Terminal cancer. Oh, child. Athena was often accused of being unfeeling and aloof, but she wasn't heartless, even if she didn't wear hers on her sleeve. Her sympathies were with the girl, who spoke her own death sentence in such an even voice, even if the downcast gaze and fidgety hands hinted at her struggle.
This was what Marcie had meant, with her remark about the Styx. It wasn't quite what Athena had expected. Always dangerous, the assumptions one made without even realising it. Hecate had warned of a danger to Marcie, and Aphrodite had fiercely insisted that nobody would touch her, and Athena had supposed the threat would come in the form of an attack.
But then, she had wondered at the incongruity between Aphrodite's protectiveness and Marcie's apparent fatalism. She'd even raised it with Aphrodite: What could make the girl so certain of her own doom, when she had the protection of Love herself? Surely only that the god who had levelled their sights on her was powerful enough to risk Aphrodite's ire, or that the attack had already been launched.
And it occurred to her now that Apollo did not only rain arrows down on his foes.
But perhaps that was another assumption.
"I'm so sorry, Marcie," she said, her voice low, storm-grey eyes taking in the girl's downcast features carefully. "That is truly terrible. It's aggressive, then."