Page 65 of Dark Restraint

I’ve done as much as I can. What happens next is up to her. I have sympathy for her, even if I don’t like her much. I don’t know who will win in a contest between Hera and Circe. But hopefully I’ll be long gone before I have the chance to find out.

“Good luck to you, too, Hera,” I whisper. I grip Icarus’s shoulder and give him a shake. “Get up. Asterion is on his way. We need to be ready to move when he gets here.”

“Ariadne?” His voice is still thick with dreaming. “I was having the most awful nightmare. We…” He blinks, shakes his head, and looks around. It hurts to see the innocence of sleep fall away from his expression and be replaced by the hardened exterior my brother has cultivated. “Not a nightmare, then.”

“It’s a nightmare. It’s just not confined to the sleeping world.” I vow right then and there that it doesn’t matter what it takes, I will see Icarus happy. His dreams were never the same as mine. He doesn’t look at the horizon and imagine all the possibilities it holds. He’s only ever wanted acceptance. Acceptance from our people, acceptance from our father.

Icarus smiles, and though it seems to warm his eyes, I know it for a lie. I hate that he feels like he has to be dishonest with me, but now isn’t the time to call him on it.

I put my backpack on and head for the front of the house to be ready for when Asterion calls. It seems like a small eternity before my phone buzzes in my hand. I almost drop it in my haste to answer. “You’re here?”

“Yeah.” He sounds more tired than I’ve ever heard him. “There’s a car parked across the street with two people in it. I clocked them when I drove by the first time. I’m not really in the mood to murder more people tonight, so we’re going to time this carefully. I’m driving around the block. You and your brother need to run out and jump in the back when I pull up, and then we’re going to take off.”

Later, we’ll talk about his statement about murdering more people tonight. What the fuck were he and Hermes doing? There’s no time now, though. “Okay. There’s not a good place to hide in the front, so we’ll have to come out the door.”

“Get to the front door. Now.”

“We’re there.” I grab my brother’s hand, keeping the phone to my ear. We’ll be sitting ducks the moment we exit and start the sprint to the front gate and street side. If the watchers are under orders to kill us, they have plenty of time to do it.

Asterion is silent for several seconds. “I’m at the corner and about to turn. Run, sweetheart.”

I hang up and shove my phone in my pocket. “Now.” As much as part of me doesn’t want to release my brother’s hand, I have to in order for us to move efficiently. He opens the door, and we sprint out down the cobblestone pathway of dead plants. The door doesn’t have a lock on this side, so I thrust it open without slowing down. I catch sight of the car across the street that Asterion must’ve been talking about. The people inside throw open the doors, but it’s too late. Asterion slams to a stop at the curb, and Icarus shoves me into the back seat and dives in behind. We barely get the door shut before Asterion is veering back into traffic and away from the house.

My brother lets out a breathless laugh. “Never a dull fucking moment.”

Asterion glances at me in the rearview mirror. “Are you okay?”

It’s such a strange question given everything going on. I’m not okay. I don’t know if I’ll ever really be okay again. There’s something about being hunted by people who intend to kill you that shifts a person’s perspective. Maybe permanently. I guess time will tell, but it feels too hard to contemplate the future when we’re in such a crisis currently.

Instead of answering his question, I ask a question of my own. “What happened with you?”

He curses under his breath. “Let’s just say that Hermes isn’t someone I want to cross. She set a bomb that will go off in…about thirty minutes from now. We have to get to the marina and get to a boat as quickly as possible.”

I have a dozen follow-up questions, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. The barrier will come down or it won’t. If it doesn’t, there’s a good chance we’ll end up trapped at the marina. But at this point, we’re trapped no matter where we go. The barrier has made sure of that.

So I sit back and try to regain my breath. Traffic thins out as we head north toward the shipyard and marina. It’s the one part of Olympus I haven’t spent any time in whatsoever. It reminds me a little of the lower city. The buildings get smaller and older, but they’re all in decent repair as best I can tell.

No one seems to come up here except for those who deal directly with Poseidon, or I guess those who plan to use the marina for a day trip. We’ve been in Olympus for several months now, and I’ve never heard about anyone doing that, though.

I twist to look out the back window, but I don’t see anything. “Are they following us?”

“No.” Asterion doesn’t sound happy about it. “They never even pulled away from the curb.”

I don’t ask why they wouldn’t follow us. It’s not for any benign reason; it’s because they don’t need to. Which means either someone else is… Or they think they know where we’re going.

It’s everything I can do not to huddle in the back seat as Asterion carves our way through the city to the north. The marina stands out against the rest of the buildings in the area, shiny and polished in a way that feels brand-new, not like it’s been standing here for years. Half a dozen docks stretch out into the bay, holding space for entirely too many sailboats and yachts.

As Asterion pulls into the parking lot, dread weighs me down. “Do you even know how to work a boat? I’m not even talking about just a sailboat.”

“I can sail.”

Icarus scoffs. “Just because you think you can do something doesn’t mean it’s true. I know you’re formidable and all that shit, but that doesn’t mean you can do anything.”

“I’m aware.” Asterion doesn’t sound irritated. “In this case, I know what I’m talking about. Your father gave us a small amount of downtime over the years. I used mine to learn to sail.”

Shock steals my breath. “I had no idea.” I thought I knew everything about him. I certainly watched him closely enough over the years. But there were times when he’d disappear without a word, only to reappear hours later. Back then, I assumed he was meeting up with a lover, so I didn’t pry. It would hurt too much to know for sure. After the revelation that he hadn’t been with anyone since meeting me, I should’ve stopped to wonder what he was actually doing during those mystery absences.

“I find it relaxing. But that’s not why I started learning.” He glances over his shoulder at me. “We lived on an island, sweetheart. It pays to have an exit strategy in place.”