Radiant Sin(11)

“You’ll take Zeus’s money.” It comes out like an accusation, but I can’t help myself. I don’t understand her logic. Sometimes I feel like I know Cassandra better than anyone else in this city, and sometimes it’s like arguing with a stranger.

She laughs bitterly. “Fuck yes I will. That bastard has more than he could spend in a lifetime. If he’s going to strong-arm me into doing this, he’s going to pay through the nose.”

“Cassandra…” So many things I can’t say dance on the tip of my tongue. Let me help you. Let me protect you. Let me take care of you. I swallow them back down the same way I have every other time the temptation to press her arises.

I always knew she’d find a way out of the city eventually. I think the only things that have held her here are this high-paying job and her sister. Poseidon’s people aren’t above accepting bribes to get citizens out, but that costs money. She won’t make that call until she has enough saved up to know she can land on her feet and keep her sister afloat. After next week, she’ll have more than enough and have dodged the need to spend any of it in bribes.

So little time left. The thought leaves me ill at ease. I don’t know what I’ll do when she’s gone.

She shakes her head slowly. “It’s done, Apollo. I agreed. You can keep feeling guilty about it, but you’d be better spent updating me on what I need to know so I can prepare for the party.”

She’s right. I know she’s right. I simply have a hard time pivoting in this direction with so little warning. I close my eyes and inhale slowly, stilling my thoughts. When I open them, I’m almost centered. “Minos has brought information of a threat against Olympus.”

“Yes, you mentioned. I fail to see why we’re dancing to his tune instead of just getting all the info out of him. You can’t pretend worse hasn’t been done in the name of the city’s safety.” She narrows her eyes. “Besides, there’s the boundary to consider. What is this enemy going to do? Camp out a few feet from the city limits and yell at us?”

I glance at the closed door. There’s little chance of someone overhearing this, but…I sigh. “The boundary is failing.”

“What?”

“It’s failing. It’s not obvious yet, but there are weak spots. Poseidon brought it to our attention months ago.” Months of fruitless searching for answers. I’ve never been so frustrated in my life. The entire history of Olympus is at my fingertips, and yet there’s a giant blank spot when it comes to anything connected with the barrier. I tried to talk to the last Zeus about it when I first took over this title, but he wasn’t interested in devoting further resources to finding answers—and forbade me from talking about it with anyone lest I cause a panic. Now he’s dead and we’re left to deal with the fallout without years’ worth of lead time.

Cassandra stares at me. “You don’t know how to fix it, do you?”

“No.” Admitting as much feels like admitting my deepest, darkest sin. “I’ve looked, but someone scrubbed the records at some point.” Some past Apollo, no doubt. My title is the only one with the authority to even access the records, let alone make a call to remove them. I don’t understand why, though.

The boundary is the greatest mystery of Olympus. The average citizen just takes it as fact, whether chalking it up to magic or some advanced technology that might as well be magic. They assume that those in power, at least, know the details.

We don’t.

If we did, we’d know how to fix it now that it’s broken.

“Fuck,” Cassandra breathes. “But how likely is a ground war or whatever? Most of the greater world has written us off. Why now?”

“I don’t know.” Another admission of guilt. I scrub my hands over my face. “This is why we can’t toss Minos out, and even if someone was willing to resort to torture, it’s not a surefire way to get accurate information. We’re more vulnerable than we’ve ever been, and he has more information than he’s telling us.”

“I see.” She taps her thigh with one black-painted fingernail. “Well, Zeus is paying me well enough. Guess I can help you save Olympus.” She looks up and meets my gaze. “Let’s do this.”





5


Cassandra

I hold off telling Alexandra about my new “boyfriend” for as long as possible, but in the end I can’t avoid it forever. The last thing I want is for my little sister to see news of us splashed across the gossip sites.

Still, I wait until the very end of our lunch to blurt out, “I have something I need to tell you, and I need you not to get your hopes up.”

Alexandra laughs a little and folds up her cloth napkin. “With an intro like that, I’d almost expect you to tell me that I was right last week and you’ve fallen madly in love with your boss.”

It would be so much easier if I could tell the truth, but if I share what’s really going on, she’ll worry. More, I am very careful to hide how much I go without to ensure Alexandra has everything she needs. She has enough hurdles after what our parents did. The last thing I want to do is add to her burden. She’d start making her own sacrifices to help me, and that I can’t allow.

If she knows I agreed to Zeus’s bargain to help her, she’ll feel bad and tell me I don’t need to do it. No, better to keep up the lie Apollo and I are about to spin to the whole of the city.