The Sun Revolves Around Apollo (The Gods Are Back In Town Book 2)

by Serena Akeroyd

  “True crime is very interesting.”

  I almost groaned hearing that. Now I knew this tín eaftoú gynaíka shit was real. Only the Fates would think it amusing to set us with a crystal-touting, tree-hugging, sex-eavesdropping, true crime-fanatic for a wife.

  Zeus save us.

  “Well, that’s a crime against nature itself,” Pollux replied, but he grinned when she glowered at him.

  “Pollux,” Castor chided, and it was in that tone of voice that had all animals listening to him—his brother included. Pollux ducked his head in apology, and I saw Ella take note of the gesture. She didn’t, as would be polite, ignore it. Instead, she pointed at Pollux.

  “You did that.” To Castor, she frowned. “Do it again.”

  He snorted. “Do what?”

  “I don’t know what. You did something. Was it mind control?” Her eyes flared wide with interest even as she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Was it? I won’t tell anyone.”

  Apollo tutted and utterly distracted her by tossing her the two crystals. I tensed, my hand whipping out to make sure the heavy rocks wouldn’t collide with her soft, puny human form. She surprised me by catching both, taking a second to glower at Apollo, but just as her mouth opened, her top lip curling in disgust at his treatment of her possessions, she released a squeak instead.

  Where before the crystals had glittered faintly in the dim light coming in from the windows, now?

  It was like they’d been lit up from the inside with a bulb.

  ❖

  Pollux

  “See? Hecate’s child,” Apollo stated.

  While I was one to press people’s buttons, even I cringed at Apollo’s blanket statement.

  “What the fuck is happening here?” Ella squeaked as she scrambled back as though trying to evade the crystals and failing to do so, as she didn’t drop the heavy rocks, just took them with her as she did her scrambling.

  “You’re a child of Hecate,” Apollo repeated.

  “Who the hell is Hecate?” she screeched.

  Achilles tutted. “Another lie.”

  I shot a quick grin at our walking lie detector, amused when Ella released a sharp shriek of outrage.

  “Stop this! Stop it right now,” she commanded, and I found myself amazed to realize that the command wasn’t just verbal. She packed some punch with it too.

  The crystals took her power and focused it, sending shards of her talent our way. As it brushed over me, I felt the compulsion to ‘behave,’ which would never do. The only person I listened to was the man who I’d shared a womb with, the man with whom I’d reigned over the night sky.

  I wasn’t about to do as my wife said.

  Not unless it consisted of the words, ‘Harder, deeper, faster.’

  Apollo stiffened at my side as he too felt her compulsion, but Castor pressed a hand to her shoulder. “Calm down, Ella,” he soothed, and his tone, though one I recognized, eased the tightness in me.

  While this scenario was beyond the pale in more ways than one, I was tense and restless. Apollo seemed to believe that this woman was truly ours, and considering the connection I’d felt last night with her when we’d touched, I had to admit that I couldn’t discard the notion as being out of hand.

  I rarely responded to women like that.

  If ever.

  It hadn’t stopped me from screwing thousands over the years, but what had drifted into being when I’d rubbed her bottom lip last night and she’d bitten me?

  Unique.

  As unique as the woman herself.

  “Who are you?” she squeaked. “Why are you calling yourself by those Greek names?”

  “You recognize them?” I inquired, surprised. Achilles and Apollo, sure, but Castor and Pollux? We were known as Gemini. Everyone forgot we were individuals.

  She licked her lips. “You share the same names as the Gemini twins. I saw the temple in Rome.” Then she rubbed her head. “At least, I think I remember that.”

  I sniffed. “The best temple was in Athens. It was sacked a long time ago though.”

  “You say that like you saw it,” she whispered, her eyes big and round, enough to trap me in their delicate prison.

  “I did.” I tilted my head to the side. “We don’t share names with those men, Ella.”

  “You’re crazy,” she breathed, inducing me to smirk at her.

  “I try, but in this instance, no. I’m not. I speak only the truth. Before you are the Gemini twins, the fierce warrior Achilles, and Apollo, the God of a shopping list.”

