“Sister,” I murmured and she gave me an amused, annoyed look.
“You’re a mess,” she said, precisely. I grinned at her, and nodded. Leaned into her hound’s warmth.
It felt good.
Like home.
This place, with these people. Feels like home.
“Don’t get used to this, Apollo.” Artemis said, her voice too soft to match the biting words.
“Why…. what causes this?” Del asks. “He is a god. Why…”?
It’s the first time she’s acknowledged that I am more than I claim to be. I am not just a village boy running from an unwanted marriage.
I wonder if she ever believed that or if she always knew the truth about me.
Knowing my girl, she did.
“His power. He’s strong, Del. One of the strongest of us. He could rule Olympus. But power carries a price.”
“Visions of the future. But he’s too crazy to influence it,” Del whispers and I feel a thrill of pride.
My girl is fucking brilliant. She shines like a gods-damned star, brighter than any jewel of Olympus.
“Yes,” Artemis says, sadly.
It’s three days later, and I am almost sane. I’m sitting near Del on the shore, while Artemis swims and her hound bounds around, barking madly. The world is bright and golden, the sun a shining halo and I can only see the shimmering golden threads that bind me and Artemis.
Here, where there are no people, I am almost sane, almost able to cling to the façade of being normal. There are no futures tangling and twisting and tripping me up.
I wonder if that, as much as Del, is what has kept me here, this endless summer.
“Apollo?”
Her voice is soft and frightened, and I lean back, rocks digging into my back and draw her with me. The water is rising, the tide changing and here, on the shore of the sea, with my sister’s curses filling the air and Del’s scent filling my head, and her tiny hands twisted in my tunic, I am happy.
I am so fucking happy.
“I want to help you,” she whispers against my skin and I close my eyes.
Too slow.
I see it. The jumping threads, the shifting futures, the way they wrap around her and bind her, gold and glowing and perfect, and mine.
And broken.
“Del,” I whisper.
She leans into me, and kisses my throat, and my power lurches under my skin, almost aching to break free, to reach for this bright, beautiful, brave girl.
“Let me help you,” she murmurs.
The sun is shining, my sister is laughing, and a girl I will always love is curled in my arms, the sea in my hair.
A day so perfect a thousand years could not replicate it.
That’s the day I destroyed a girl.
Chapter 13.
There are a few things that will never change, despite everything else that has.
When I call, my sister will come.
Always.
It is the unshakable truth that my entire world is built on, from my first memories to this day. So when I piece it together, I don’t think.
I slide my phone out, even in the hospital room while Iris murmurs at her brother and Heath eyes me like I might break her.
Stupid boy. I already have.
I text her and slide the phone away. I don’t need to watch to know she’ll answer any more than I need the answer to know she’ll be at my apartment when we return.
This is Artemis, who has made a life of taking care of me and worrying about me.
I listen to Heath and Lily talk around Iris, listen to her increasingly fragmented babble, and when Heath sends Lily a confused look, I intervene. Catch her hand and let a thin trickle of power seep from me to her. “We had a very long day, and she didn’t sleep well. I think I should probably take her home and let her get some rest. Do you mind?”
Heath does. I can tell, the way he’s bristling but Iris slumps into me and yawns, impressively, backing up every lie I’m spinning.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, okay? You just. You rest. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
She’s still looking over her shoulder when I pull her from the room.
Her eyes are wide and serious when we duck into a stairwell. "What happened to him?" she asks. Staring at me like I might give her answers. Like she has the right to demand answers from me.
Smart girl.
I tuck her hair back, behind her ears and ignore the low growl of warning it earns me. "If I promise to tell you when we reach my apartment. Will you trust me a little bit longer, sweetheart?"
Her eyes narrow. "Last time we got to your apartment, you and I didn't do much in the way of talking."
I grin at that. Because. Fair point.
"My sister is meeting us there. And I need to feed Del."
