Page 105 of Blood of Olympus

“Of course your mother was involved,” I muttered to Caelus.

“No woman wishing to remain here may set foot onto the Isle without first covering their features,” Io continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “None may call it home unless they practice true altruism. By wearing these robes and dedicating ourselves to the service of our gods, we reject the notion of being distracted by thoughts of our own vanity.”

“More like you’ve been coerced into thinking that,” Aros interjected.

“No, it’s true!” Io implored.

“It’s true! We cannot possibly be jealous of this one’s long hair, or that one’s golden skin, or another one’s perfect teeth⁠—”

“They get the point, Ekho.”

“They get the point, Ekho,” she mumbled. “The point that I was trying to make is that these robes shield us from each other’s envy so that we can better focus on our work and our worship.”

“You mean these robes shield you from my mother’s envy,” Caelus said gently.

“What? No,” Io said. “The goddess Hera⁠—”

“Why is it that you repeat things, Ekho?” he asked.

“Repeat things, Ekho,” she said with scathing bitterness. “Because I was foolish. I followed the order of our late King, and the Queen punished me for it.” She took a deep breath, her resolve steadying as no one dared interrupt. “Zeus ordered me to distract his wife while he was… otherwise occupied… with one of my sisters. And before you ask, it was a different sister each time — thank the Furies he never deigned to visit me. Although it did hurt at first, until they finished and I realised that he was actually just an egomaniacal dickwad with a⁠—”

“Ekho,” Io whispered sharply in warning.

“Ekho,” she repeated, jerking backwards. “Tartarus. Sorry. I didn’t mean⁠—”

“It’s nothing we haven’t said before,” Caelus answered with a grin. “My father… was not the most beloved man. Least of all, perhaps, by me.”

“Me,” Ekho said quietly. “Perhaps I may stake the claim of hating your mother most, then.”

Caelus and I exchanged a brief, amused glance unsure who here might have actually earned that mantle. Likely, him again — she did stab him in the heart, murdering him, after all.

“You’d be surprised,” I murmured ruefully.

“You’d be surprised,” she whispered back before raising her voice to continue her tale. “In any case, Hera came looking for her errant husband one afternoon. And as he had ordered me to distract her with my wit and charm⁠—”

Io coughed.

“—so that he and my sisters could flee without being caught, I was the one she punished for the transgression. I was successful in distracting her for an hour, thanks only to her own vanity.” She paused for a breath — every word had come rushing out in a tumble as though it were a relief to bare this part of her soul to us, free of repetition. “I asked her how her hair was so shiny and golden, which Aetherian designers she favoured because she always looked so effortlessly beautiful, and she was only too happy to prattle on about herself for the hour.”

I stifled a snort — though Demeter was not so successful.

“Afterwards, though, she realised what happened… what I’d done, and what I’d allowed to transpire. And since I had distracted her with pretty words, she cursed me to repeat the last words spoken to me.

“It was absolute misery — at least at first. I lost someone I cared about a great deal, believing I could only repeat the words he told me. And for a time, that was true. But then another found me, withering into nothingness in a long-forgotten wood, by the skeleton of a friend and an accursed pool. They saved me.

“I know not who they were, only that they spoke with such kindness, held me — not in contempt but with tenderness, did not question or ridicule my peculiar habit… and they smelled of pine needles and some kind of beast. A deer, perhaps? Cow, maybe… donkey, perchance?”

“Donkey?” someone called with outrage. “Now I know you didn’t just call me an ass.”

Clipped footsteps clacked across the tiles as Pan wormed his way to the front.

“Ass,” Ekho repeated, quickly followed by a huff of amusement that stuttered out just as fast when the satyr finally stood before her, a look of wonderment on his face. “You,” she breathed. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

Pan, dumbstruck, could only nod.

Ekho’s head flicked down as she, presumably, beheld every inch of his fur covered legs and hoofed toes. “Are you not half ass, then?”

Velira snickered, the sound rattling off the stone as smoke curled out from between her swordlength teeth. Io took a dainty step sideways to avoid the worst of the smoke. The tremor in her hands, however, suggested that smoke was the least of her concerns.