But they darted forward anyway. Achilles moved first, going after Pain. It twitched and jumped away from his grip. Cassandra took a quick step forward, and Famine leaped for her face. Athena pulled her back by the coat collar just in time. The white wolf’s teeth snapped inches from her nose.

“Stand down, damn you,” she hissed. “Ares, get out of here!”

“What? What are you doing?” Cassandra asked, her voice full of rage. She struggled in Athena’s grip, and grabbed Athena’s shoulder. Pain flared bright and wet inside her jacket as fresh feathers exploded through her skin and muscle. Athena grimaced and let Cassandra go. Ares and the wolves had run anyway. Cassandra and Achilles gave chase a few feet in the dark, but soon slowed.

“Why did you stop me?” Cassandra shouted. “I could’ve done it this time. I felt it. I should have done it, for those boys. For those people in the jungle.”

“Maybe,” Athena said. “Or maybe you’d have gotten yourself killed. And you,” she said to Achilles. “I never gave the order.”

Achilles shrugged. “In the heat of battle, my orders come from right here.” He struck his chest and his guts. “Always have.”

“Damn it,” Cassandra said.

“The odds weren’t good, Cassandra.”

“How much better do you think the odds are going to get?” she asked, angrier and angrier. “When I face him next time he’ll be side by side with Hera.”

“It wasn’t the right time,” Athena muttered. The shoulder of her jacket soaked through with hot blood, mocking her like Cassandra’s words. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t let the girl try. If they’d succeeded, their chances in Olympus would’ve been measurably better.

It was something in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in a long time. Cassandra stalked past her and kicked snow on the way back to the car. And it was something in hers that I didn’t want to see.

21

PLANS

“You should stay with me,” Athena said. “With us. It’ll look less suspicious if you go home in the morning. And then you can check in with Henry. See what load of BS he told them.”

Light from Cassandra’s den and kitchen blared yellow into the snow. At two in the morning on a weeknight. One or both of her parents were sitting up waiting. Whatever BS Henry had told them, they hadn’t bought it.

“It won’t make a difference,” said Cassandra. “And I don’t want to stay with you.”

“What will you tell them?”

“How’s your shoulder?” Cassandra didn’t spare Athena a glance as she got out, didn’t look back as she walked up the driveway. She was overjoyed thinking that Athena would be plucking feathers for hours.

When she walked into the house, she shed her coat and boots and went into the den, where both her parents waited as expected.

“Where were you?” her mother asked, sitting on the couch. A glass of brandy trembled in her fingers.

In Pennsylvania, on the trail of a god. On a school night. Cassandra frowned. She couldn’t very well tell them that.

“I was with Athena.”

“With Athena where?” her dad asked.

“Just out. Snowstorms make her sort of claustrophobic. We didn’t mean to come back so late.” Their shoulders relaxed. And to think, she’d always figured she’d be terrible at lying from lack of practice.

“Snowstorm claustrophobia or not,” her dad said, “you can’t just disappear until two AM on a school night. And when Henry got bitten—you ran off with her then, too … to the … spa, or whatever.”

Cassandra clenched her back teeth down on a laugh. Her dad pronounced “spa” as if it were exotic as an alien spaceship.

“We like Athena. And we know it’s hard for her, with her brother sick. But you’re in high school. There are limits.”

“I know.”

Her mom put the brandy glass down. “You’re not acting like you know.”

“I know. But I do.” Except limits didn’t matter. She had to break the rules, to fight a war that raged on under their noses. She had to lie, because they didn’t know who she was. And they might never. They could lose both of their children; she and Henry could be buried shallow in a ditch, and they would never know why. They’d wonder what they’d done wrong.

“I’m really sorry,” Cassandra said. “That I cost you sleep. That I give you headaches.” That they were so very, very in the dark. She bent and hugged them. “I’m sorry that you worry. You don’t have to.”