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“I don’t know how to say this, and I hope it doesn’t come across the wrong way, but I didn’t leave the house to you or anyone else. I’m clearly not dead and I didn’t write the letters.”
If Circe hadn’t brought me here, it meant that the opposite might be true—she didn’t want me here, and that stung more than I expected it to.
“It’s very hard for me to look at you. You look so much like her it’s a little scary.”
“She chose adoption because she understood fully that what we do, what we are, has brought so much loss, so much pain, she wanted to try and keep you from it.
We’re just trying to survive so much of the time that I think we forget to live.
“How is it that some of us have no time left and others have more than anyone could ever truly need? It’s not fair.”
It was she and I and all that remained of the oldest branches of our ancient family tree … almost.
“A bunch of mostly old white men admit that they don’t know everything there is to know or that something they once believed is wrong?”
Tuahhhh
“Don’t ask me. I just found out Hercules killed his entire family, and I been singing his little songs from the movie my whole life.”
Lmaooo
It took me a second to remember that I wasn’t alone in this anymore. I had someone who had the exact same abilities as me and who knew what it was like to live with them every day.
The potential for disaster is never greater than when a god intercedes in mortal affairs.” I didn’t like her answer, and I was so tired of everything being a riddle.
Running this shop used to be one of the greatest joys of my life. It allowed me to stay connected to my past and still serve my community, to provide them something they couldn’t get anywhere else.”
“We respect the practices and traditions of the people in our magical little community. That is where my heart lies.”
“You don’t have to guess at what’s going to happen. We’re all going to die.”
Tf
The problem used to be—could I control it? Would it slip away from me and mess something up? Now, it was the same question but with a different sort of answer. I could control it, clearly, but what would I do with it? What was I capable of?
He’d been in collusion with Mrs. Redmond all this time? Since Selene’s murder? “Mrs. Redmond killed Selene and my mom,”
I didn’t really care. I was going to go with her to find the last piece of the Heart, and I was going to bring my mom back from the dead.
I hated myself for being so open with him. Look where it got me. Images of him in the apothecary helping his mother terrorize me and my parents played in my head. He really didn’t care what he’d done.
“What I want to tell you all is that we have a pretty good idea about where the last piece of the Heart is and we have to go get it to try and bring Bri’s mom back.”
This was a hero’s quest and something would have to be lost.
The Heart doesn’t define who we are or what we’re capable of. Without it, we still have our gifts and we still have each other. That’s enough for me.”
We weren’t sailors or pirates. We were two people with the ability to control plants and an immunity to poison and two immortals, one of whom was my girlfriend.
When they becAME OFFICIAL
I could see Hermes standing in the upper room. Messenger god, protector of travelers. I wondered if he’d done all he could do for us.
“Auntie—” I stopped short. It had just slipped out. Auntie. A title I didn’t know if Circe wanted or needed or deserved.
The Heart was beating like a drum—announcing our presence to whatever creatures prowled the Black Sea.
“You saved me.” “I couldn’t let these mer-hos just take you away,” I said. “I don’t wanna have to tell people you left me for a fish.”
“That woman couldn’t even take care of her own kid. She couldn’t get into a locked garden. Who lied to her and told her she was anything more than a bad mother, a thief, and a murderer?”
Im weak
A full night. It was morning and it was day twenty-eight. The last day to reach the Heart if I had any hope of getting my mom back.
I kicked and screamed, trying to break the person’s grip. I reached up and grabbed at their shirt, tearing it, clawing at their face. A face I knew. Karter.
“She killed my dad!” Karter shouted as another rush of tears traced their way down his face.
As if on command, the deadly foliage shifted in the moonlight, revealing a mound in the very center of the garden. At its peak stood what could only be the thing we had gone there to find—the Mother. The last piece of the Absyrtus Heart.
the Mother—the original piece of the Absyrtus Heart—began to beat.
Marie was gone. Persephone was gone. And I didn’t have my mom back.
We did the thing that had never been done. We had resurrected Medea’s beloved brother, Absyrtus, and he stood before us.
Persephone made her choice, in words whispered to me over offerings and black flames—things that will remain between her and me for eternity. She would not allow it to be anyone else. Not you, not Briseis. Just her.”
Circe was right all along. We would not come out of this unbroken. We would not be whole.
Nothing mattered in that moment because I was finally, after all we’d been through, in my mom’s arms.
Hecate moved around us and stood at the opening to the void. I caught her eye and she sighed. “We will meet again, my dear Briseis. Of that you can be absolutely sure.”
Our Persephone now carried the lyre and played it so beautifully Circe began to weep.
Karter looked away. “You’ll stay,” Hermes said to him. “We’ll see what redemption there is to be had.”
It was the reality I never knew I wanted, but that Mom and Mo had somehow been able to prepare me for, a blending of the past, the present, and the future.
I was the seed set in the soil, nurtured by the love of my family, and allowed to grow, to stretch, to reach for the sun.
We held each other under the vines and blooming roses for a long time. She murmured things against my ear that affirmed what I already knew—I was in love for the very first time.
We had this one precious life and what we did with it was entirely up to us. I wanted to use it to love and be loved in return.
