they were mine and Cassandra’s both, and we’d leave them with nothing.
“You’re not the only one losing everything,” Odysseus said angrily. “In fact, I’d say you got the best end of it. You get to sew yourself up with Clotho and Lachesis and come out a butterfly on the other side. A shiny new Atropos in an Athena skin. You won’t remember Hermes. Or me. Or if you do, you won’t care.”
“You’d rather I let Cassandra become the Fate of death?”
“I’d rather you thought of something else!” he shouted. “You’re afraid. I get it. You messed up on Olympus and you don’t think you have the right to lead them anymore, but you’re wrong, Athena. This isn’t noble. This is giving up.”
He turned and struck the side of the house hard enough to rattle it.
“Just like you and me,” he said. “That was giving up, too.”
“Odysseus—”
“You never would have done it, if you thought you were going to survive. For you, telling me you love me is the same as saying goodbye.”