Page 87 of Edge of Stars

I almost abandon my post when my wife ignores her sister’s heed. “Kell! Are you freaking—”

“Pissed off?” she cuts in. “Fed all the way up with this broom rider messing with you? With every one of us?” She turns back around to spit at Hecate, “I get it, all right? Going for the high road all the damn time, especially after getting jerked around and disappointed, time and time again…you must be wiped out. And angry. And probably dying to let your bitch flag fly.”

Hecate huffs, bristling but confused. “I didn’t ask for things to go this way.”

“Uh-uh.” Kell wags a finger. “You did ask for this. You have to look at this. The wreckage you’ve chosen, Hecate. Is this really how you want it to go down? Is this really the way you want to be remembered?”

“Kell.” Kara steps over again, scooping a hand toward the back of her sister’s elbow. “Please—”

Hecate takes a big stride as the wind catches her hair and dress. “Goes down. Your phrasing fascinates me, Kell Valari. My intention has always been, and remains forever, to raise Olympus up. Your sister is exclusively qualified to be the center star of that new order. Venerated forever in the history of the realms. Why do you want to hold her back?”

Kell doesn’t flinch. “And why do you want to use her up?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

KARA

For the first time since I was a little girl, I can’t turn myself off. My sentience is on overdrive, gunned its highest gear by the agitated passenger in my belly, and I feel them both. Hecate and Kell.

All of them.

The anger. The outrage. The vexation. The indignation.

Neither one of them ready to turn anything down. Their dual commitment to choosing the opposite is what makes me rush forward again, ignoring Maximus’s protective growl.

Instead, I run into my sister’s stiff back as she confronts the goddess fully face to face. No, Kell. You foolish, amazing vanguard. No!

“She’s already made herself very clear about your offer,” she states without hesitation. “Several times. And yet you keep pulling these new stunts—”

“Conditions.”

The goddess is as sure with that as a fresh-sharpened knife through chiffon cake.

“Excuse me?”

“Not stunts. I choose to call them conditions, darling.”

The final word feels like anything but an endearment, especially as the magic queen draws up her posture on a new blast of wind. The layers of her skirt mix with flying stones and metallic moonlight. The centers of her eyes flash like diamonds—matched by the unblinking stares of the human versions, who suddenly materialize behind her.

“Circe?” I call out. “Morgana? Kiama? Aradia?”

All seven of them are here, but none of them blink for me, let alone answer.

“Hecate?” I charge. “What’s going on? What are you doing?” I accept the idiocy of the demand. The clarity of its answer.

They’re here because she commanded them to be. Because they’re marrow-deep in their mistress’s thrall now. Alive but not free. As imprisoned—and likely in as much agony—as Mother and Nancy.

The exact same way she’ll capture and torture Nikoleta.

The shackles in which she’ll trap your daughter if you don’t agree to do this with her.

She’ll never accept a compromise, Kara. So you have to.

“Conditions.” I force myself to say it, though bile claws the back of my throat. The bitter tang is still there as I step to one side and let the goddess see my full, trembling stance. “You call them conditions,” I grate. “And many times, conditions change.”

A higher set of my jaw. A harder pound inside my brain.

A huger clench throughout my spirit.