Page 69 of Invoking Ruin

“You can’t tell me you never imagined it,” I challenge her, stepping in closer and brushing a wet lock of hair off her shoulder. “What sort of life you’d want us to have, when you’d successfully stolen me away for good.”

I shouldn’t even want to know. My duty lies back on Olympus with my family, who will never be safe while she has the knife. Or so they told me.

Knowing Atê as well as I do, I am less convinced.

Atê frowns at me. “Why do you want to know?”

“Call me morbidly curious.”

She scoffs, disbelieving, but I don’t say anything, and after a moment, her shoulders drop, the fight leaving her.

“We’d travel. Wander where we pleased. This world has changed so much, gotten so much bigger. I keep finding new things, new cities. It would take centuries to see them all, experience them all. I think you’d love it.” Her eyes light up as she talks, taking on a faraway quality. I’m not sure she’s allowed herself to dream until now.

It softens her, the hard edges fading until I can see the goddess who spied on me from behind an ancient olive tree, all wide-eyed longing and pure need.

A goddess I desired.

Perhaps one I desire still.

“Like what?” I prompt.

“The tall cities. Each one has its own dark, seedy underworld. The parties, the hedonism.” Her lips quirk up, amused. “Every sort of wine and spirit you could imagine. The wilderness of the world, too. I want to see it all with you.”

The picture she paints—one of freedom, licentiousness, of going where we please—hooks in the back of my mind as though she’d struck me with the full force of her power.

Only, I know that she hasn’t. I would have felt it wash over me. Her words are just that: words. Tempting, but unadorned. There is a little power, though, in how well she knows me. How she knows just what sort of adventurous life I’d pick for myself.

“It sounds like a life tailor-made for me." The way she preens when I say that amuses me, even though it should frighten me. "And you? What would you do on these trips?”

She smiles dangerously, and I want to kiss that coy little edge from her mouth. “I’d be right beside you, experiencing it all for myself.”

“Even the orgies?” I ask, because we both know there’d be some.

She laughs, “Especially the orgies. I have special memories of the last one we shared.”

So do I.

I chase away the daydream. Fanning the flames at a time like this is a risk. Certainly not one I should be encouraging.

Atê’s sex drive is relentless, and after fucking her so hard I saw stars not an hour ago, the last thing she needs is more proof of our compatibility in that regard.

“They won’t stop chasing you,” I tell her, staying on topic. “Not if you have that knife.”

She shrugs. “They’ll forget about the knife. My mother has the attention span of a goldfish, and in a few months they'll be back to fighting amongst themselves like they always do. As long as I have the knife, and Nyx remains locked in Tartarus, nothing will happen. It’s a stalemate.”

I hear a lot if’s, and I’m not sure I believe her confidence, especially if the fate of the universe hangs in the balance. Momus is also hunting her, and he’s not the type to let things go. She thinks she’s safe here, but I think she’s in more danger than ever.

“You could return the rift knife to them in exchange for your freedom,” I suggest.

The wariness returns to her eyes. Part of me is sorry to see the playfulness dissipate so quickly. “No. They’ll drag me straight into a cell, even if they promise me otherwise. I’ve hurt them, made them look like fools. No one is going to forgive and forget just because I gave up the one piece of leverage I have.”

“I thought I was the leverage.”

She stares at me, the silence growing. A tickling feeling works its way down my spine as I weather her scrutiny.

“You’re an idiot,” she says at last, “You’re not leverage. You’re the prize.”

I already knew she thought that about me, deep down, but hearing her say it breaks something inside me. Prize. The word is real, finite, and so incredibly wrong.

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