Page 92 of The Shadow Gods

“Castor isn't a god,” Pollux argued, voice tired.

“No,” I replied, “but something happened to allow him and Leo to speak. It allowed you to reach him for the first time ever. I think Achilles is right. Athena's setting the stage to end this. Maybe she wasn't strong enough to choose which of us to bring. Whatever the reason, we're here, and I think Leo is here, too.”

“So, we find her.” Hector stared up at the cliffs. “What are we waiting for?”

Leo

When I opened my eyes, I wasn't sure if I was in a memory.

I knew this place. The dirty floor. The altar. The stained walls.

There were some things that were new, though, like the goddess. Athena sat on the altar, legs crossed, chin resting on her hand and wings folded against her back, watching me.

Next to her sat four shards of pottery, the obsidian glowing in the torchlight. Those were new, too.

“You're awake.”

Instead of answering, I took another minute to sit up and take stock of my body. I was sore, but as far as I could tell, uninjured.

Standing, I studied the room. The walls were crumbling. Huge portions of rock and marble, sheared off in some places and piled in others, made the space closed in and claustrophobic. A layer of dust and dirt covered the floor, except for her footprints and the smudge from my body.

“Corfu?” I asked.

Nodding, she placed her hands on the altar and pushed herself off. “I thought we should end this where we began.”

End this.I wanted to be braver, but her words terrified me. Eyes on her, I sidled closer to the altar and the shards of the seal she'd laid on there, piece by broken piece. I needed a plan, and I didn't have one yet. I wanted to close my eyes and reach for my serpents, but the otherness that I always felt wasn't there. It was just me.

Alone.

I had to delay her while I figured out my next steps.

“You took the seal from the museum,” I noted as she stepped toward me. Pretending not to be interested in her approach, I instead examined the shard. “Should I expect there's a warrant out for my arrest?”

She chuckled. Her voice was so sweet and musical, it totally belied how evil she could be. “No. Once you left Oxford, people conveniently forgot about you. Like you never existed.”

I nodded. “Seems like a hell of a lot of work to go to.”

“It's not fun if it's simple,” she replied.

I glanced over my shoulder to find her watching me. Her eyes blazed bright and her dark hair glowed, all shades of rich burgundy and chestnut. Every inch a goddess.

“But you might be more successful.”

Those beautiful lips turned down. She didn't like that.Good.I went on, “All this strategizing and subterfuge, and if you'd acted logically, this story could have been finished years ago.”

She let her arms drop to her side. I went closer to the shards, drawn by the sight of the four pieces together for the first time. “You don't have the fifth,” I observed.

“I don't?” Her lips lifted quickly. That brought the smile back to her face.

I ignore the anxiety her smile created and went back to insults. “Seems like you should have found it, instead of playing professor at Harvard. Were the '84 Olympics a good tradeoff for where you find yourself now?”

“Is that what you would have done?” she asked. “Find every piece? Put them together and release the gods? You dare to tell a goddess how I should act?”

“I mean—you even took the time to bully and intimidate me when I was in grad school. Those don’t seem like the acts of a powerful goddess. It seems like jealousy. Why are you so obsessed with me?”

The walls around us shook, and pieces of stone crumbled from the ceiling. “You're very brave for a mortal.”

Where were my serpents when I needed them? Where was the power that had boiled up to protect me when Poseidon threatened me?

---