Page 38 of Invoking Ruin

“Shut up, Deimos.” Vita snarls.

He ignores her, focusing on me. “I’d have told you who you were, uncle. After all, nothing would bring me more joy than making precious Vita suffer. But now I see it’ll be better if I don’t. Just wait until you remember who it is you’ve been fucking.”

He speaks with absolute certainty, as though he’s in on some big secret, and it’s as though someone threw a glass of wine in my face.

Who I’ve been fucking?

Vita won’t look at me, even as I stare at her, trying to figure out what he means.

This is too much.

Vita growls, a little rasp better suited to a house cat. It’s cute. I wish I could enjoy it. She picks up the bundle containing the girdle and wraps the ends of the protective silk around her hands. “What are you doing here, Deimos?”

His grin only widens. “Nemesis had reason to believe you might seek out the sacred sites. I volunteered to watch my dear mother’s holy place. I can’t wait to tell Nemesis she was right. I’m sure as soon as I do, she’ll come running.”

“You can tell that overgrown pigeon I’ll cut her wings off if she gets close,” Vita snarls.

The humor disappears from Deimos’ face. A tide of black swallows up his blue eye as he intones, with a heaviness that seeps into my very bones: “You will fail. No matter what you try. You will fail, Ruin.”

Vita visibly shudders, her eyes going wide in shock. I know Vita, but this goddess is very nearly a stranger to me. Still, I could swear she miscalculated in how she baited the other god.

“Not today, I won’t,” she says, her voice even. Then, she shoves the silk-wrapped girdle into Deimos’ mouth, gagging him.

When she speaks next, her voice is heavier, filled with power. I can sense it now, as though tapping into my own cracked the lid. “You’ll wait until we are a dot on the horizon before you summon Nemesis. You’ll give her my message.” She pauses. “And tell my sister that I send my love.”

His power must be in his speech, like Vita’s. Gagged and bound, all Deimos can do is glare and try to fight off Vita’s compulsion. It doesn’t look like he’s winning. He nods reluctantly, like some sort of puppet dancing on her strings when he wants to do anything but.

The strength of her power is terrifying. If she wanted to do something like that to me, could I even stop her?

Vita comes to me, taking my hand. “We need to leave. He won’t be held long.”

I pull out of reach, still reeling. “Vita…”

Her expression turns pleading. “We can’t stay here. When the other gods come, they’ll lock me away. Or worse.”

Lock her away. So she’s in danger, too. All this time, and she was supposedly protecting me, but it’s not the whole story. Of course it’s not.

More lies. I should leave her here, take the opportunity to run away. Figure out what’s going on for myself, without someone feeding me lies. But she won’t leave me, and if she stays here they'll—whoever they are—take her away. I can't stand the thought, as though the very idea robs me of something. Whether it's some latent instinct of the god I was, or some misguided loyalty to the woman I thought I knew, I don't want to let her go.

Damn it.

“I won’t let them hurt you.” The words come unbidden, but I don’t take them back. I won’t let anyone touch her.

When she tries to take my hand again, I let her.

“Come, then,” she whispers to me. We run for the chariot and take to the skies once more.

Chapter ten

Atê

We’re somewhere over the Isthmus before I stop Pegasus, instructing him to hover in the air. We’re not nearly far enough away from Corinth yet to relax, not if Deimos was telling the truth and Nemesis is coming after me, but the Isthmus is a crossroads of sorts.

There are several places we can go from here.

To the East, I can just spot the closest of the Cyclades rising out of the sea. To the West, the Northern edge of the Peloponnese, and to the North, Athens and most of the mainland.

South isn't an option as I'm not crossing Corinth again.

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