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“The greed for Atlantis.” Ice is a growing crawl inside me as he continues, “The fall of it.”

“What does Atlantis have to do with Olympus?”

His mostly golden eyes come to me. “Olympus, Atlantis, and the Underworld were conjoined for a long time. Zeus likes to deny it, but I believe the realms were all powered by one source. A source that first fed Atlantis, and from Atlantis the other realms were nursed.” Ares laughs. “It’s just a theory. One I’ve been punished for.”

“Punished?”

“When Atlantis fell, when she sank into the depths of the ocean, Olympus dimmed. In the centuries after, the haze only grows worse. Most hardly notice it anymore, the dulling of what once was. Like I said, tonight it’s particularly bad.”

My eyes fall again to the girl, and I have to knot my hands in my lap to keep from reaching out to touch her. To caress her hurt skin. To touch her in a way that is not evil, so that perhaps her flesh will remember when her soul returns to her body that not all touch promises pain.

Emotion is a burning brick in my throat I force myself to swallow. I croak, “Will she remember?”

Ares doesn’t give me his eyes. “Yes.”

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

“How cruel.”

Ares says nothing, and the Pegasuses massive gold wings carve into the misty sky, arching our direction rather sharply to the right. Through the haze, I see that we’re flying through a valley of impossibly high mountains. The high cut of the stone is dagger sharp and veined in blue that should shimmer, if it weren’t covered in the layer of haze that dulls the shine like dust on a shelf of ancient trinkets.

Without lifting the trinket and wiping away the dust, one can’t truly assess the value of the piece. I feel the same about the realm which currently holds so many prisoner.

“What were you doing in the hall?” When Ares doesn’t answer, I ask again, “Were you waiting for me?”

“I was waiting for her to die,” he says. Coolly, calmly, like he does it all the time. “You were…unexpected.”

I can’t help but study him. Can’t help but assess the way he holds the girl so easily when, in the short time I’ve been in Olympus, I’ve come to realize that Ares does not find physical touch easy. He’s always withdrawn from everyone and everything. An outlier. An outsider.

“You do this a lot, don’t you?” He doesn’t have to answer for me to know the truth. “Why does Zeus do this?”

“Sacrifice has always been the way of the Gods, as it was the way of the Titans before him.”

“That was not sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice happens in many ways.”

“That was murder, plain and simple.”

“Blood was spilled. The power of her soul was pulled for the realm to feast, and that power feeds the power Zeus wields. Without it, he would wither to dust.” Ares’ eyes pin mine. “Zeus will never wither.”

A shiver has me hugging my arms around my middle. Ares notices, his lips thinning. “We’ll be there soon.”

“Where is there, exactly?”

“Hephaestus’ home.”

“Isn’t he the…” I frown, mentally flipping through the catalogue of Gods I’d memorized in my readings.

“The God of Artisans,” Ares supplies dryly.

I snap my finger in anahamoment. “I knew that.”

“Of course, you did.”

My belly flutters as the Pegasuses dip. “Why are we taking her to the God of Artisans?”