Page 84 of The Duplicity of Thieves

“I would say, you’re probably right.”

She releases her tight shoulders, but only a sliver. Her anxiety seems to rest in my bones; I can feel it.

After a moment of contemplating my words she says, “No one can read it?”

“Not one living soul. Except for you.”

She’s chewing on her bottom lip anxiously. “I’m an orphan, I think.”

“I was adopted when I was younger, but I wasn’t a baby. Still, I can’t remember my parents,” I admit. “I don’t remember anything. I woke up one day, with two people standing over me, claiming to be my adopted parents.”

The stress re-enters her body. She looks like she's going to flee, but she hasn’t yet. It’s my honesty holding her here. There is nothing except for her, and I submit.

“Ever since then I’ve worked for Hades,” I divulge.

“Why are you telling me this? You know I don’t like him, right?”

“I figured you probably didn’t. I’m being honest. I’m giving myself to you. I don’t want to keep secrets.” My statement sits on the table in front of us. I didn’t know I would say it like that.

“I had an accident,” she says slowly. “I drowned…”

That’s a monumental bit of information. Maybe that’s what her demons are, but my gut tells me there’s more.

“I was saved by…When I woke, I was with Kate. She’s the one who taught me to speak Mondurian. She was insistent that I learn. We read this book hundreds of times.”

“Where is she now?”

“Dead. Murdered.” She scrunches her face up in indecision. A series of emotions pass through her features. Some of them I know, like grief. Drowning and murder? That could definitely give someone nightmares.

“That’s a bit extreme,” I respond.

She lays her head back on the couch, her ice blonde hair flowing over the side, staring at the ceiling. “She died because of me,” she says softly. “They both did.”

I see Josie, the pieces of who she is melded together. Not all of them, but enough. She’s wildly beautiful, chaotic, and brilliant, but she’s also haunted by darkness. Just like me. Besides all the other things, I know what I feel for her. Admiration. Persephone was right, I’m in love with her. It’s beating on my rib cage and pulsing on my tongue.

“Whoever killed them is going to use me then kill me, too.” She laughs like she just said the funniest thing in the world. A sick feeling twists in my stomach, and everything starts to fall into place. They’re going to kill her. This beautiful enigmatic goddess. Someone wants to kill her and take her from my world. What happened to make her tell me?

“And you need to figure out why?”

“Precisely.”

“And you think it’s in this book?”

She looks at me with those sharp silver eyes. “Can I trust you?”

Trust. It’s something I’ve never really been asked. It’s just been handed to me without question. Am I a trustworthy man? I suppose I am. I want her to trust me. “I would do anything to make sure I never lost yours.”

She turns back to the book pensively. “Pandora was a woman made of innocence. She was pure.”

Pandora. The story Vivian liked. The one Josie called a dumb bitch.

“You said something about her the first time you grabbed this book. I’ve never heard the story.”

“I’ve realized people have purity all wrong,” she continues, more to herself than to me. “It’s all about intention and Hope. Trust. It’s about sacrifice. It offers salvation and destruction.”

“Saviors or destroyers,” I remember.

“Same thing.” She sits up and gives me a genuine smile. “I don’t know why I came here. I should leave.”

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