Page 45 of Sweet Obsession

The question remains which of them is the better bet to actually protect the city.

I still don’t have an answer when sleep finally takes me. Or when I wake up to early-morning light streaming through the window and Icarus sprawled next to me, one arm outstretched as if reaching for me.

I tense, but he doesn’t immediately open his eyes and his breathing remains even. It feels a little strange to watch him while he sleeps. He’s removed all the bandages on his chest but one, and the cuts have scabbed over, even with the…energetic physical activities we indulged in last night. Still, I should have considered that he was still injured when we started talking about safe words.

“You’re staring.” Icarus speaks without opening his eyes.

I don’t jolt, but it’s a near thing. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

I know what he’s going to say even before he opens his eyes. “I’m sorry about last night.”

“Yeah, me too.” It’s the truth. He didn’t act outside the range of expectations. There’s no point in being mad at a dog who bites when they’ve been kicked their entire life. Icarus has no reason to trust me, so the fact that he’s telling me what little he is should be counted as nothing less than a miracle.

My phone vibrates on the nightstand. I don’t exactly lunge for it, but I move fast enough that it’s probably clear I want to get out of this conversation. Any relief I might feel is gone the moment I read the text.

Zeus:Be here in an hour. Hades has agreed to meet.

He doesn’t send an address, just a screenshot of a map with a spot circled near the river just south of Juniper Bridge. Hades might be attending this treasonous meeting, but he’s not taking any chances by coming farther into the upper city than strictly necessary. The fact that he’s showing up at all defies belief—or maybe it just highlights the fact that he’s as worried thathiswall will fall as the rest of us.

“We have to go.” Even this early, it will take the better part of the hour to get across the upper city to that spot. I haul myself out of bed and make quick work of dressing and brushing my teeth and dragging my fingers through my hair. My beard gets a little more attention, with some of the clove oil that Orion gifted me for my birthday. It’s only when I step back into the bedroom that I realizeIcarus hasn’t moved. I frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Are you sure you want me there?”

I blink. “Yes. If I didn’t, I would have told you to stay here.”

Icarus huffs out a rough laugh. “Gods, you really would, wouldn’t you? You don’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Thatisn’t true. I do lots of things I don’t want to do.” Top of that list are parties with the Thirteen and all the legacy families. I don’t like parties on principle; they’re too loud, too crowded, and too filled with agonizing small talk. “Get dressed. We need to leave in two minutes.”

For once, he doesn’t argue. He just slumps into the bathroom and, two minutes and thirty seconds later, reappears in the same clothes he was wearing yesterday. Because he has no changes of clothing yet. Orion has probably picked up some clothes for him by now, but those would be back at the house.

I barely pause to text Orion that I’ll be gone for a few hours and then we’re in the SUV and heading south. Despite my concerns for the potential traffic, the upper city is a ghost town, even in the city center that’s usually bumper to bumper with morning commuters. The colors seem almost muted, but that might be the overcast day.

I half expect Icarus to ramble on the way he seems to when bored, but he stays perfectly silent during the drive, his attention tracking on the buildings and streets of our route.

It gives my mind time to wander, though there was only ever going to be one destination for my thoughts. Circe. I might have forgiven Icarus last night, but I still don’t know who he called or what blackmail might be strong enough to make Circe’s generals abandon her on the brink of invasion. Getting that information should be thehighest priority—and itis. But…I worry about him. About what comes next, about what he’s risking for a city that hates him. I think he really doesn’t believe he’s going to survive the coming conflict.

Fuck that. I’m determined that he will. The world would be a dimmer place without Icarus in it. I refuse to allow it to happen.

I’m still deliberating on our current disaster when we arrive at our destination. The River Styx’s current is unforgiving, so people don’t tend to swim in it, even during the summer months. Halfway through October, the small, rocky beach is empty except for Zeus himself, standing as if the cold, early-morning air doesn’t touch him.

He only looks over when Icarus and I are a few feet away. His icy-blue gaze flicks past me to Icarus. I can’t begin to guess what Zeus is thinking. He’s about ten years younger than me and even though I’ve seen him at Dodona Tower parties since he was a teenager, I’ve never been able to get a good read on him. He doesn’t have tells like normal people do.

I glance at the river, the thick fog amplifying the shimmering barrier between upper and lower city until I can’t reallyseethe lower city. If I were a fanciful person, I could almost imagine that we’re completely cut off from the world here. That nothing can touch us. A lie, no matter which way you look at it.

“He’ll be here,” Zeus says, answering my unspoken question.

Next to me, Icarus shivers. I mentally curse myself for not thinking to make him get a coat, and I shrug out of mine. He makes a sound of protest as I drape my jacket around his narrow shoulders, but I ignore it.

When I turn back around, it’s to find the barrier’s shimmering flicker as a small boat coasts through it. I’m familiar with theexperience—before the greater barrier came down, it was the job of every Poseidon and their family to ferry resources into the city. I’ve done it myself countless times and yet I’m still not sure how the technology identifies me with a nonintrusive scan. It appears the secondary barrier is identical, except it’s keyed to Hades’s bloodline instead of Poseidon’s.

He’s not alone, but I didn’t expect him to be. Charon sits at the near-silent motor, a white man nearly as large as I am with dark hair and a personality that discourages people from fucking with him. He guides the boat onto the shore and Hades steps out smoothly. It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve seen him, but he looks much the same as ever, a white man nearing forty. There’re the beginnings of gray sprinkled through his dark beard and new lines at the corners of his dark eyes, but ever since he married Persephone, something unwound in him. I’m glad for whatever happiness those two have experienced.

They’re both people Olympus failed—more victims of the previous Zeus’s monstrosity. He murdered Hades’s parents in a house fire. And he would have married Persephone against her will—and likely killed her as well, eventually.

All while the rest of us did nothing.

Hades takes in Icarus huddling in my coat, nods at me, and focuses on Zeus. “Well? I’m here.”

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