  “The God of a shopping list?” she repeated, blinking at us in a way that made her look like she had something stuck in her eye.

  My twin waved a hand at me. “Apollo is the God of many things. The arts, poetry, music…”

  “Holy fuck, this isn’t a rehab center, is it? Dolly fucking lied to me. It’s an insane asylum!”

  After having tossed the crystals at her, Apollo had been relatively silent in the aftermath. Now, though, he grunted and reached forward. Before she could argue, he’d retrieved one of the crystals and passed it to me, then he grabbed her hand, bridged their fingers even as she struggled, and stated, “I am the God of Truth. See my truth.”

  Silence washed over her then. She slumped back into the pillows and fiddled with a pendant she wore as Apollo revealed the truth to her.

  I watched as she processed it, as she focused on reality as Apollo saw it. I’d undergone this process once before, and it was both enlightening and terrifying. It was easy to forget that Apollo was a God. He wasn’t like Zeus or Poseidon. He didn’t hold sway over a kingdom of his own with their corresponding elements. Nor was he like Hades whose powers over the dead were immense.

  But when he conveyed the truth?

  It was powerful.

  I did not doubt that when he was done, her eyes would be opened in ways that there was no turning back from. I could only hope that it led her toward us and not away, because if this was a union blessed by Zeus and the Fates? I wanted in.

  Chapter Three

  Ella

  Holy shit!

  Those were the two words that were rolling around my brain. Well, they were rolling when whatever it was that Apollo was showing me gave them room to move.

  I wanted to pull back, wanted to pull free, but I couldn’t. There was no avoiding this—no evading it.

  He showed me a lifetime. A thousand lifetimes. He showed me powers and feats, things I’d heard about in stories and movies. He revealed his capabilities to me, showed me a woman morphing into a laurel tree of all things.

  It went on and on.

  I saw a mountain. A huge mountain that was crested by a palace so large, it took up nearly the entirety of its crest. I saw a council of beings so beautiful, so majestic, it made my eyes water. And when the king of those Gods stood? Lightning crackling around his head in short bolts that made up his crown? There was no avoiding who he was, no misunderstanding it or mistaking Zeus.

  I saw of the way the Gods were dispersed to all quarters of this realm, scattered so their powers wouldn’t cause more tumult in Greece. I saw how their life forces were tied to chosen guardians, and I knew that Apollo wasn’t insane and I wasn’t in an asylum that made a cuckoo’s nest look cozy.

  This was real.

  I knew there was shit out there that few would ever understand. I knew that because I was living proof of it.

  I’d been dead and then I’d come back to this world in this woman’s body. That had never hit home harder than it did now. Finishing school? Cindy had gone to finishing school? Sweet Lord, no wonder Dolly had eyed me warily when I’d gorged on gelato the first day I’d been released from hospital. I mean, I wasn’t a pig, but I sure as hell didn’t eat like a debutante!

  When more incredible scenes flashed before my eyes, ones that involved spirits moving from the stars themselves to take shape into the two men sitting before me, I pulled back and whispered, “Enough.”

  Apollo frowned and tried to grab me. “No
. You didn’t see it all.”

  “I saw enough.” I rubbed a hand over my face. What I’d ‘seen’ hadn’t been in chronological order. I’d beheld temples that were now ruins and then I’d seen Apollo on the phone with me, bleeding on the floor, as he spoke to Zeus about wives and something called a tín eaftoú gynaíka.

  In fact…

  “What did you do to my tongue? I bit it.”

  He waved a hand. “I healed you.”

  That’s right. Apollo was the God of Healing.

  Holy shit.

  Heart racing, I stated, “There’s been a mistake.”

  “No, no mistake,” Castor rasped.

  “You don’t understand,” I half-pleaded. I felt the connection between us, I felt it like I’d felt nothing else since I’d taken possession of Cindy’s body, but that was the issue.

  This wasn’t my body.

  This body belonged to Cindy, and Cindy was dead now whereas I’d taken to squatting in it.

