Page 47 of Dark Restraint

I look at her over my hand. “What do you mean, you haven’t decided yet?”

“Exactly what I said. Now, what are Hera’s terms?”

No point in pussyfooting around it. She’s not going to leave until I tell her, and more than that, I need her help to bring the barrier down. “Hera will keep Ariadne safe—and Icarus, too—in exchange for me not killing anyone but Zeus when we bring down the building.”

Hermes whistles. “So it’s gotten that extreme. That’s unfortunate.”

Unfortunate is one way to put it. I study her. “Now what?”

“Now nothing. Minos doesn’t care what Hera wants.” She suddenly looks tired. “This is a gargantuan mess. I can’t let you—or him—kill hundreds of people who work in that tower. They haven’t done anything wrong, and while there are plenty of sins to go around this city, the problems start at the top.”

Considering Ariadne will feel similarly about a bunch of people dying for no fucking reason, I’m not about to let Minos bully us into making a shitty decision—that won’t even work. “And Zeus?”

“Zeus can take care of himself. And if he can’t?” She shrugs. “I can’t save everyone. In a conflict with these kinds of stakes, you either come out on top or you come out six feet under.”

24

Ariadne

I wake up to a text from Asterion.

Asterion: We have a problem. Minos wants us to move forward next week. Doesn’t care about casualties.

I read it, then read it again. It still takes my sleep-clogged brain another minute to process what he’s saying. What it means. “No.” I sit up. “No, no, no.” If the tower comes down like that, without Hera and the rest having an opportunity to come up with a reason to evacuate the building, a lot of people will die, and I’m a special kind of monster because even knowing that, the first thing my mind jumps to is my brother.

Hera won’t protect him if we defy her. She might throw me to the wolves, too, so I won’t even have a chance to do it myself. I fling off the sheets and call Asterion. I barely wait for him to pick up to say, “I thought you had this under control.”

“I thought I did, too.” He sounds tired, more tired than I’ve ever heard him. “I’m working on it, but he’s already given the command to the team. The plan is in motion. His plan.”

My stomach lurches, threatening to revolt. “What do we do?”

“You don’t have to do anything but stay safe. I’ll handle it.”

That’s lovely of him to say, but my safety is not guaranteed. More than that, I have a skill set that might actually be useful. “I can help, Asterion. You know I can. I wasn’t joking about wanting to be involved.”

“If your father finds out you have any connection with this, he won’t wait around for me to kill you. He’ll do it himself.”

I press my hand to my chest and try to breathe through my racing heart. He’s right, but either I’m content to sit on the sidelines and let him take the risks or I’m an equal partner. If I don’t convince him to take my help, people will die.

Zeus was always going to die and you were okay with that.

I ignore the snide little voice inside me. “He’s going to try it soon anyway. He’s not one to sit around and twiddle his thumbs when his orders aren’t being obeyed. It’s only because the tower has taken priority that he hasn’t sent someone else after me.”

“Ariadne…” He curses. “No. Absolutely fucking not. You’re staying out of this. You won’t be able to live with the guilt if something goes wrong.”

I ignore the fact that he’s probably right. “Who’s working the tech side of things?”

He sighs. “You’re not going to let this go.”

“I’m not.”

“Fine.” Another low curse. “It’s Mars.”

I don’t have much interaction with my father’s people, but I have spent plenty of time going through their records. Information is power, and maybe Icarus and I are using the same playbook, because I’d had a faint thought of finding secrets to use to blackmail them if things got particularly bad. The difference is that I didn’t find much. Just a few gambling debts and mistresses. Nothing my father would care about enough to give me ammunition to use against his people.

Mars doesn’t have any dirty secrets. Like a lot of my father’s people, they were a street kid that he brought in as a teenager. They’re well liked by the others on Aeacus’s team, and they do a pretty decent job of hacking and whatnot.

I’m still better. “When are you meeting with them next?”