“They told me. How it works and what I do. What you need from me. They told me how you blind yourself for your family. Is that why they hate me? Your family?”
I shift on the bed, pulling her close, until my chin rested on her hair and her breath tickled my skin. “They don't hate you, Iris. They are terrified of change. We've spent over two thousand years wasting away. Losing our worshipers and our home and seeing our powers wane. And there was the prophecy.” I hesitate and look at her. “Do you see the last Del?”
Her eyes take on that haunted, unfocused gaze, and she nods, slowly. “She was a thin girl, with long gold hair and eyes that appeared lavender in the sun. She liked to sit in her bed and tell you about the world that was to come and the lives the little Shepard girls would get to live, and she loved you so much it hurt. She told you not to ask.” Iris blinks at me, curious and afraid.
A painfully familiar combination in my girls.
“What did you ask her, Apollo?” she demands her voice shaking and I can hear Del, her voice strident and desperate, telling me no, telling me not to ask, telling me that this would break me. I shudder.
I should have listened.
“Apollo,” Iris snaps and I look at her. Wide eyed and lost. I am a god and I am still wide eyed and lost.
“I asked how Olympus would die.”
It was the question that broke Olympus. Broke me. Broke all of us. I think I knew even as I asked that it was a bad idea, the worst idea I’d had in ages.
Del sat staring at me, her eyes wide and surprised, and she shakes her head, slowly. “You don’t want this.”
“Del,” I started and she shakes her head again, rolling off the bed and screeching. “No, Apollo. You don’t want this. I won’t give it to you.”
I flinch. Because she’s refusing a request from me. Me. Her god. She shouldn’t be able to refuse me, much less want to.
Del had always played by her own rules, though. I suppose it wasn’t that surprising that she could refuse me this.
“You’re playing with fire,” she snaps, stalking around the tiny bedroom. I huff a sigh and twist to sit up, my legs crossed under me. A raven is sitting on the window, watching my Oracle pace with big golden eyes and I feel a surge of affection, because I am almost whole, here, now.
My power has always been a fractured thing, since I first made Delphi an Oracle, and took my raven as a familiar.
But with them both here and the sun bright overhead, it feels like I am whole and strong, and I lean up on my knees.
“Delphi, I need this. I’ve seen the future before, and I’ve never gone crazy. That’s what you give me. But it does no good to me to be the god of visions if you won’t See what I need.”
“You don’t need this,” she says, immediately, her voice harsh with conviction.
“You don’t get to decide that, Oracle.”
She flinches.
I have never reduced Del to her title and nothing more. She’s my friend, my servant, my partner. She’s a part of me, as close to me as someone can be that isn’t my sister. She is DEL.
She straightens, then, and I feel her withdrawing, pulling her title and duty around herself like a shield. When she speaks to me, it’s in the cool tones of the Oracle.
Not my warm, sassy Del.
Not her at all.
“I cannot See the fate of the Gods, Lord. Mayhap you can offer sacrifice. Or accept that this is clouded by destiny and all will be learned in time.”
I snarl softly and she glares, her eyes bright and furious.
I leave her like that. Retreat to Artemis woods, and when killing with my sister doesn’t soothe me, I find Hermes, in a brothel outside of Rome. We are called different names here. It makes me uncomfortable, and Hermes grins at me as I settle next to him in the brothel.
“You are upset, cousin,” he says. I shrug, and he sighs. Slaps the girl on his lap lightly on the ass. She scurries off and Hermes focuses on me, pouring wine and sliding the cup across to me.
“What?”
“I fought with Del,” I say, glaring at the wine.
His eyebrows hitch up, surprised. “You? But. She’s your blind spot.”
I frown at him, confused and Hermes laughs. “Delphi could rob Olympus and you would still smile and tell us how sweet she is. You won’t even hear Artemis insult her. She’s always gotten a free pass from you, despite her bad behavior or her lack of respect for your power.”
“She is a living embodiment of my power,” I snap, a little annoyed that he doesn’t seem to understand just how much she gives up.
“I know. It’s why none of the pantheon argues too much. You are the only one of us who has that.”
There is something in his tone that draws my head up and I frown at my cousin. “You sound almost like you are jealous, Hermes.”
“I am,” he says, easily. “She loves you, and is yours, completely and unreservedly. That kind of worship is intoxicating.” He shrugs. “But you are bound to her. You own her as much as she owns you. That’s why you dislike fighting with her. She isn’t a priestess that you can just give an order to.”
“So I allow her to defy my orders and let her decide what I will know of the future?”
“No. You reach a place where you are both happy. She is your Oracle, but she knows more than you can, so trust her if she says that it’s not safe, it’s not safe. Del isn’t going to fuck you over, just for kicks.”
I frown, deeply, at the table, and Hermes sighs.
“Or, do what you want. You usually do anyway.”
Chapter 15.
Artemis is curled on my couch. She looks tired, big circles under her eyes that worry me a little.
“Sister,” I murmur. She shouldn’t be this tired and wan, not at night, with the moon rising and the wind blowing a hunt song.
