Artemis, however, had. She waited until Khione overextended, then stepped inside her reach and slashed. The knife struck Khione’s skin but barely scratched it, as though Artemis had hit a bronze cuirass. Pneumatikoi of Steadfastness.
Rather than fall back, Artemis grabbed the other woman in a pankration hold and twisted, slamming her down into the ground. Icicles burst from Khione’s skin, gouging Artemis’s arm. The knife clattered onto the stone. Khione struggled, a match for Artemis’s Potency, if not her technique. Artemis shifted until she managed to wrap her legs around Khione’s arm and pin it.
With her free hand, she grabbed an arrow from her quiver and slammed it into Khione’s eye.
Not easy to fortify that into bronze.
The Titan spasmed beneath her and a wave of cold sent Artemis tumbling over backward, clutching her arms around her chest. Her insides felt frozen solid. Her mind ceased to function. It took all she had to grasp her Pneuma—she’d used so much already—and send it into Tolerance. Slowly—painfully—warmth seeped back into her organs.
She caught her breath.
The blizzard had faltered, the sun beginning to poke through the clouds. Rays fell upon her face, forcing her to blink in the sudden radiance. Had that all just happened?
For a time, she just lay there, reeling. Then she turned, looking over at Khione’s corpse. Beyond the Titan lay the bodies of so many of the men Khione had brought with her. They did not deserve her remorse. No, these men had come here to raze and plunder and would have murdered, raped, and enslaved had they breached Helion.
Still, caught in the moment, Artemis realized she had ended a score of lives without the barest second thought. Should that concern her?
With a groan, she rolled over and gained her feet. She would need the body to prove to Father she had been the one to accomplish this. Not Apollon, no. Artemis.
Her arrow had made a mockery of Khione’s former beauty. Would it prove more grotesque to remove it and leave the gaping wound, or to leave it be and let Helios see how it had played out? After a moment’s deliberation, she decided to leave it and dragged Khione by her hair all the way to the gates of Helion. Doing so required her to flow a bit more Pneuma in Potency, further draining her reserves. It would take her days to draw back in the breath to replace what she’d expended here.
At the city gates, open-mouthed guards took the corpse from her, offering her escort to the acropolis. The whole of her body ached now, and, much as she wanted to see Father’s reaction, still more she longed for wine, food, and a soft bed. Maybe a hot bath first.
Helios’s seneschal led her into the expansive hall with its soaring ceiling and bright-painted columns. Her father sat upon his throne, golden eyes gleaming. Others stood amid the columns, among them her glowering brother.
“So it’s true,” Father said, rising when Khione’s corpse was cast at the base of the dais upon which his throne rested. He cast but a cursory glance at the fallen Titan before shifting his gaze to Artemis. “And you managed to slay her?”
Artemis stiffened. Still, even now? Even after all she had done, had she not won some measure of respect from this man? “I did.”
“Hmm.” Helios returned to his throne. “Well. I suppose you’ve earned a reward. Perhaps I can make a good marriage for you. Kronos has two sons, maybe one of them.”
She wanted to spit. She wanted to scream. “I do not need a man. Neither as my reward nor to govern me.”
Though she had let go of her Perspicacity, she could have sworn her brother snickered in the wings. Her imagination, maybe.
“The very fact you could make such a claim proves you do,” Helios said with the air of dismissal.
Artemis gaped at him. It was like … he didn’t begin to see the circularity of his claims. The sheer absurdity of it left her speechless.
With naught left to say, Artemis fled the throne room.
Only when she was alone in her chambers did she allow herself to curse. A string of expletives that would have made great Ouranos himself blush.
16
Athene
1570 Silver Age
Hand resting upon the slight bulge of her belly—could anyone even tell yet?—Athene stalked the halls of the Throne of Zeus. It was hard to even breathe after what Father had done to Prometheus. He had summoned all the Olympians to witness the trial, if trial was even the right word for what Athene had just seen. She didn’t know whether to feel more shocked at the idea that one of their own would betray her father, or at what Father had done about it.
Her gut roiled, but surely this was too soon for nausea from the babe. Wasn’t it? When did these things even begin? Before now, Athene had never much troubled herself with such petty concerns.
While she wended between the marmoreal columns and the shadows saturating the back of the palace, Hera abruptly stepped out in front of her. The queen wore the finest peplos Athene had ever seen, so heavy with embroidery a mortal woman’s shoulders would have ached from it, but cut in a style that had gone from fashion two hundred years ago. Perhaps Hera dressed thus to promote ‘traditional’ standards. Perhaps she simply had no clue how people garbed themselves anymore.
The queen’s gaze darted to Athene’s hand upon her abdomen and sneered, apparently having judged the case at once. “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me a whore would wind up thick with child out of wedlock. Especially a bastard whore.”
Much as she would have liked to step around Hera and ignore her—or, in fact, to punch her in the face—one did not ignore queens. Or punch them, sad to say. “Greetings, Mother.”
If it was possible, Hera’s gaze grew even more withering. “Do not call me that. Your mother is as much a whore as you are. I’m sure you’ll