She makes a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat and I slip her sunglasses on her face, and grab her hand. She's not shaking apart, and I don't know if that's because I'm holding her hand or because seeing her brother has helped settle her, but either way, I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth. I tug her lightly down the stairs, and duck into a cab, holding her close, her head pressed to my chest as I hum and she twists against me and the city and all its hundreds of thousands of souls, and millions of possibilities stream by like water over a rock, battering away the sharp edges until the thing left behind is smooth and shapeless and lovely and so utterly broken.
I kiss her hair and I swear to myself, then and there, that I won't let my gift destroy another girl.
Iris is panting and shaking by the time we reach my apartment, and I let her go, let her reel into it, babbling softly under her breath and letting her hands run over Del, scooping the kitten off the bed and cuddling her close, her face pressed to black fur, her shaking hands growing slower and stiller as she forces herself to breathe, slow and steady.
She's calming herself, something I've never seen an Oracle do.
They're wild and flighty and they have no fucking clue how to stand against the wild storm of Sight, the sheer possibilities of it all.
But Iris. She curls around Del, in my sun chair, and lets her eyes close, her breathing slowing slowly as she pets Del and let's all of the tension and tangled threads fall away.
It's fascinating and shocking and it reminds me of a painful truth.
"I don't know anything about you," I whisper, and my voice is sad. There is no denying that my voice is very sad.
"I'm a flighty failed musician-turned-coffee-shop-proprietor with an unhealthy relationship with my siblings and the bad habit of fucking strangers. That last one might bite me in the ass, if I'm not careful.
"It might bite you in the ass if you are careful," I murmur, smiling at her.
A grin flashes in her eyes and curls up her lips. "I might be confused as fuck about what the hell is going on, but don't think for one second I wish this particular one-night stand didn't bite me in the ass." I jerk a little, startled. Gods knew I wasn't expecting that little confession.
She grins at me and wiggles deeper into her chair.
“Wanna tell me what the hell is happening, Apollo?”
I look at her and smile. “Yeah, sweetheart. I’ll tell you.”
It doesn’t take long. In truth there, there isn’t much to tell. Iris is a smart girl and most of it she’s pieced together, much as I have on how the actual fuck she became my Oracle.
“So you fuck a girl, and she gets pretty visions of the future,” Iris says, when I finally finish and she’s staring at me, her gaze a mix of horror and amusement.
“Not every girl,” I say, shifting nervously. “There must be intent. I give power in exchange for something. And she takes it, willingly. That’s always been the way.”
Iris frowns, and I huff a sigh.
“Do you know that the first girl, her name was actually Delphi. So many think the Oracle was named for where she resided. But she resided there because that cave was where she always wanted to live. It’s where I fell in love with h
er.”
Iris sucks in a breath, and I glance at her, a smile turning up my lips.
“Later, when a city grew up around the temple, we called it Delphi, after my girl, and every Oracle was called Delphi for her.” I rub a large hand over my kitten’s head and she bats at me, annoyed. “Del is named after her.”
“You loved her?”
I shrug. Nod. “Yes. I loved all of my girls. In their own way. I think, I had to, to give them so much of myself.”
She stares at me, her eyes large and dark and searching.
“And me?” she whispers. “Do you love me?”
Iris defies every norm. Breaks every rule that has bound my Oracle for a millennia.
“I want to love you,” I say, soft and honest. “But I don’t know you, Iris.”
She laughs, a little at that, and rolls her head back. “How long did you know Del before you made her an Oracle?”
I tilt my head. “Almost a year. I spent a summer with her, and then a winter. Spring my sister came and spent it hunting in the woods Delphi lived near. It was an endless year, and I loved it. She lived in this tiny cave, so far from the wonders of Olympus. It was everything I wanted, after spending centuries in my father’s court.”
Her eyes are wide, and I think she’s just now putting it together. If I am a god, then my family is also made of gods.