“The family is whispering, Apollo,” she says, at last. I was expecting it. Because of course the family is talking.
Once upon a time, my family was powerful. They ruled the world, and the humans, and played our endless games with them. But then we got lost in our own pettiness. In being worshiped and everything we believe was owed to us. We began to believe our own lies. We bought the stories of our won grandeur, and it destroyed us.
It wasn’t the only thing that destroyed us. I played a part in that.
“What are they saying?” I ask, shifting her legs and settling them over my lap as she sinks deeper into the couch. She frowns up at me.
“There is talk that you are the killer,” Artie says, not bothering to couch her words delicately. Hermes laughs into his water, but dodges my eyes.
“I take it Uncle Poseidon is leading that faction.”
She shrugs.
Poseidon hates me. He’s hated me and Artemis since before we came to Olympus. When we first arrived in the golden halls, we were afraid of Hera.
Everyone knew Zeus’s wife hated his bastard children, even the ones who were gods.
But Hera was open in her hate. She was a known quantity. Something we knew to avoid and learned to anticipate. And she was weak enough that she was no real threat.
Not to us.
Poseidon, though.
His hate was a slow burning, hidden thing. When we were living on the island with Leto, there was this one summer day, when I was swimming, and a current caught me. I wasn’t deep, but the current was strong and hidden, and it jerked me under and away from shore, and out into the sea.
I was calm, even though I should have died. My sister, even then, was a hunter, and she was always able to find the thing she hunted. And my sun gleamed down on me, keeping me warm and buoyant, a bright promise of power, as I floated on my back and waited for my sister to pull me from the sea.
His hate was like that current. Deep and hidden and deadly when it caught.
It was dangerous because it came as friendship, family and loyalty, everything I trusted most wrapped around a shiny blade, slipping between my ribs.
That was the third lesson we lea
rned in Olympus.
We might be related, but that didn’t make us family. Not the kind of family I had learned to expect from Leto and Artemis. The gods and goddesses played to their powers and needs, and fucked each other over as often as they actually fucked each other. Family meant only that our downfall would come at the hands of one another.
But it never meant that we were safe with the family.
It’s why leaving was so easy. Why even now, I want nothing to do with them. Why the whispering of them is neither surprising nor upsetting.
“Poseidon has wanted to blame me for the family’s decline since I left Olympus,” I say, shrugging.
Artemis frowns. “He didn’t have dead bodies to work with. And he didn’t have you fucking helping by disappearing and making a new fucking oracle.”
I glare at her. “That wasn’t intentional.”
“Do you really think they’ll care?” she asks, her voice a sigh. All of the fight is gone from her, and she’s just…tired.
We are all so fucking tired.
“Will it help if I come back to the house? Face the whispers and put them to rest?”
She bites her lip and shrugs. “It won’t hurt. They…they are….they’re angry and scared, Apollo. And you know that they don’t make good decisions when they’re acting out of fear.”
“We make good decisions?” Hermes asks, a lazy smile on his lips.
Artie gives him a dirty look.
“What are you going to do with the Oracle?” Artemis asks, returning her attention to me when Hermes doesn’t seem suitably impressed with her fierce stare.
I shrug. “I don’t want the family to know about her. Not yet. They aren’t ready to hear the harbinger has come into her power, and I’m not ready to deal with all of them furious. I need a few people to trust me before it breaks across the pantheon.”
Hermes shifts when I look at him, and his face takes on a slightly pained expression.
“C’mon, Pollo, you know I hate when I have to ask him for help.”
“Think we’re past your feels, Hermes,” Artie says, tartly, and my cousin grins, all lecherous and teasing.
“We’re never past my feels, Artie.”
He looks at me and huffs a sigh. “You know he might not listen.”
“We won’t know until you speak to him,” I say.
Hermes huffs and curses under his breath. And I know we’ve won.
Chapter 16.
My uncle scares the shit out of me.
He always has.
Father is flashy, all brute power and lazy skill, nothing to be impressed with. Poseidon is fury and crashing waves, but my sister pulls the tides, and I am the sun, untouched by his raging storms.
But Hades.
Hades is the end of all of us. Even the gods will die, and go to Elysium, and Hades will rule over us.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and it’s made the pantheon nervous around him.
Sometimes I wonder how lonely it is, to be the god of the underworld.
I think that’s why he chose Hermes, to teach. Because even an undying, unchanging god gets lonely, and Persephone spends as much time away from him as she does with him. There is a dysfunctional marriage if ever I saw one. But it worked for them, for whatever reason. Even now, my uncle loved Persephone to distraction, and she adored him, even if she does desert him for six months to sit at her mother’s side.
But Hermes. Hermes was an eternal child, prone to stealing and running from trouble and playing small useless jokes. He was the opposite of Hades.
He was laughter where Hades was serious, fast where my uncle was slow, thoughtless where the Underlord was deliberate.
He was calm when Hades was fury. Peace when Hades wanted war.
When Hades first picked Hermes to sit as his apprentice, I think the entire pantheon was surprised. We all knew how flighty and unpredictable the messenger god was.