  When Castor went to argue, Apollo held up a hand. “Let her speak.”

  Half angry that he’d deigned to allow me to speak, and half relieved that I wouldn’t have to argue to make myself heard, I whispered, “My name isn’t…” Would I ever not wince? “Cinderella DiStefano. It’s Ella. I can’t remember my surname. I can’t remember much else, but I died and the next time I woke up, I was in this body.” I gulped. “T-The woman, this tín eaftoú gynaíka, isn’t me. It’s her.”

  And what stunned me the most was how much that fucking hurt.

  I was too messed up to want a boyfriend. I wasn’t at ease with my own skin so I sure as hell didn’t need someone feeling that skin up. But damn. These four guys? They were looking at me like a kid would stare at a puppy in the store.

  They wanted me.

  Not just for sex.

  It was like I was a promise they wanted to act on, and I knew, point blank, lost memories and all, that no one had ever looked at me this way.

  “Cinderella wasn’t our tín eaftoú gynaíka.” Apollo shook his head when I tried to speak. “Let me finish, agapití. Zeus himself told me that you had died before you should have, and he brought you back to this life.” His lips curved into a weak smile. “The Fates work in mysterious ways, Ella. Cinderella DiStefano was my fiancée.”

  “You were her fiancé?” I squeaked out the question, then, as that fact hit home, I glowered at him. “You didn’t visit once.”

  Pollux snorted. “Typical woman. Focus on the one thing that doesn’t matter.”

  While I flipped him the bird, Apollo didn’t even wince at my accusation. “You're—” He stopped, corrected himself, “Cinderella’s mother asked me not to.”

  “Why would she do that? And why would you listen?” It was irrational, but I was pissed off on Cinderella’s behalf.

  Goddamn men. Even the deities sucked as boyfriends.

  “Because of who you are and why you were injured in the first place.”

  That statement dampened my anger somewhat. Apollo seemed to have zero facial expressions. Anything I read, I gathered it from his eyes. The longing I knew he felt for me? I saw it there. Only back in the dining hall had his control slipped enough for me to see the almost pained anguish that crumpled his mouth and darkened those bloodstone orbs of his.

  “James DiStefano was Cindy’s father. He died a few years ago—”

  “Yes. I know that,” I snapped. “Dolly almost had a fit when she realized I didn’t remember that.”

  “You need to listen to me, Ella. Stop interrupting,” he stated grimly, then scrubbing a hand over his face, he admitted, “He died in prison.”

  “Say what?” If my jaw was able to dislocate so it could land on the ground, it would have.

  Prison?

  My dad, well, Cinderella’s dad, had died in prison?

  What. The. Actual. Fuck?

  “He was behind a rather large Ponzi scheme.”

  Pollux snorted. “Understatement.”

  “The largest the world has ever seen,” Castor agreed.

  “Bigger than Bernie Madoff?” I asked.

  Apollo’s eyes were sad, a storm of blues and greens that made my stomach stir with the beginnings of nausea. “Yes. He was a fool, but I loved him like a son.”

  It was really weird for a guy who looked like he was only a few years older than me to say something about a man that could have a daughter in her early twenties.

  I knew James DiStefano had been sixty-four when he died, so Apollo’s statement hit home all the more.

  “He knew what you were, didn’t he?”

  It was only then that I realized how formally he was dressed in comparison to the others. He was dressed down in a sense, no suit or tie, but he was all buttoned-up. Castor and Pollux wore worn jeans and tees. Achilles sported khakis with a black Henley. In his close-fitting pullover with its crew neck, the button-down shirt underneath, and jeans that looked like they cost the same price as a used car, Apollo looked formal. Like he was going to watch a game of polo or some shit like that. They had polo in the Hamptons, right? It seemed like the place they’d hold games like that.

  I watched as he tugged at his neck, like the sweater was choking him, and wondered why he felt that way. What about my question had put him on edge when nothing else we’d discussed until now had?

  “I knew James as a boy.”

  “How?” I whispered.