She makes a low noise, a broken sort of whimper and I smile. Open my mouth to reassure her.
And Artemis slams through the door.
She is still wearing her ceremonial garb. Her hounds are seething at her sides, and her eyes are cold and deadly as she storms through the door of my apartment and into the tiny kitchen with all the force of a midnight storm. Just as cruel and cold and devastating.
"Artie," I say, my voice dry and vaguely annoyed.
She ignores me, stalking closer to Iris, who sits still and wide-eyed as a goddess examines her for faults.
I'm kind of absurdly proud of my girl for not squirming under that gaze. I've seen fucking Hades squirm under it. My sister is a sweetheart, for sure, but she's also the goddess of the hunt, and she's a fucking force to be reckoned with.
"What the fuck are you doing with my brother?" she snarls, her voice low and deliberate. Like the quiet pad of a predator stalking its prey.
"I think I'm having coffee, if he ever remembers that's what he was supposed to be doing in the kitchen," Iris says, giving me a dirty look.
I jolt into action and watch from the corner of my eye as Artemis stares down at my new Oracle.
"What favor did you extract for this power?" she snaps, furious. She's almost shaking with it and for a heartbeat, I wonder if Iris will be the exception to this rule, too.
My handmaidens are toys to be played with and broken. My priests are the same. I've never lifted a hand to stop Artemis from venting her anger against my chosen.
But my Oracle has always been untouchable. Maybe it's because she knew Del, the first one, and she has a sentimental streak (that she vehemently denies) or maybe it's because she doesn't want to test me. Doesn't want to pit her considerable strength against my own.
Maybe it's a simple as she knows that my Oracle is special to me, and won't raise a hand against her because she doesn't want to hurt me.
Whatever the reason, my Oracle has never been touched. Has never been harmed. Not by Artemis. But now, watching the way my sister bristles and snarls, and stares at the unblinking Oracle in her sun chair, my kitten in her lap, I wonder if now she will.
Artie has spent most of the past few thousand years, worried about me and tending to me in my madness. An insanity brought on because I am an idiot and refused to listen when Del said, so many years ago, that some prophecies are not meant for even me.
I take a step toward them, toward where Artie is still and staring and Iris is humming soft and swaying, and Hermes, in my doorway, shakes his head.
Wait.
Wait.
I hate waiting.
But I do.
And finally, after what feels like an eternity, Artemis relaxes her arms dropping to her sides and a tired smile twisting up her lips.
"I like you," she decides, and Iris huffs.
"So does your brother. I'm not looking to collect any more gods, if they're this temperamental and troublesome."
Artemis laughs, then, and her hounds whine, a long plaintive note before they flop on the ground in my living room.
Del, from her neat perch on Iris's knee, eyes them with disdainful disgust.
"Apollo, I like this one. Let's keep her."
I grin and bring the black coffee to Iris who reaches for it with grabby hands. I smile and brush a kiss over her forehead as I hand it to her and lean back. "I like her, too."
The prettiest blush steals over Iris's cheeks and Artemis laughs at that, low and delighted.
My sister. She can go from I will slaughter you and your unborn children to a giggling girl at a sleepover in about thirty fucking seconds.
It's annoying and adorable and I want to stab her when she does this shit.
Instead I scoop Iris up and sit, settling her in my lap while Hermes wanders into the living room, dropping next to Artemis.
“Sweetheart, my twin, Artemis, goddess of the moon. And my cousin, Hermes.” I grin at him. “What are you god of, again, cousin?”
Iris drives an elbow into my gut and I huff a little. “Don’t tease him, you dick,” she says, and Hermes laughs.
“Oh, I like this one,” he grins and I scowl.
“Find your own Oracle, cousin.”
Iris perks up in my lap. “Does he have one?”
Hermes pouts and I laugh at him as Artie giggles. And for a while, as we sip coffee and feed Iris tidbits about our family, it’s quiet.
