“The girl wants revenge,” Demeter said.
“Wouldn’t you?” Athena asked. Cassandra swallowed rage and tears like candy. Her guts would soon burst with it. “The pain burns her like fire. Aphrodite’s blood will put it out.”
“Will it? I think you know better.”
Maybe she did. But it was what Cassandra wanted, and Athena owed her that.
“What about your fight?” Demeter asked. “Your battle?”
“What of it? We found the weapon. We won the day. But we’re no closer to answers. We’re still dying.”
“What did you think would happen, Gray Eyes? That you’d destroy Hera and the feathers would dissolve in your blood? That Hermes would plump like a fattened cow? That I would spring up out of this dirt, soft and supple and woman-shaped?” Demeter’s eye closed, wearily or sadly or both. “Everyone wishes for answers, Athena. But sometimes the answer is that things just end.”
“Is that the answer here?”
“I don’t know. But I know you don’t think so. If you did, you would wander off and let yourself be torn apart by wolves. You’d dye more harlot colors into your hair.”
Athena snorted. She could be killed. They’d proven the impossible possible. But it wasn’t as easy as Demeter made it sound. Her bones would break those poor wolves’ teeth. A death like that would take months.
And she wasn’t ready. Who would have thought, after so much time, that she wouldn’t be ready.
“The point is,” said Demeter, “that you stay. Why?”
Odysseus flashed behind Athena’s eyes. His voice whispered in her ears. And Hermes, too. Her beautiful brother. Thinner and thinner.
“There are things, I guess, that I still need to take care of.”
Demeter drew in a rippling breath. “You are tired. Sit, child. Rest.”
Athena cleared her throat. “No, thank you.”
“Why not?”
“Hermes says…” She hesitated and rolled her eyes. “Hermes said that when he sat on you he could feel your pulse through his butt.”
Demeter laughed, hard enough to knock Athena off-balance. Her feet skidded apart, and she put her arms out to steady herself. Startled birds flew from wherever they’d been hiding moments before, squawking their worry at the shifting dirt.
“I wish you’d brought him,” Demeter said, quieting. “I miss his impudence.”
Athena smiled. Having finally reached her aunt she was no longer all that tired. Wind cooled the sweat on her shoulders and neck. The quest neared its end. Soon she could go home.
“Aphrodite,” she said. “What do you know?”
“Nothing.” Demeter recoiled innocently, stretching herself so thin that Athena could feel desert pebbles beneath her toes. “Without Hera to direct her path, Aphrodite will hide. So fast and so well that you’ll never find her.”
“We will find her.”
“Why do you ask if you aren’t going to listen?” Demeter snapped. “Why are you talking about a mortal girl’s revenge? Why are you fighting her fight, instead of yours?”
Athena looked away, across the sand. At first it was grief. The loss of a loved brother. And then it was guilt, too many days spent staring at Cassandra, at the shell of a girl Apollo left behind. She’d made a promise to look after them all. Cassandra, Andie, and Henry. Apollo had made her promise.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said softly. “I never … understood time before. It didn’t mean anything. I could never make a mistake. I don’t know how mortals do this. How they only live once.”
“You doubt your instincts.”
“Why shouldn’t I? Things just end. Isn’t that what you said?”