  “I adopted him.” The admission was tight. His mouth was pursed. “Look, it doesn’t matter. I knew him, and he knew me and what I was. He was dying when he asked me to visit him, and even though he’d been an utter idiot, I never could deny him—”

  “Which is why he was in that position in the first place,” Achilles stated, his tone almost conversational.

  Apollo’s mouth pinched. “A conversation for another time?” It was rhetorical. “He asked me to wed Cinderella. To make sure she was safe. I promised. You—I mean, she was only twenty at the time, and I saw no need for me to intrude upon her life until later. Dolly agreed, and we decided I’d make my way into the world, court her and date her as though there was no connection between James and myself.”

  “But you were here this morning,” I whispered, my eyes wide as I processed just how nutty this all was, and yet it was the complete truth. Even as he told me this, it resonated with what he’d shown me. “Why?”

  “Dolly was concerned about you. About how different you were,” he admitted.

  I huffed. “Well, you know she wasn’t bullshitting now, don’t you?”

  “I do.” He tilted his chin and stared down at his hands, which he’d bridged together in a prayer-like fashion. “I decided it might be the appropriate time to start pressing my suit.”

  Wanting to laugh at his phrasing, which was so antiquated, I didn’t, I withheld it. Barely. And if I had laughed, it would probably have sounded hysterical. I really didn’t need the hysteria right now.

  “Wait a minute. You made it sound like Cinderella was in the hospital because of what her father did. Is that right? Dolly just said I’d been in a bad car crash, but she was lying, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes. She had extra security on her, but it wasn’t enough. Some idiot just chased her vehicle into incoming traffic. He hurt a lot of people along the way.”

  Fuck. “That’s terrible.” I reached up and rubbed my face. “Did anyone die?”

  “The driver died.” My mouth trembled and he reached over to gently tap my bottom lip. “It wasn’t your fault, Ella.” Wasn’t it? I didn’t speak the words but he sighed as though he’d heard them anyway. Shit, was that a thing now too? Before I could freak out even further, he murmured, “A lot of people were injured.” He waved a dismissive hand. “I saw to all their medical bills.”

  “That doesn’t make up for their pain,” I argued. “Did you heal them like you healed me?”

  “I don’t do that often,” was his reply, and it was stiff. Like I’d touched upon a very sore subject.

  “Why not?” Yeah, I wasn’t
one to beat around the bush.

  “I just don’t.”

  “It causes problems,” Castor explained, apparently taking pity on Apollo who, I’d admit, looked constipated. His face scrunched up like my question had both pained and irritated him.

  “What kind of problems?” I asked, intrigued now, especially as it meant that I got to look at a dude as pretty as Castor.

  “It can mess with the natural timeline of people. Say Apollo healed a broken leg but found the patient had stomach cancer. His abilities won’t let him refrain from healing what he finds. He can pull back, but not before some of the disease is cured.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?” I demanded, gaping at both him and Apollo.

  “Yes. It is. Not for the individual, but people have a set time to die. If I mess with that, then I mess with the laws of nature itself. I, therefore, only do it on the rarest of occasions.”

  “That sucks,” I informed him with a scowl.

  “There are many things about being a God that does, indeed, suck.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “As it stands, the most I can do without disturbing Hades himself is to throw money at the situation.”

  Hades.

  He spoke about him like he knew him, and now that I thought about it, I recognized him from the ‘reel of truth’ Apollo had just exposed me to.

  How though?

  How did I recognize a God? It wasn’t like I’d even known Apollo was one until he’d introduced himself, for Christ’s sake.

  I reached up and massaged my temple where the ache seemed to be growing, like a quake that was gaining power rather than weakening over time. “Jesus, talk about giving on the one hand and taking away with the other. Sorry to sound selfish here, but yay, I’m no longer dead. Boo, I’m in the body of someone thousands of people wish were dead.”

  “Tens of thousands of people,” Pollux inserted.

  I shot him a narrow-eyed glare. “You make things so much better.”

  He grinned. “I try.”

  Achilles soberly murmured, “You’re safe here.”

  “I am?” I studied him, the quietest of the bunch and when I looked into his eyes, I almost winced. There was pain there.