Skyla’s stomach dropped. And in her mentor’s eyes, she saw reality sharpen and clear.
“You know.” Betrayal burned a hole straight through Skyla’s gut. “You knew he was Cynurus and you didn’t tell me?”
“Oh, Skyla. You make it sound like I set out to deceive you. I had no such intentions.”
“What would you call it?”
Athena bent to pick up her throwing stars from the ground. “I call it an assignment, plain and simple. Who he is changes nothing. And had you not slept with him, you would never have known the truth. You did sleep with him, didn’t you? That’s the only reason you’d even know. My gods, Skyla. It’s been years since you fucked a mark. It didn’t even occur to me that you would screw a human, let alone a daemon hybrid.”
It hadn’t occurred to Skyla either. She hadn’t understood the pull she had toward Orpheus. All she’d known was that between seeing him in that concert crowd and tending his wounds in that stopover apartment she’d taken while she waited for him to show up, he’d awoken some primitive womanly part of her she’d shut down eons ago. And in that moment of release, when they’d been joined and her guard had been stripped bare, she’d seen into his soul.
Athena’s betrayal seared her heart. A heart she’d buried so long ago, she didn’t realize it could still hurt. “You should have told me. Keeping his identity secret was not your call to make. I had the right to—”
“To what?” Athena asked. “To decide his fate? That’s not your job, Skyla. Your job is to do as you’re told. If you remember, I tried to talk Zeus out of sending you on this mission, but you claimed you were ready, and I went along with you because I trust your judgment. Regardless, though, who your target was is of no importance. It’s who he is now that matters. And what he’s done.”
Skyla stared at the goddess she’d once regarded as her friend. The only person who’d understood her. But now she realized Athena hadn’t truly understood her at all. Not if she could so callously brush this aside as if it meant nothing.
“How is it even possible? He died. I saw his body. I…” She closed her mouth, swallowed. Couldn’t say the words. Because even just thinking them cut with the fierceness of a jagged blade. He’d been her lover, her heart, the one person she’d been willing to leave the Sirens for. Until he wasn’t.
Athena pressed the button on the end of the magical weapon. It shrank down to a six-inch metal bar, which she slipped into the leg of her platform kick-ass boots. “That was not my doing.”
“But you know.”
“What I know is irrelevant.” She shrugged. “My guess, though? A meddling Fate.”
“What would a Fate care about one man’s actions?”
Athena turned to look past the Siren Compound toward the shimmering palaces of Olympus beyond. “More than you know.”
Before Skyla could ask what that meant, Athena turned back to face her. “The man you were so ready to leave the Order for, Skyla, was so angry at Zeus for convincing his father Perseus to put another on the throne of Mycenae instead of him that he used you to gain access to Olympus and jump-start his revenge against the King of the Gods. He stole the air element right out from under Zeus’s nose. An offense punishable by death. And when you couldn’t kill Cynurus as you were ordered to do, Zeus sent others in your place to finish the job.”
The stab of Cynurus’s betrayal still stung, over two thousand years later. Skyla remembered all too clearly how humiliated she’d been when she realized she’d been duped, that he had in fact stolen the palm-sized gem that held the chthonic powers of the sky. And when Zeus had ordered her to kill him, she was so distraught over her misjudgment, she hadn’t been able to think, let alone act.
She’d spent the long years of her life knowing that misjudgment had sealed his fate for all eternity. And she’d justified it by believing he was guilty. But now…
If he was truly guilty, as Zeus and Athena claimed, why would a Fate give him a second chance?
“Lachesis was pissed when Zeus stepped in and had Cynurus killed prematurely,” Athena went on, oblivious to the painful memories washing over Skyla like a wave. “Why? I’ll never know, nor do I care. My guess is she took her appeal to Hades and brokered a deal for a second shot at life for the bastard. And as he did back then, now, in the body of this daemon hybrid, he’s pulling the same shit as before. Only this time he has his sights set on the Orb of Krónos. And ultimate control of everything. The soul is black, regardless of the body. Then as now, Skyla, that is the same.”
The Orb of Krónos. Holy gods, that’s what this was about? Athena had told her Orpheus was after a relic. One that held great sentimental value for Zeus. But that’s not what this was. This was the source of ultimate power. The object that had the strength to release the Titans from Tartarus, to start the war to end all wars, and the power to control what was left behind.