Page 2 of Sweet Obsession

To savemylife.

I shudder and wrap my arms around myself. “Whatever. Take me wherever you want. A dungeon? Maybe Olympus has stocks you can lock me in and let the public toss tomatoes at my head.”

“Stocks are for your feet. You’re thinking of a pillory.” Poseidon huffs out a breath, but he doesn’t continue. He just drives. Later, I’ll worry about looking for an angle to leverage this shitty situation into one I can use to my advantage. Later, I’ll start crafting an escape route. Later…

It feels like between one blink and the next, the car is rolling through an impressive-looking wrought-iron fence and up to a startlingly massive Victorian-looking home…and then we drive past it, looping around the curved driveway to a much smaller building tucked into the trees behind the main house. It looks like an in-law setup, or maybe somewhere for the staff to live if the family didn’t want them in the house proper.

So this is where I’ll be held.

But when Poseidon hauls me inside, it’s hardly the cold, dank cell that I expect. The glimpse I get of the space as he drags me down the hall is startlingly cozy—low light, deep colors, sturdy furniture. This looks like a place that’slivedin. Cared for. Loved.

The hall ends in a staircase so narrow, Poseidon’s shoulders nearly brush the walls. I’m so bloody tired, more tired than I’ve ever been. My head feels like it’s floating a foot above my body.Everything hurts.

So when Poseidon opens a door and shoves me inside, I barely manage to turn to face him before he slams it shut. The click of a lock snapping into place feels very loud in my ears. “Locked in,” I murmur. “Of course.”

I turn and dredge up the energy to survey my new prison. It’s nice, as prisons go. The bed is large and looks comfortable enough that I have to fight against the urge to drop onto it and let unconsciousness take me. There are a sturdy-looking dresser and nightstand, both probably too heavy for me to move on my own. A TV mounted on the wall. Two gaming consoles situated on the shelf below it. Past that is a door into a decent-sized bathroom with a shower and tub, fully stocked with high-end products.

Stranger and stranger.

My immediate priority is to get these clothes off and scrub the salt from my skin. The bed looks inviting, but I know better. I haven’t slept properly in weeks, haven’t slept at all in days. I’m destined to lie there and watch the minutes tick by until dawn comes and it’s time to go through the motions all over again.

But thirty minutes later, when I’m clean, wearing someone else’s lounge pants I found in the bathroom, and between the sheets…I’m out like a light.

Apparently all I needed for a good night’s sleep is to be captive to an enemy who wants me dead.

2

Poseidon

Going home to shower is a waste of time, but I can’t fuckingthinkwith my damp clothes pressed to my skin, pulling with every movement, the salt starting to make everything crusty. It’s more than an irritant. It’s agony. My people—Olympus—need me at my best, and my best requires a shower and a clean set of clothes.

I move as fast as possible, but there are still half a dozen missed calls when I step out of the shower. Five of them are Zeus, who is very much alive despite the plans, weeks in the making, to change that. The sixth is from Hera.

It’s Hera that I call back even before I get dressed. She’s not a patient woman, and I highly doubt failing to make herself a widow has sweetened her temperament.

Sure enough, she answers almost before the phone actually rings. “Where are you?”

I prop the phone between my shoulder and ear and reach for a pair of pants. “Securing my prisoner. I take it Zeus is alive, judging from all the times he’s called me.”

“Yes.” Her voice is so cold, I’m surprised the phone doesn’t ice in my hand. “A small setback, but not a permanent one.”

Previously, I found her confidence inspiring. She plays the same games the rest of the Thirteen do, but she at least has the aim of protecting the people of Olympus. Well, she intends to protect her family, but it benefits the general population, which is the only reason I agreed to support her attempted coup. The enemy is literally at our gates; we can’t afford to have the Thirteen divided, and they will never be unified under this Zeus. He’s not charismatic enough, and the others see his attempts to bring the group together as weakness. He should have taken a note from his father’s playbook and ruled by fear, but it’s too late for that now.

“I assume there’s a reason you called. Unless you’re actually ready to discuss the navy currently laying siege to our bay.” Unlikely. Hera moves fast, but this is too much, even for her. We all feared the barrier would come down, but I hardly believed it was possible. It’s held for my entire life, my parents’ lives, my grandparents’, back more generations than I can count. The barrier was just a fact of life, and now it’s gone and Olympus is not prepared to deal with an outside threat.

“He’s called a meeting. I’m sure you’ll get a notification of it shortly. Afterward, I would prefer you linger here so we can discuss our next steps.”

Our next steps. She means to continue with her plans to murder her husband, and obviously she needs my help. Not that she ultimately asked me for much help when it came to putting together the plan to annihilate Dodona Tower. The only reason I agreed withthatrecklessness was because she promised to clear the tower of everyone except Zeus before bringing it down. The amount of destruction is hard to quantify, but the tower has served as an imagefor Zeus’s power for generations, ever since it was built so long ago. Bringing it down serves to undermine that title.

It all seems rather petty now. I thought we had more time. I was certain of it. But here we are; the barrier has come down.The barrier has come down.I can barely comprehend what that means. For so long my entire role in Olympus was to ensure our imports and exports came through the barrier smoothly. To ensure the people of Olympus wanted for nothing. To ensure we were safe.

Safety is going to be a foreign concept moving forward, I suspect.

I have no interest in making Hera my enemy. She’s much more useful as an ally, and we’ll need all the alliances we can get in order to protect the people who need it the most. So I swallow down my distaste and say, “I’ll be there.” I hang up before she can. It takes mere moments to finish dressing, but I still feel uneasy.

Everything is changing. And I can’t say it’s changing for the better.

It’s tempting to check on Icarus, but nothing I’ve learned about this man has given me any indication that he’s actually dangerous. Yes, he’s Minos’s son. Yes, he attacked Pan at the country party. Yes, he even took me captive and tackled me into the icy waves of the marina. But once we hit the water, the fight seemed to go out of him.I’mthe one who had to draghimto safety. He hardly attempted to drown me.

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