“He killed my mother,” she finally said. “And he’s the reason their fathers are dead.” She nodded to the boys, who either were ignoring us or couldn’t hear her soft voice over their own laughter. “That’s why we all banded together.”
“How did he do all that?” I said, and she gave me an odd look.
“The war? Weren’t the men of your village recruited? Weren’t you?”
I frowned. “Why do you assume I lived in a village?”
“Well, you weren’t raised by wolves, were you?”
In a manner of speaking. “So this man—this earl, he sent all of your fathers off to war?”
“And killed my mother,” she added. “That’s important.”
“So what does the pendant have to do with it?”
She stared down at the necklace, brushing her thumb almost wistfully against the blue jewel. “I already told you. It’s—”
“Worth more than I could possibly imagine,” I finished. “I still don’t believe you.”
“Too bad.” She glanced into the purple sky. The stars were just beginning to appear. “Can you keep an eye on the boys? I have somewhere I need to be.”
“Yeah? Where’s that?”
“I know a guy who will buy the loot we can’t use.”
“Like your pendant?”
Her fingers tightened around it. No way was she letting that go anytime soon. “Yeah, like the pendant.”
“Let me come with you. You shouldn’t go on your own.”
Her eyes flashed. “Why? Because I’m a girl, and I need your protection?”
I snorted. “The day you need my protection is the day the sun rises in the west. I’m good with trade, that’s all. I could make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.”
She mumbled a curse under her breath. “If I let you come, will you stop asking stupid questions?”
“Only if you promise to be honest with me from here on out.”
“When have I not been honest with you?” she said. I nodded to the pendant.
“Right there.”
Tuck stood. “I’ll think about it. Are you coming or what?”
Leaping effortlessly to my feet, I gave her a grin. “You won’t regret this.”
“I already do. Mac, you’re in charge,” she called, trudging into the woods. I gave the three boys a wink and followed.
For most of the journey, silence hung between us. Tuck looked about as willing to talk as Hades did most of the time, and I tried to come up with a way to ease her into it. There was a reason I’d wound up here with her, and if she wasn’t willing to talk to me, then I might as well accept the imminent death of my entire family.
Right. Not gonna happen.
I cleared my throat as we worked our way over a fallen tree. “It’s great of you to take care of the boys like you do.”
She shrugged. “We take care of each other.”
“What’s your plan?” I said. “I mean, are you going to be robbing the wealthy when you’re eighty?”
Tuck let out a hoarse, almost violent laugh. “Please. At this rate I’ll be lucky to see twenty. In three years,” she added before I could ask.
“How long have you been out here on your own?” I said.
“Six months. We make do.”
Six months—so the spring and summer. Persephone’s seasons. “What about the cold months?”
She slipped in the narrow space between two trees and said nothing. I walked around them to rejoin her.
“Have you thought that far ahead yet?”
“I’ve let you join us, haven’t I?” she snapped. “How do you survive the winter?”
I shrugged. I’d never actually spent one this far north. “Guess we’ll see.”
Without warning, she grabbed my elbow and spun me around to face her. “If you turn us in or abandon us or do anything to hurt them, I will hunt you down, carve out your eyeballs, feed them to the dogs and flay you. Got it?”
“Is that all?” I said lightly, and she glared at me. “Tuck, I’m on your side. Believe me. I meant what I said this morning, about family and all.”
“Yeah? What’s someone with your skills doing anyway, running away from yours? Aren’t they starving without you?”
“Hardly.” The idea of Zeus wanting for anything was laughable. “They know how to take care of themselves.”
“I bet,” she muttered. “Still, you know why I ran. Why did you?”
I didn’t know her reason why, actually, but it didn’t seem like the time to correct her. Not when she was finally talking. “How do you know I’m running from anything?” I said, and she rolled her eyes.
“You’re not nearly as mysterious as you think you are.”
I set my hand over my heart. “You wound me.”
“Not as badly as I will if I find out you’re a spy. No one walks around in the middle of these woods without so much as a satchel or a skin of water.”
“I’ve already promised to show you how I do it,” I said. “This would all be a whole lot easier if you at least tried to trust me.”
“The last time I trusted someone I didn’t know well, my mother wound up dead.”
I was quiet for a long moment. “How did it happen?”
Tuck shook her head, her gaze distant. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Come on, it’s just up ahead.”
She changed her angle, as if she was circling around something, and I followed. Right—she didn’t want anyone to know which direction she was coming from. She was smart, smarter than the rest of the council would give her credit for, but I still had no idea what answers she was supposed to give me. And it wasn’t as if I could come right out and ask. She’d think I was crazy.
So for now, all I could do was watch her. Not that that was the worst job in the world—there was something inherently pure about her, despite her sharp edges. She cared for those boys more than Zeus had ever cared for me, and the thought of staying here with them in the woods sounded a hell of a lot better than returning to Olympus.
I still had to find the answers—no matter how my family treated me, I couldn’t walk away from them. But in the meantime, I could enjoy this life, too. I could enjoy being part of something, being appreciated, being needed. Being more than the one who constantly made mistakes everyone else had to clean up.