Did I care about my own life? No. I did not. I have never been afraid to die. I do not go looking for it, but I have always chosen to welcome death when it chooses to visit me. I was prepared to welcome it on this day, but…

“Victor,” Artemis whispered, looking up at me at an angle, “please don’t let them hurt me.” I could still faintly smell the wine on her breath from our dinner earlier that night. I pictured her in that black dress; I could still smell the product she had used to curl her long, dark hair; I thought of the two of us running out of the restaurant, laughing and smiling and living in the moment.

With two of my fingers, I pulled her head closer, and I dipped mine, pressing my lips to the spot between her eyes. And I held them there for the longest time; my eyes, closed tightly, began to sting and water; that strange lump had formed in my throat again, but this time I could not swallow it down and it was choking me.

And as I slid the blade across Artemis’s throat, I whispered against her ear with tears in my voice, “I am unable to have children, Artemis Stone.”

I gasp so sharply that I lose my breath; it feels like someone punched me in the stomach.

He killed her…he loved her, yet he killed her anyway.

I stumble backward, away from the vanity, trying to understand, trying to find words and thoughts and excuses for Victor. I can still vaguely see my reflection in the vanity mirror; I’m dressed in a black dress and black high-heels; my hair has been curled so that it falls just below my ears; my makeup has been painted to perfection by Hestia’s careful hand. But mostly what I see is the sad and bloody picture that Victor’s words left remnants of in my mind.

He killed the woman he loved…

“Now do you see?” I hear Hestia say somewhere behind me. “Now do you understand?”

I look down at myself again: the dress, the curled hair, the telling similarities to Artemis when she spent her last meal in that restaurant with Victor so long ago, and all hope I had left disappears.

Without turning to look at her I answer, “Yeah…I understand.” Then I do turn, and I look her right in the eyes. “I understand perfectly.”

Hestia smiles slimly, confidently, and I accept that Death is at my door.

Blood seeped through all of my fingers, and I could hear Artemis choking, gasping for air, and I could not let her go. I held her there in the embrace of my one free arm, listening to her last breaths, feeling the life drain out of her. Osiris and Brant stood like statues in the room, watching the scene with wide eyes and parted lips, shocked by my actions, I supposed. I thought it odd how they both wanted me to kill her, and I did, exactly in the manner in which was required of me, yet they looked as though they had never seen someone dying before.

Sirens wailed and drew closer; ultimately drawing Brant and Osiris from their shock-induced states. Police? Who called the police?

“We have to go, Victor,” Brant insisted.

He walked toward me quickly, drew a knife from his pocket and cut me free from my bonds—I was so dazed myself that I never noticed when Artemis fell from my lap and hit the floor. And I could not recall later—because I thought about that night many nights after—if I ever looked back at her as Brant dragged me from the room and out of the house, still naked.

I sped away in my car, following Brant down the back roads, and almost crashed into a tree because all I could look at, the only thing that existed in my world at that moment, was Artemis’s blood on my hands, both literally and symbolically. I was white-knuckling the steering wheel; her blood covered the tops of my fingers, and every crevice in my mind. It was all that I could see, her blood.

“And Osiris?” Apollo asks.

“I never heard from him again,” I answer, still somewhat lost in my thoughts. “It is not customary to keep contact with a client after a job has been fulfilled.”

Apollo is standing by my cell now; I am sitting on the floor.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says.

I erase the images completely from my mind, and I look up at him through the bars.

“How did you feel about Osiris,” he clarifies, “after he made you kill the woman you loved?”

“He did not make me do anything,” I answer without flinching.

“So then you wanted to kill my sister?” He cocks his head to one side. “Is that what you’re saying, Victor? Because if that’s true”—he shakes his head, clenches his fists—“if that’s true then we have a very different problem, you and I.” His solid gaze seethes with anger.

“There is nothing more to tell,” I say, and look down at the stones around my bare feet.

An eerie silence chokes the room all around us.

Then Apollo says, “Oh, but there is, Faust,” and a proud grin deepens in his face. “There is so much more to tell. Only…”—he glances behind him toward the exit, then looks back at me—“…you won’t be the one telling it.”

I hear voices funneling down the hallway just beyond the door; shadows move against the floor beneath it. I am afraid; absolute fear grips my chest. What has become of Izabel? All that I can think of is Hestia’s threat years ago, and I try to mentally prepare myself to see Izabel, wheeled into the room because she can no longer walk; bloodied by the blade of Hestia’s knife; skinned alive and put on display. For me. For long-overdue revenge.

Dull light from the hallway spills in as the door opens. I cannot breathe; my heart is beating so fast I feel it in my head, hear it pounding against my eardrums. Slowly I rise into a stand, and I do not tear my eyes away from the figures moving through the darkest shadows; my hands are on the bars of my cage again, gripping, squeezing, pulling; all of the moisture has evaporated from my mouth.

And then I see her, Izabel, alive and seemingly unharmed, and I let my breath out in one deep sigh of relief; my legs feel weak beneath me, and for a moment I feel that hope is not lost, after all.

But then I see another face—Artemis Stone.

And what strength I had left in my legs, betrays me.

I’ve never seen a look like that on Victor’s face before. He appears…traumatized; that calm, impassive disposition he always carries, replaced by something more…fragile.

And he’s not even looking at me.

“Artemis…” Victor says in a sort of gasp.

I gasp too, stunned, and I turn my head to see the woman behind me, the same woman who dressed me and fixed my hair and did my makeup. The same woman who told me that she was someone else. And then, as if a dam has been opened, the answers to everything rushes into my head like a raging river. Ah, so that’s what that traumatized look is on Victor’s face. Now I know exactly how I must appear to him.

I feel a hand on the center of my back, and my body is pushed forward. With my wrists tied behind me, I fall, skinning my knees on the floor; my shoulder hits next, and then my face. Oomph! A sharp stab darts through my head and spreads throughout my jaw, neck, and back, and my only consolation is knowing it was from the fall, and not the cattle prod this time. I don’t know how much more of the electric shock my heart can take.

Artemis walks past me as if I’m not even here, and steps closer to Victor and the cage.

I’m lifted from the floor by unseen hands, and am shoved onto the chair I sat on before I was whisked away to this crazy bitch’s beauty salon. “Don’t move,” I hear Apollo say behind me.

Suddenly I feel the pull of Victor’s gaze; he isn’t looking at me, but I feel like he wants to—or that he’s trying not to.