Psyche sniffles. “But that has nothing to do with me.”
“It has everything to do with you.” She leans down, sneering. “Demeter really thinks that you’re good enough to be married to Zeus. Look at you. You’re nothing but a fat girl playing pretend.”
“I didn’t ask for this!”
“Wake up, little girl. No one asked for it in Olympus.” She laughs, the sound wild and unhinged. “You don’t get to swim with sharks and then cry about getting eaten. You tried to play the game and you lost.” She shifts her stance, lifting the gun an inch. “Now you’re going to pay the price.”
“That’s enough.” I start forward, but she stops me with her finger on the trigger. If she were pointing it at me, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d take my chances. But I will not risk Psyche’s life. “You don’t get to talk to her like that. You don’t get to attack her because she’s better than you, prettier than you, both inside and out. Put the fucking gun down, Mother.”
“We’re done talking!”
Psyche sighs. “Yes, I suppose we are. I’ve got more than enough. So has the rest of Olympus.” All the quiver is gone from her voice, her fear tucked away as if it never existed, leaving only cold calm and steely determination in its place. She reaches into the flower bed and extracts a phone from the space behind her. She holds it up to her face, and just for a moment, the calm flickers and she gives a trembling smile. “So, you see, everything is not okay. It’s not okay at all. Aphrodite wants to kill me and frame my husband.”
Aphrodite’s jaw drops. “You’re livestreaming us.”
“One hundred thousand viewers and counting. Before the end of the day, all of Olympus will have heard you confess to trying to kill me.” Psyche’s trembling smile goes sharp. “Sharks aren’t the only predators in the ocean, Aphrodite.”
Holy fuck. Holy fuck. There will be no sweeping this under the rug, no pretending it never happened. She’s just paved the way for a bloodless changing of power with the title Aphrodite; there’s no way my mother will retain the role after this. Relief makes me giddy. “It’s over. There’s no coming back from this. It’s finally over.”
“It’s not over until I say it’s over!” Aphrodite turns fully to face Psyche, her expression going ugly and hateful. “If I go down, you’re going down with me!”
“No!” I sprint forward, moving faster than I ever have. Even as I do, I know I won’t be fast enough. There’s too much distance between me and Aphrodite, too little distance between her finger and the trigger.
I don’t count on Psyche.
She surges up, grabbing Aphrodite’s wrists and shoving them up toward the sky as the gun goes off. She stomps on my mother’s foot and yanks the gun from her hands, flinging it in the opposite direction. Aphrodite curses, but Psyche shoves her to the ground. The whole thing took two seconds.
I grab Psyche and pull her into my arms. I know she didn’t get shot, but I can’t help searching her body for wounds despite that. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. I’m safe. We’re both safe.”
“Thank fuck.” I point down at my mother, currently trying to sit up. “Do not move.”
In the distance, sirens sound. Psyche presses her forehead to my chest for a long moment and then moves away. “Now, it’s time for the final act.”
32
Psyche
Things happen quickly after that. Ares’s people arrive. Half of them cart Aphrodite off in a black van; the other half act as our escort to Dodona Tower to face Zeus. Good. I have some choice words to say to him.
Eros sits next to me in the back of the car. He hasn’t said a word since Ares’s people showed up. He’s stayed close to me, but I can’t read the expression on his face. He’s iced me out. I open my mouth but decide against speaking before any words escape. We aren’t alone, and this needs to play out before we can have anything resembling an honest conversation.
I don’t know if he’ll forgive me for lying to his face and going behind his back.
We reach Dodona Tower and are escorted up to Zeus’s office. He’s waiting for us in nearly the exact same position he was during our last meeting. He glances up as we walk through the doors, his gaze landing on the soldiers behind us. “Leave us.”
They obey instantly. I’ve never had much desire to have power for the sake of power, but his ability to state commands and have people leap to obey is something that would be useful. Especially right now.
Zeus rubs his temples. For a moment, he almost looks tired, but it passes and then he’s the implacable cold man he’s always been in my presence. “When I said I needed evidence, I didn’t mean I wanted you to stream that evidence to half of Olympus.”