But he proved us wrong, and Hades still gives us a smug smile, when the flash of Hermes' serious side peeks through, and silences all of us.
I am absurdly proud of my cousin.
It doesn't hurt that Hermes is loyal to me and Artemis, for his own reasons that he's never bother to explain. I quit asking. It's enough to know that his loyalty is complete, and it extends, in some part, to Hades.
Hermes is the apprentice, but he is still a god, and he will not permit Hades to move against us. So when we pull up to new Olympus, it makes perfect sense to go to him. That we would reach out to the strongest and appeal to him for aide.
We send Hermes, first, because Hades has few sentimentalities, and they seem to be limited to Persephone and Hermes.
And his fucking dog, but we don't talk about that because no one should coo over a bloody, fucking MONSTER.
The house is changing, still adapting to fit our needs and our moods. As I wander down the hall to Artie's bedroom, I take note of the gilded columns, the wide marble hall and the girl strumming a fucking harp in the corner.
"Gods, tell me that wasn't Aphrodite."
Artemis rolls her eyes and shrugs. "She likes the adoration."
I groan and drop my head back. "She's a fucking diva," I snap. My half-sister won't like it, but I don't like playing bitch boy to her when she decides her pet of the week needs to be pampered. That had happened enough in the past to last a lifetime.
I slide into the bedroom Artie claimed and smiled. She hadn't removed my touches, not yet. The forest still allowed the sun to seep through and the smell of summer was almost as heady as the scent of dead things decaying underfoot.
For a moment, standing here, with Artie watching me with a half-smile and a hungry gleam to her eyes, I forget we are in a home where our family is a few feet away and I am recovering from years of regret.
For a moment, it feels like we are children on an island, and innocent. Gods in our mountain, and powerful. Everything we have not been for a thousand years.
I feel like myself, and with that, it is so easy to fall into step with her.
She’s worried, still, but I think she will always worry about me. It’s her nature, to care for me. We decided, a long time ago that we wouldn’t kill each other, and even when we fight, we care.
It makes us different from the others, and that difference is what makes Hermes like us.
And, gods willing, Hades.
He's always been fonder of family than any of the others, and we're hoping it holds true now as well.
We wait for an hour, my raven shifting impatiently on my arm, and Artie sitting like a folded pretzel, her eyes closed as she meditates. Here's what they forget to mention, when they talk about gods and shit. When they talk about immortality and how we live forever, they forget to mention the endless march of time and the lack of things to fill it.
There are only so many times you can read your way through the greats of literature, only so many languages to learn, and instruments to learn.
I hate inactivity. It always lets my thoughts wander too much, and now isn't the time to think too loudly.
So it's a relief when Hermes taps on the door and shoves it open. I open my mouth to greet him, and Hades steps into the room behind him, a wave of darkness wrapped in robes and wearing a bland expression. His gaze flickers over both of us, my sister and myself, and then he huffs.
"Hermes thinks there is something I should hear, from you."
"Uncle," Artemis says, her voice surprisingly steady.
My sister is a goddess of Death, in her way. It makes sense that she wouldn't feel uncomfortable around the god of the underworld.
Me. I hate the fear curdling in my gut, twisting through me like a hot wave.
"Why don't you tell me what the hell I should know, and why I shouldn't drag you in front of your father, nephew," Hades says, looking at me.
But for all that his words are cold and demanding, his tone is warm and almost inviting. Like he wants to know and is curious about me.
That rubs my nerves smooth.
"You've heard the prophecy?" I ask, quietly.
Verifying something I already know. Every single member of the pantheon has heard the prophecy. Even if I wanted to keep it to myself, it was about all of us, and it spread, from Artie and Hermes to the entire fucking family.
Hades inclines his head, just a little. Acknowledging my words.
"It's coming to pass," I say, simply.
I’ve never been good at avoiding her. I like her too much, like her bright smile and the way her mind jumps so quickly and unexpectedly. It’s hard for me to stay angry when all I really want is to curl up in her arms and the soft spun sheets of her bed and let the rest of the world fall away.
The pantheon is fighting, Aphrodite and Ares pitched against Artemis and Athena, and I am hiding from them—both of my sisters—in a dirty brothel, where the girls are eager and the boys are comfortable on their knees. And the wine is surprisingly good.
I spend two weeks there, drunk and avoiding my sisters, watching Hermes fuck his way through the brothel, and venturing out with him to pickpocket the masses.
Bastard is a god, with the wealth of Olympus at his fingertips, but he steals.
He’s always preferred to steal.
Ah, well. We all have our vices and powers.
But after two weeks of nothing but debauchery, enough that I am vaguely surprised Dionysus hasn’t ventured down to join us, I come to the realization that I am bored.
And I miss her.
I miss my Del.
The girl in bed with me with slow smiling eyes and lips that look fucking amazing around my cock…she’s too shy, too demure, too fucking worshipful to be a good substitute. I don’t want worship. I want the only girl who will tell me no, and laugh while she does it.
I want my Oracle.
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