“You have other brothers,” they said. “Other sisters. Think of them.”
Athena wanted to tell them where they could stick it, but only clenched her fists.
“You’ll help us now,” Clotho and Lachesis said. “You and Cassandra. You’ll help us kill Atropos to win your lives back. And in exchange for your lives…”
In her mind Athena ransacked the house for any weapon she could use to batter the Moirae out of Cassandra’s body. They came with balls the size of grapefruits, demanding help and payment for their lives besides.
“What the hell can you possibly want?” Athena asked.
“After Atropos falls,” the Fates sighed. “Cassandra will join us.”
“Join you?” Odysseus said. “What do you mean, ‘join you’?”
“The Moirae are three. Life, Destiny, and Death. We can cut Death out. But Death must replace her.”
Athena looked hard into Cassandra’s eyes, trying to see any of her in there. Could she hear? Was she trying to fight while they stood there talking? Was she afraid? Angry? But no matter where Athena looked, all she saw were the Moirae. They’d invaded Cassandra’s head and taken over, and before they were through, they would take the rest of her, too.
“She is ours, anyway,” the Moirae said, and shrugged with Cassandra’s shoulders. “Our perfect creation, brought into being by us, given the gift of prophecy by us, and touched with the hand of Death. It was all put into motion so long ago.”
The Moirae pursed Cassandra’s lips and crooned inwardly to her, as if crooning to a pretty bird they’d recently swallowed.
A perfect creation. But that’s not what Athena saw. Athena saw a girl with too many lives inside. Too many pains and wrongs and losses. A girl her brother Aidan had loved and ruined, but mostly loved.
I promised to take care of her. And even though she hates me, she’s still my friend.
“Would you take me instead?” Athena asked.
“What? No. No, they won’t take you instead!” Odysseus stared at her as though she’d lost her mind. She wanted to look at him, to try to explain, but if she did that she’d never be able to say what she had to.
“I can take lives as well as she can,” Athena said. “I’m strong. You can give me the sight.”
“Understand what you offer, goddess,” said Clotho. “To join us is to become us. To join us is to disappear.”
And that’s what you intended for Cassandra. To put her through all this shit, just to lose herself anyway.
“Of course I understand,” Athena said. “I’m a goddess. Not a stolen girl.”
The Moira wearing Cassandra considered the trade. And nodded. An obsolete goddess of battle would become the Moira of Death. It was more than fair, on all sides.
“Athena, you can’t do this,” Odysseus said. “How do we even know they’re telling the truth?”
“As a token of good faith,” Clotho said in her Cassandra-but-not-Cassandra voice, “we will tell you a very great secret.”
“What’s that?” Athena asked.
“Achilles is here. Now. In Cassandra’s house.”
23
ACHILLES
“Don’t. Linger.” Andie brushed Henry’s fingers away from her bare belly. “On my scars.”
“Why not?” he asked, and walked his fingers right back where they’d started. Four clean cuts slashed across her belly, gently pink.
“Because I don’t like to think about them. I rub fricking Bio Oil on them twice a day hoping they’ll disappear.”
But they never would. They would remain, shiny and smooth, with small pockmarks at the edges where the stitches had grown into the skin. Henry hadn’t realized how close he’d come to losing her that day in the road, when the Nereid raked its claws across her stomach. Nobody had until it was over, and Hermes noticed all the blood that had soaked into her shirt.