Page 23

CIRCE

“ A dri …”

Ero’s somber cry wakes me.

For a single instant, I linger in peace from the languid haze still gripping my body from our lovemaking. I rest my hand on his until he stills.

My words and actions leading up to our union clap back, front and center.

Slinking off the bed, I dress, easing the door open and glancing back at the sliver of Ero I can see from the front door of the villa. No movement. A soft snore assures me he’s still out.

Cool, fresh breeze assuages some of my guilt as I walk down the hill from our apartment, no destination in mind. Moonlight guides me down a main street, across a plaza.

Despite the rustic, classic feel of the town, I barely notice my surroundings. This should be another dream come true. A fantasy getaway.

Like all the others?

We’ve seen the whole world. And I hardly noticed a single sight.

All because I was so goddamn fixated on the end game. On my revenge. On keeping Ero at arm’s length and out of trouble. Ignoring the signs that I was slowly falling for him.

The rest of our journey replays, highlighting only my heinous choices. My kills, justified in the name of the greater good.

I’m such a fucking idiot.

I wait for Artemis’s voice to chime in, to chastise me. She’s conspicuously silent.

Because she’s dead. She’s long gone and it was my fault.

No. It was Dom Vipera’s fault. He ratted us out. He hired us and then…

Then what?

How much of my story is a lie? Or a twisting of the facts? I can no more trust my memories than Ero can his.

I’ve allowed Ananke to erase me, bit by bit. All of it my choice.

I’m near the entrance to a garden, a small park, when I sense the presence of someone following me. Normally, I would double back, get the drop on them. Tonight, I don’t care.

Striding right out into a blue-bathed clearing in the trees, I face the entry, waiting. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I’m losing my edge.

“You used to be more careful,” Artemis says softly, and I sigh to have her heckling back in my head.

Only it isn’t.

Wheeling on one heel, my gun appears in my hand. My eyes scan the darkness.

“Who are you?” I demand, drawing back the hammer meaningfully.

“Someone who misses you, Melia.” The name pierces straight through my heart.

Aimelia . A name no one has called me since…

“A-Artemis?”

A female silhouette takes shape beneath the boughs and leaves of the interlacing cork oaks.

Her stance is so familiar, the cant of her head as she looks down her nose at me.

“Once upon a time. Once upon a different time, you called me adelfí .

When my name was Xyla Bakas. Before we swore ourselves to the Lyra code.

Faces attached to those names smile at me, aunts, uncles. Cousins. A man and woman swing me between their hands, two people I can’t believe I ever forgot. My mama. Papa.

Stinging squints my eyes.

No. I won’t cry.

But the woman steps into the light and all my control implodes. My legs give out, the stone cobbles catching me as I slump to the ground, my gun sliding from limp fingers.

“How?”

Artemis looks weathered. She was older than me by a few years.

I’ve lost track of my birthdays, but she can’t be more than thirty. Yet the lines on her face age her ten years at least.

“You’re dead,” I whisper, suddenly terrified that I’ve lost the last shred of my sanity. “I watched you fall.”

“And I watched you take a bullet to the head.” She shrugs. “It appears someone lied to us. Manipulated us.”

“Ananke.”

“She saved me, Circe. Like she saved you.”

“Where have you been?” And why would Ananke do this? Keep my only family member alive and not tell me…

Through the shock, the bitter thought still almost makes me laugh. Of course she would. To use her to keep me focused on my grief.

“I’ve been all over the world. Doing everything she told me to do. Until about a year ago. I met someone I knew from before. A close friend Ananke convinced me was dead. I escaped and he sheltered me.”

“Who?” I may be missing portions of our past, but somehow I doubt she knew that many people I didn’t.

“Haru.”

“So you were …”

“Yes. That’s how I found out you were alive. Him too.”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“We had to be careful. And I couldn’t risk Ananke finding out where I was. But I also couldn’t stay away once I knew you were out there, working for her. Controlled by her.”

Numb. I’m fucking numb. I can’t make my stress-addled mind put the fragments back into place. All I can do is stare at her, my cousin by blood, my sister in soul.

“You must resist her, Circe. Come with me tonight.”

“I c-can’t.”

“Yes you can. It’s only your belief and fear that chains you to Ananke.”

“No … I want to, but?—”

“Ero. Oh, sister. Do not tell me you fell in love.” Her face softens, her eyes still dark and petrifying. “Circe, you cannot trust that man. He’s too far gone.”

“If he is, then so am I,” I breathe, curling in on myself.

“I know she did so much more to the two of you than she did to me. But you are my family. My blood. I won’t leave you behind.”

“You have to.” My voice steadies. “If she questions me, I won’t be able to lie. It will put you in mortal danger.”

Just like that, I’m back on my feet, my terror solidifying into purpose. Pointing a finger over her shoulder, I shake my head frantically, “Get out of here, now. Leave me.”

“Circe—”

“No. I lost you once already. Knowing you’re alive is enough, I just?—”

“Why must you always play the martyr? The heroine?” Artemis scoffs, taking another step toward me. “Can’t you see that if you stay with him, he’ll kill you? If he ever figures out who he was, who you were?—”

My fingers spread, stretched out to stop her. “Please. Stop. If you come any closer…”

I’m trembling. Teetering on the brink. She could break me with a single touch.

Arty sighs, nodding sadly.

“Knowing you are alive will have to be enough for me too. Someday. Someday soon, I will come back for you again.”

“You mustn’t,” I snap, throwing every ounce of anger and bile into my words.

“Time will tell.”

“It already has . These past two years have changed me forever. It feels like a lifetime.”

Artemis sucks in a startled breath, the whites of her eyes gleaming wide. “Circe…it has been so much longer. It’s been five years since Berlin.”

A popping snap rings in my ears. I swallow hard, heaving against the vertigo threatening to take me to the ground again. “F-five…years?”

“Ananke did the same thing to me. Kept me isolated for so long. Warped my sense of time. Then she told me altered dates. That, along with the memories she stripped away?—”

“Stripped away?” Fingertips find the scar under my hair along my skull. I thought it was the head wound. “How long has Ero?—?”

“I’m not sure. But the Diamantes were rumored to have disappeared six or seven years ago now.”

Which means Russia must have happened only a few months after Berlin.

“Circe. I shouldn’t have told you?—”

“It doesn’t matter. Tell me how to resist. How to counteract her control!”

“I can’t, Circe. The only thing that worked for me was time. Haru had to isolate me again, restrain me. It was like going through drug withdrawals. Eventually it came back. Mostly.”

I want to sob. Scream. Run.

“Go. Just go.”

“If anyone can find a way to keep her from resetting you, it’s you . Don’t give up.”

“It’s too late. I already betrayed him, I won’t betray you too.”

Artemis backs away, her expression stunned, horrified.

Scared.

Of me.

Of what I’ve become.

It’s too late to save me. Too late to save Ero. Too late to heal my heart or my head.