Three sets of razor edges cut through Atropos. Lachesis hacked her own arm free, leaving a gaping red wound across Atropos’ stomach. When they started on her legs, the brutality was too much to bear. Athena and Cassandra stepped back. Clotho and Lachesis cut and cut until one mangled form became three, each bleeding from the hips down.
Clotho and Lachesis lay on their bellies, legs damaged, their faces and arms withered and graying as blood left them. Atropos wavered on her feet, wobbly as a mermaid who’d lost her tail. Blood covered her in a broad skirt.
“Athena! I’ve got the rope!”
The rope dropped and almost at the same time she saw Odysseus’ foot, ready to climb down.
“No!” she shouted. “Thanatos! Don’t let him come!”
“Athena! Don’t you do it,” Odysseus shouted as Thanatos pulled him back up. “Don’t you leave me!”
There was so much love in his voice. He was wrong, what he said on the widow’s walk. She would have been with him as long as she could, if there had been a choice.
“Cassandra!”
“Cassie!”
Andie and Henry up there, too. They were all right. How Athena wanted to see all of their faces again. Just once more. But Atropos wasn’t dead yet.
“Now what?” Athena asked Clotho.
(The shears. She dies by her own shears. The one who kills her will take her place.)
Clotho and Lachesis lay sprawled, clutching their own shears in their hands.
“You heard them,” Cassandra said. “Give them to me.”
“What?”
“Give them to me.” She held her hand out. “It’s what’s supposed to happen.”
Athena stared at her, open-mouthed.
“Come on,” Cassandra said, and smiled. “You’ve got a life now. Up there. This wasn’t meant for you.”
“No,” Athena said. “We made the deal.”
Cassandra’s smile changed. It disappeared.
“Give them to me!”
Athena jumped back, favoring her injured hip. Cassandra fell and her hands caught Athena at the knee. Athena thought she would black out from the pain of so many feathers bursting through the joint.
“Stop this, Cassandra.” Athena moaned. “It’s only them in your head. You don’t want this.”
“Nobody wants this,” Cassandra said as she got to her feet. “But I am this.” Her fingers hooked into claws but this time Athena was faster and managed to dodge.
“Get out of her head!” Athena screamed at the Moirae.
“Cassandra. You’re not death. You killed gods because you fought—”
“I killed Calypso!”
Athena stopped. Cassandra’s eyes were wide and hateful. Full of regret. In the midst of all that had happened, Athena had missed how much of Cassandra’s hate had turned inward.
“I put my hands on her,” Cassandra shouted. “And she died. Her hair turned white, and then yellow, and then it shed off of her skull. Her face turned to leather in front of me!”
Above, Athena heard Odysseus speak, but couldn’t tell what he said.
“You didn’t mean to do that,” Athena said, and knew it was true. Cassandra had cared for Calypso. It was in her eyes for anyone to see.
Athena sought Atropos in the back of the cave. The cold weight of the shears in her hand felt good. Solid. She opened and closed them once, and Atropos hissed.
Athena moved fast, but Cassandra’s hands slammed down on her back. Feathers cut through her lungs, through her liver, through the skin and muscle that held her together. It brought her to the ground.
Athena turned over and looked up through the cave entrance, hoping to see a scrap of sky, wishing she wasn’t there, in a hole that felt so much like a grave.
“Athena!” Odysseus shouted. He started down the rope and then let go and fell the rest of the way to splash into the lake. He came up sputtering, and she recalled how cold it was. It seemed a long time ago that she had been in the water.
Cassandra’s shadow fell across her torso. She bent down to carefully take the shears from Athena’s hand.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Cassandra said. “After it’s over, I think you’ll heal.”
Poor Cassandra. The girl who killed gods. They’d put her through a world of shit, and she proved herself tough as nails. Athena understood why Aidan had loved her so much.