Page 74 of Descent

“I know she did so much more to the two of you than she did to me. But you are my family. My blood. I won’t leave you behind.”

“You have to.” My voice steadies. “If she questions me, I won’t be able to lie. It will put you in mortal danger.”

Just like that, I’m back on my feet, my terror solidifying into purpose. Pointing a finger over her shoulder, I shake my head frantically, “Get out of here, now. Leave me.”

“Circe—”

“No. I lost you once already. Knowing you’re alive is enough, I just?—”

“Why must you always play the martyr? The heroine?” Artemis scoffs, taking another step toward me. “Can’t you see that if you stay with him, he’ll kill you? If he ever figures out who he was, who you were?—”

My fingers spread, stretched out to stop her. “Please. Stop. If you come any closer…”

I’m trembling. Teetering on the brink. She could break me with a single touch.

Arty sighs, nodding sadly.

“Knowing you are alive will have to be enough for me too. Someday. Someday soon, I will come back for you again.”

“You mustn’t,” I snap, throwing every ounce of anger and bile into my words.

“Time will tell.”

“It alreadyhas. These past two years have changed me forever. It feels like a lifetime.”

Artemis sucks in a startled breath, the whites of her eyes gleaming wide. “Circe…it has been so much longer. It’s beenfive yearssince Berlin.”

A popping snap rings in my ears. I swallow hard, heaving against the vertigo threatening to take me to the ground again. “F-five…years?”

“Ananke did the same thing to me. Kept me isolated for so long. Warped my sense of time. Then she told me altered dates. That, along with the memories she stripped away?—”

“Stripped away?” Fingertips find the scar under my hair along my skull. I thought it was the head wound. “How long has Ero?—?”

“I’m not sure. But the Diamantes were rumored to have disappeared six or seven years ago now.”

Which means Russia must have happened only a few months after Berlin.

“Circe. I shouldn’t have told you?—”

“It doesn’t matter. Tell me how to resist. How to counteract her control!”

“I can’t, Circe. The only thing that worked for me was time. Haru had to isolate me again, restrain me. It was like going through drug withdrawals. Eventually it came back. Mostly.”

I want to sob. Scream. Run.

“Go. Just go.”

“If anyone can find a way to keep her from resetting you, it’syou. Don’t give up.”

“It’s too late. I already betrayed him, I won’t betray you too.”

Artemis backs away, her expression stunned, horrified.

Scared.

Of me.

Of what I’ve become.

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