“It’s hardly famous.” She makes a choked sound. “And that’s my brother-in-law you’re talking about.”
I twist in the seat to face her fully. I’d much rather talk about this than about myself. “You know, your sisters seem the overprotective sort, and that’s not even getting into your mother.” Talk about a nightmare. “I’m surprised they let their precious baby sister attend a place like that.”
“Oh. That.” She waves it away. “They don’t know.”
“What?”
“They don’t know,” she repeats. Eurydice smiles. “So, you see, now you have a secret of mine.”
Sharing simple secrets to promote the sharing of deeper secrets is a trick as old as time. I ignore the impulse to do exactly that; it’s just the alcohol talking. “Rumor has it that you’re living in the same house as your sister and Hades. How could they possibly not know that you’re playing tourist in his sex dungeon?”
She shoots a look at the back of Charon’s head. He doesn’t appear to be paying us the least bit of attention, but he’s too close to miss any of it. Eurydice clears her throat. “I’m not allowed to participate or go into the club without Charon as an…escort. I just get to watch on the nights Persephone and Hades aren’t down there.”
“I see,” I say slowly. That’s an interesting piece of information that I don’t bother to file away because I have no interest in helping Minos do whatever he plans to do to Olympus. Murder and mayhem and chaos. He’s a bastard and a half, and I have no doubt that he’d sacrifice Theseus at the altar of his ambition.
Theseus already got hurt. I don’t want him to get dead, too.
I take another long drink of the champagne bottle. My stomach isn’t feeling too great. Or maybe that’s because we’re crossing over the bridge to the lower city. Apparently there’s a barrier here similar to the one that surrounded Olympus, keeping it separate from the rest of the world. Magic or some fancy tech that might as well be magic? I have no idea. I suppose it doesn’t matter. The alcohol fuzzes my brain, making it hard to tell if it’s the same sensation I felt entering the city or if I’ve just drunk too much.
I mean, I’ve definitely drunk too much.
It doesn’t take long for the car to roll to a stop in front of a nondescript gray building. I frown out the window at it. “This looks like a place you take people to murder them.”
Eurydice gives a choked laugh. “The other entrance is in my sister’s house, and that will create more questions than I want to answer. Come on.” She slips out of the car, leaving me to follow.
I’m distantly aware of Charon coming around the car and following us up to the large door. I’m so far past buzzed that I start to list to the side, and he has to move fast to catch me. He slips an arm around my waist and keeps me on my feet. “You sure about this, Eurydice?”
“Yes.” She opens the door. “Come on.”
The room is kept atmospherically dim in a way I might appreciate on a different night. Not right now, when the strangely reflecting light on the ceiling makes me dizzy. I try to focus on Eurydice’s back, but everything is a bit watery right now. “I drank too much.”
“You’re safe here, Pandora.” She leads the way through a series of couches and chairs, circling a low dais in the center of the room. The place is packed, and the couples and throuples and moreples in various states of undress and sexual revelry only add to my dizziness. I’m pathetically grateful when Eurydice stops in front of a private booth tucked back against a wall. Charon helps me slide into it, but I keep sliding, slumping down against Eurydice. She laughs a little and helps me right myself. “She’ll be here soon. But let’s get you some water in the meantime.”
She?
Time ceases to have meaning. Water appears at some point, and Eurydice coaxes me to drink a little, but my stomach is still swirly in a really worrisome manner. Damn it, I shouldn’t have drunk so much. I never do this. I have fun, but never recklessly. Even before I came to Olympus, I knew better, but these days the stakes are so much higher.
My blinks are getting longer and longer when the room seems to darken. I blearily look up, only to realize it hasn’t. There’s a woman standing over our table in a gorgeous red dress that screams sex. It coats her lean body lovingly, kissing the curves of her breasts and hips. As she shifts, it presses to the mound of her pussy in a way that makes my mouth water. From this angle, with her height, I can almost see beneath the short hem, and that’s probably wrong, but I can’t quite remember why.
Then my gaze reaches her face and my stomach drops. This isn’t some stranger. No, the woman I was just ogling is Aphrodite.
Theseus’s wife.
5
APHRODITE
“Did you drug her?” I peer down at a nearly passed out Pandora. When I pulled Eurydice aside at the reception—wanting a little revenge after the stunt my husband pulled with Adonis—I told her to get Pandora to the club. I didn’t expect this.
“No, I didn’t drug her.” Eurydice rolls her eyes. She’s nursing a glass of white wine and surveying the people in the club behind me. It’s late enough that there are plenty of people in various stages of fucking, putting on quite the show. She meets my gaze. “She drank too much because she’s worried about Hephaestus.”
I refuse to feel even a twinge of guilt. Best I can tell, Pandora exists outside Minos’s cozy little family unit and is only there because of her connection with Hephaestus. It doesn’t matter. She’s here, which means she’s the enemy. All’s fair in love and war. “We’re all worried about Hephaestus.”
“Not like that and you know it.” She brushes Pandora’s dark hair off her face. “I like her.”
“Eurydice.” I sigh. “Don’t go soft on me now.”
She drops her hand and takes a sip of her wine. “No danger of that. I know what’s at stake. I’ll reach out to Ariadne tomorrow and get that moving.”
“Good.” I’m still not entirely convinced of Apollo’s report that said Minos’s daughter might be turned to our side, but at this point we can’t afford to overlook any potential foothold.
I turn to where Charon is leaned against the wall nearby. He’s always haunting some space near Eurydice. She seems to find it comforting. I feel it’s disconcerting. With someone as dangerous as Charon, I prefer to have him where I can see him. “Help me get her into the car.” I had planned to come here and get her sloppy drunk, so her managing it on her own skips a few steps.
Sometime later, I corral a nearly passed out Pandora in my apartment and help her get out of the bridesmaid dress and into my bed. Guilt threatens to rise again, but I swallow it down. She’s not an innocent, no matter how sweet she’s been since I met her. She’s part of Minos’s household, which means she’s part of the plot to bring down the city I love.
That doesn’t stop me from pulling the covers up around her shoulders. It’s cold in here and she’s already asleep. There’s no reason for her to freeze. It might make her wake before I’m ready for her to. That’s all.
I watch her sleep for a few moments. She’s got to be the only person in existence who doesn’t look more innocent like this. Not that she’s innocent when she’s awake, but there’s something about Pandora that invites the kind of delight that only exists before the world shows exactly how cruel it can be. I don’t understand it. It must be a mask, but I’ve never seen it so much as crack in the hours we spent together for the wedding planning.
That means nothing.
My mask doesn’t crack, either.
Satisfied that she’s not somehow faking sleep, I head for my bathroom. I need to take a quick shower and wash the events of the day off me. I’m mildly irritated to discover I’m sore after having sex with Hephaestus. I press my fingers to my pussy and shiver. It was fast and cruel and, damn it, I came. I shouldn’t have bothered, but in the moment I couldn’t resist.