“It’s failing. It’s not obvious yet, but there are weak spots. Poseidon brought it to our attention months ago.” Months of fruitless searching for answers. I’ve never been so frustrated in my life. The entire history of Olympus is at my fingertips, and yet there’s a giant blank spot when it comes to anything connected with the barrier. I tried to talk to the last Zeus about it when I first took over this title, but he wasn’t interested in devoting further resources to finding answers—and forbade me from talking about it with anyone lest I cause a panic. Now he’s dead and we’re left to deal with the fallout without years’ worth of lead time.
Cassandra stares at me. “You don’t know how to fix it, do you?”
“No.” Admitting as much feels like admitting my deepest, darkest sin. “I’ve looked, but someone scrubbed the records at some point.” Some past Apollo, no doubt. My title is the only one with the authority to even access the records, let alone make a call to remove them. I don’t understandwhy, though.
The boundary is the greatest mystery of Olympus. The average citizen just takes it as fact, whether chalking it up to magic or some advanced technology that might as well be magic. They assume that those in power, at least, know the details.
We don’t.
If we did, we’d know how to fix it now that it’s broken.
“Fuck,” Cassandra breathes. “But how likely is a ground war or whatever? Most of the greater world has written us off. Why now?”
“I don’t know.” Another admission of guilt. I scrub my hands over my face. “This is why we can’t toss Minos out, and even if someone was willing to resort to torture, it’s not a surefire way to get accurate information. We’re more vulnerable than we’ve ever been, and he has more information than he’s telling us.”
“I see.” She taps her thigh with one black-painted fingernail. “Well, Zeus is paying me well enough. Guess I can help you save Olympus.” She looks up and meets my gaze. “Let’s do this.”
5
Cassandra
I hold off telling Alexandra about my new “boyfriend” for as long as possible, but in the end I can’t avoid it forever. The last thing I want is for my little sister to see news of us splashed across the gossip sites.
Still, I wait until the very end of our lunch to blurt out, “I have something I need to tell you, and I need you not to get your hopes up.”
Alexandra laughs a little and folds up her cloth napkin. “With an intro like that, I’d almost expect you to tell me that I was right last week and you’ve fallen madly in love with your boss.”
It would be so much easier if I could tell the truth, but if I share what’s really going on, she’ll worry. More, I am very careful to hide how much I go without to ensure Alexandra has everything she needs. She has enough hurdles after what our parents did. The last thing I want to do is add to her burden. She’d start making her own sacrifices to helpme, and that I can’t allow.
If she knows I agreed to Zeus’s bargain to help her, she’ll feel bad and tell me I don’t need to do it. No, better to keep up the lie Apollo and I are about to spin to the whole of the city.
I’ll come clean at the end, when I can explain why it was all worth it.
I take a deep breath. “Yeah, about that.”
Her eyes go wide. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not joking.” My skin heats. “I wanted to tell you first. You know how this city is. We’re going to be photographed and they’re going to say terrible things about me. Just, uh, heads up.”
Her smile fades. “I wish it wasn’t like that. You’re not our parents. You’d think after twelve years, they’d have realized it.”
“They don’t care, Alex. Our parents dying wasn’t enough. They need someone to punish and we’re still here.” Not that we have a choice. I don’t know if our parents would have tried to leave the city after failing in their plan. They never got the chance. They died the same night they attempted to enact the assassination clause.
Leaving us to pick up the pieces. “They’ll keep punishing us as long as we’re here.”
“I’m sorry.” She reaches across the table and takes my hand. “You shouldn’t havethemputting a damper on a really great thing. I’m happy for you, Cass. He seems like a really good guy.”
I swallow past the sudden lump in my throat. I hate lying to my sister, but it’s for the best. “He is.”
The entire walk back to the office, I wonder if I’ve done the right thing in not telling Alexandra the truth. I’ve been her guardian for nearly a third of my life; at this point, keeping the less savory details of my life from her is second nature.
I’ve done the right thing. I’m sure of it. She’ll be happy when I explain the situation fully and have a solution to the problems that have plagued us for twelve years. A true escape.
In the end, pretending to date Apollo in order to investigate Minos is a small price to pay.
Being back at my desk feels particularly surreal. Nothing’s changed and yet everything’s changed. I don’t know how to explain it. Apollo is still my boss, at least until Zeus’s payment clears my account. That should be where it ends, but I can’t help obsessing over how we’re supposed to play pretend for all of Olympus. Not just in carefully constructed public dates. At ahouse party. The intimacy that will be required leaves me breathless and a little sick to my stomach.
I don’t know what I’m doing.