From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(71)

“What in the bloody hell? Since when do you approve of anything having to do with Jon?”

“Since you need help and I can’t help you.”

“I’m not calling him,” she said without even considering it.

He paused for a moment. “Josie, this isn’t about you or him or what happened between you two. It’s bigger than that.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she shot.

“I dunno, Jo. You’re not acting like you do, so I thought it warranted saying aloud.”

“Duly noted.” The words were cold and flat.

Hank sighed. “Just think about it. And call me if you need anything.”

“Same goes,” she said, trying to breathe through her anger.

They said their goodbyes, and Josie ran her hand over her mouth, feeling alone, abandoned, betrayed, even by her father, backed into a corner with the case and her options and the sum of her entire life.

As she looked over the wall of facts and photos, the clock on the wall ticked on and on, louder and louder until she couldn’t stand it anymore. So she stood and turned on music, drowning the sound and replacing it with something she could control. She turned back to her torture to try to find a way out, a way to Rhodes, knowing somewhere in her heart that there was likely none.





Hooves thundered as Eleni and Helena charged each other with lances out, trailing clouds of dust behind them. Their unicorns beneath them snorted as they rushed across the field on a track for each other. Eleni’s teeth were bared, her skin sparkling in the sun, and when lance met shield, the splintering thunk rang through the woods.

Helena flew off the back of her steed, slamming to the ground in a poof of dust.

Artemis sipped wine from under a canopy as the Oceanids roared. Eleni threw her fist in the air, her unicorn stamping his hooves, his head as high and proud as his rider’s.

The joust had been Eleni’s idea, an attempt to cheer the camp and Artemis after the drama of the fight and the mutterings of dissent among them. One of her two goals was achieved—the Oceanids were wholly entertained—while the other had eluded Artemis completely.

Helena stumbled as the Oceanids helped her up but was otherwise unharmed. Another Oceanid ran for the free unicorn, hopping onto its back in a single motion with a whoop. She was handed Helena’s lance and shield, and the nymphs lined up at opposite ends of the track for another round.

Artemis paid little attention. Her mind was still on Aphrodite’s fit from the night before and the words that had been exchanged.

“You can’t get over the fact that you loved and lost.”

She didn’t know how to move on from Orion’s death or how to stop wishing things could be different. He had been stolen from her in a manner unfair and unjust, killed over a misunderstanding. Killed trying to save her. It was a thing that she could never forget and never forgive herself for.

He had been her one chance, and losing that had changed her, rearranged her into something harder, lonelier, angrier. Someone with less patience for things that they couldn’t control.

Like love.



Orion and Artemis lay under the stars on a tall cliff, surrounded by swaying cypress trees, shadows of black on black. A road made of stars trailed up and away from the horizon among clusters of blue and purple clouds of stardust, bright against the dark of night.

“It is so difficult to fathom immortality,” Orion said with his eyes on the constellations.

“I do not generally try to fathom it. Only live it one day at a time, one foot in front of the other.” She looked over at him where he lay next to her.

His hands were tucked behind his head, his face unreadable, illuminated by the stars. “Do you think that perhaps the reason you do not contemplate living forever is because you have not encountered loss?”

She bristled and trained her eyes on the sky. “I have lost much in my life. I have been through hardship.”

“But have you felt a loss so great that you measure time by it? A loss so deep that you count each day since it passed and every day in the future, knowing the pain it will hold?”

Her brows furrowed. “I do not understand.”

His words were soft when he spoke. “Artemis, you have never lost one dear to you. Not your mother, much to Hera’s dismay, nor your brother. You have Eleni. You have me.”

She turned to find him looking down at her with his head propped on his hand.

“Yes, and I always will. I will never let harm fall on any of you,” she answered simply.

“Artemis, you cannot stop fate.” He reached for her cheek and pushed her hair behind her ear, his fingertips trailing fire across her skin.

“Do not speak of this, please. You are immortal as well, in a way.”

“In a way, yes, but I can be killed, and there are ways to kill you too, few though they might be. Death will find us as life did. It is a thing in which we have little choice.”

“Please,” she whispered. “You mustn’t leave me.”

“I will be with you as long as I am able.”

The tenderness and sadness in his words unraveled her as she looked into his eyes. The moonlight shone on his face, carving shadows and angles that her fingers ached to touch. She reached for him, winding her arm around his neck, drawing him close, and when her lips pressed against his, she was forever lost.