The desert never changed. The same sun-dried sand, hard packed beneath Athena’s feet, and the same herds of saguaros strung out across the horizon, were programmed on repeat. And maybe that’s really how it was. Maybe it was the same five tumbleweeds, rolling through on the wind to fall off the edge and show up again back at the start.
Athena swallowed. Nothing in her throat today besides smooth working muscles. No quills, no itchy edges of feathers cutting into her windpipe to make her cough blood. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.
She wiped sweat from her brow. It was high noon in the desert. She’d timed the trip badly; she should’ve left when she could meet Demeter in the fading light of evening. But there was nothing to be done about it now. Her boots already tread lightly on Demeter’s skin, stretched out for miles, half-sunk into the sand. At any minute, Demeter’s wrinkled, blinking eye could show up between her feet. If she wasn’t careful, she might step on it.
It was the first time Athena had gone back to her aunt since finding her in the desert and learning about Cassandra. The girl was the key to everything, Demeter had said. And she had been. Three months had passed since they’d fought Hera, since Cassandra had laid hands on her and killed her. Since she’d turned Hera to stone. Three months since Hermes and Apollo had torn Poseidon apart in Seneca Lake. Since they’d laid Apollo to rest beneath the dirt.
Athena’s dark hair hung hot on her shoulders. Walking the desert the night before had practically turned her into an icicle, but under the sun she felt like a stick of softening butter. The plan had been to cover up the swirling tattoos on her wrists, to dress decently and avoid any of Demeter’s harlot jibes. But that wasn’t going to happen. She’d dropped her jacket shortly after hitting her aunt’s skin and hadn’t bothered to drag it along behind her.
“Back so soon?”
Athena spun at the sound of Demeter’s oddly disembodied voice, carried on the wind from all directions at once.
“What do you want this time?”
Athena didn’t answer. She scanned the wrinkled skin for the eye, broad and bleary. When she found it, she stood over the top and peered down. It swiveled over her body, blinking lashes longer than a camel’s.
“The goddess of battle returns,” Demeter said. “In torn jeans and barely a shirt.” The eye squinted. “The jewel in your nose is gone.”
“I took it out. You’re welcome.” Under her feet, the skin pulled and plumped: a set of pursed lips.
“If you’ve come to tell me your news, I’ve heard it. You found the girl.”
“The girl who kills gods,” said Athena.
The eye narrowed. “Does she? Does she really?”
“Don’t get excited,” Athena muttered. “I’m not going to drag her out to the middle of nowhere so she can take care of you. She’s a god killer, not a god euthanizer.”
“Careful, Gray Eyes. Don’t insult me. You at least die with some semblance of self. I’m a bare-skin rug. Vultures loose their bowels on my face, and I’m forced to snack on passing lizards.” Demeter took a breath. “Why’d you come all this way? Perhaps to gloat? To recount your victory? Tell me how my seaward brother died.”
Athena crossed her arms. Victory, Demeter called it. When they’d lost Apollo. He died a mortal, and they buried him under a mortal’s name in a Kincade cemetery when he should’ve had a temple. But yes. It felt like a victory.
“I was sent to ask whether you know what became of Aphrodite,” Athena said.
“Sent? Who could send you?”
“Cassandra sent me.”
Demeter sighed, and the skin dropped Athena four inches. She wondered how the lungs were laid out over the acres. It would make for an interesting dissection, if any ballsy scientists ever happened across the corpse.