It’s good.
I can pretend that the end of Olympus isn’t looming over us.
It’s dangerous, but I don’t resist, for now.
Sanity is a tenuous thing, and eventually, Iris sways against me, her words slurring and dipping, her body taking on that liquid sensual quality that marked all of my girls when they were deep in the grip of Sight. I let my sister and cousin talk around us while Iris snuggles into my lap and whispers nonsense into my throat, until she finally drops off and I stop rubbing her back.
Then they both give me their full attention and all of the happy laughter fades away. Artemis is frowning and I know she's going to lecture me.
I'm not sure I’m ready for it.
"Playing with fire, don't you think?" Hermes says, softly. "The family will have a fucking fit when they hear you've got a new Oracle."
I know why.
Of course I do. It's why I've resisted making a new Oracle for so long. Not just because it was destroying the girls, and I couldn't stand to do it again.
There was the prophecy.
Dead dead dead and dead.
I shiver.
"I didn't make her Oracle, intentionally," I mutter.
Artemis shifts. "How the hell did you accidentally make an Oracle? I remember Del, brother. I know how it's done, and there's no way to do something like this on accident."
"She offered herself. She didn't do it intentionally. But she offered, in exchange for her brother's health."
An offer isn't enough. I know that as well as Artemis, and her gaze narrows at me. "Why did you accept her sacrifice?"
Because I am tired. And lonely. And my own sanity is a wobbling thing that shifts on daily basis, and my family is dying, and she was there, gorgeous and sweet and willing.
I am a god, but I have spent so many years living as a man, and I can only be a good man for so long before I stumble.
"I'm sorry, sister." I whisper.
"How are you going to contain this?" she asks, ignoring my apology.
Artemis likes to ignore thing she thinks are ridiculous or pointless. Could be why she's spent so much time over the years ignoring me.
"I need to talk to her. Get to know her. The family--I don't know h
ow to keep this from them."
"You could act crazy," Hermes says, lazily, and I give him a dirty look. he shrugs. "Just an idea, cousin."
"It's not a bad idea," Artemis says, her voice low and musing.
"I'm not going to bind myself to a story that makes me weak and limits my power," I say, firmly and she rolls her eyes.
"The family will have to accept that this is what we have to work with."
"Accept that you are not avoiding Del's prophecy, you mean," Artie says.
I don't respond.
Because yes. That is what I mean. And I know my family.
They are going to be furious.
Chapter 14.
When I lower Iris into my bed, she blinks at me, startlingly lucid and heartbreakingly beautiful.
“Why does your family hate me? They haven’t even met me.” She frowns and pokes her tongue into the corner of her lips, a tiny pink point of distraction. “You really know how to up the game of meet the folks, you know that?”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” I murmur and she tugs at my sleeve, until I’m slipping into the bed with her, and she rolls onto her side, facing me, her fingers tangling in my shirt, eyes gleaming in the darkness.
“I don’t want them to dislike me.”
“It’s not you,” I whisper. “It’s—complicated.”
She frowns. “That’s a fucking cop-out, Apollo.”
“You don’t want—“
“I’m your Oracle, right? That means I am the conduit for a part of your power. I have part of you living inside me, right?”
I nod, because. Yes. How the fuck does she know that?
She shrugs. “Del told me.”
And that. That makes me go very still.
“Explain yourself, Iris,” I say, my voice low and cold.
She shrugs, her eyes drifting past me, going distant. “I can see the threads. All of them twisting and changing and then the one that will be and it’s…its…. it’s confusing. It's so bright and when I look at you and your sister, it's like the whole world is burning.”
“But then I see her. Del puts herself between us and everything I see is filtered through her and her memories.” she shivers and then, her gaze darts to me. “She loves you. They have always loved you. They miss you, but each of them are here. It's nice. Knowing that there are a hundred other girls who have done this. Who have gone crazy for you.” She smiles, then.
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