Broken God

by Andrews,Nazarea

  It takes another week after that, sulking and stewing in the realization that I have to go crawling back to her, before Hermes loses his temper.

  Granted, I ruined a robbery, and his favorite whore, a dark-eyed boy with nimble fingers, is caught before we make our escape, so I suppose he has some right to be angry.

  If he got one of my handmaidens arrested, I’d probably be pissed off too.

  “Get the fuck out of Rome and go back to Delphi,” he snarls. “Go fix whatever the hell you broke with your Oracle and leave me to my thieves. Or so help me father, I will call your sister.”

  I glared at him. Artemis was in a foul mood with her ongoing feud and she didn’t want to play mediator between me and Delphi, even when she was in a good mood.

  “I don’t want to,” I say, petulant.

  “No, you do want to. You don’t want to admit that you were wrong, and you sure as fuck don’t want to be the one to make the first move, but the options are limited here, cousin. She can’t leave Delphi. Go. Fix this. Or go annoy Heph. I don’t care what the hell you do, Apollo, just get the hell out of Rome.”

  Hermes stormed out of the room, shouting for his little whores, the ones he was forming into a band of thieves, and I was left in silence and the nagging knowledge that he’s right.

  I want to go back home.

  I’ve wanted it since I arrived in Rome, and I’m being stubborn and godly.

  I’m fucking acting like Zeus.

  That, more than anything else, makes me move.

  I am dressed and slipping out the door within the hour, and even though I am a god, and the god of the sun, I walk. I steal a horse and I walk when I can’t do that, and I sleep in the ditches alongside the road. Sometimes a hound paces alongside me, and sometimes a raven sits on the curve of my horse’s back.

  And sometimes I am alone.

  But not really. Not ever really.

  A god collects companions, even when he seeks solitude.

  It takes me two weeks, to make my way from Rome to Delphi, a sure sign I’m not using my power. Artemis, were she not fighting with Aphrodite, would mock me for my slow progress. It is a type of penance. I make no illusions to myself that it is anything less.

  When I reach the small city that has sprung up around the Oracle, I breathe a sigh of relief, and it feels like the city breathes it with me, a tension I hadn’t realized I was carrying slipping away. I am bearded now, and dirty from the road, and happy, if tired. I blend, easily, into the crush of humanity that seems to gather around my girl. It makes me absurdly proud, because even if she is a manifestation of my own power, people are here for her. Because she is a good Oracle. For a half a day, I wander through the supplicants, and bask in the low level worship and the adoration they heap on my girl.

  Until word comes that the Oracle will see no one else, and the handmaidens retreat into the temple.

  She finds me. Because of course she finds me. She comes wrapped in rough robes and her hair hanging wild and tangled, nothing like the effervescent girl with lost and dreamy eyes that so many know as the Oracle. This girl is cold and imperious and sharp-eyed. And relief, relief that seeps from me and her as she sits herself, messy and graceless, next to me in the dirt. I play my lyre and she leans against my shoulder and it feels right. Comfortable in a way that I haven’t been able to find since I fled Delphi. “I missed you,” she says, finally, and my eyes squeeze shut. I press a kiss to the top of her head and she sighs, snuggling closer. Cuddling without interrupting my playing. She stays like that as the day winds around us, and the supplicants drift past, giving us a wide berth, and I find my calm.

  It’s strange, how much her warmth, pressed against my side, can sooth me. How much I missed it and how little I realized it was missing, until it’s there again, a limb restored that I hadn’t realized was missing.

  “You look like a shepardess,” I say, finally, my voice teasing and her voice is sleepy.

  “You look like a feral hermit. I thought that was my position in this relationship.”

  That makes me laugh, a full body thing, and I drop my lyre, pulling her close with both arms, until she’s sitting in my lap and almost purring with happiness.

  This is where I am meant to be. Where I’ve always meant to be.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, finally. Quietly, the words pressing into her hair and she shudders against me. I hear her whisper against my chest, but I don’t press for her to repeat herself. I don’t need to.

  She is my oracle. My girl. The one I’ve loved, for so many years I can’t remember a time I didn’t love her.

  I don’t need to hear her apology to know that it’s there, any more than either of us really need to say it.

  That we are both here, says enough.

  The pantheon would be aghast. My father would never imagine stooping to apologize to the humans he has wronged.

  But maybe that is what is different about us. What makes me and Del different, what has always made us different. Maybe the respect that flows, the give and take that marks our relationship and always has—maybe that difference is what makes us work. What makes us better.

  “Father, tell me why” She says, and I sigh.

  “The world is changing, sweetheart. You and I both know that.”

  “The world has always been changing. It always will be. It is the nature of the world to change.”

  “We won’t always be able to adapt to that change. You know that.”

  She remains silent and I don’t press her. There is still, under my skin, the itch to know to press her for more than she has shared, to press until she tells me everything that has happened or will happen and how we will die.

  My Oracle has my power, living within her, and this Del is stronger than the ones who came before. That is always the way of it. The first was the weakest, and each Del has grown and been stronger. I used to wonder why, and then I stopped wondering. It is merely the way that Del is and I have accepted that even though she is mine, there are something about her that I will never understand. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she says, finally. Her voice husky and serious against me, and I glance down at her. “I think you’re playing with fire.”

  Her eyes are sad, so very sad, and it occurs to me, too late, that I should ask her why. To wonder what the hell she’s seen.

  “But if this is what you want. I will Speak for you, Apollo.”

  It is a week later that she finally Speaks. A week of lingering in her bed, and ignoring the restless mass of supplicants outside our temple. A week of laughter and tears, when she thinks I am otherwise occupied. A week of music and coaxing a smile from her lips.

  We’re there, still. In her bed. I’m laying naked on the sheets, while she sits in a sheer robe a few inches away, her legs drawn up almost demurely hiding herself from me.

  “Father, this is a bad idea,” she says, again, and I nod.

  I know the risks.

  She eyes me, and bites her lip, worrying it red.

  And then she Speaks.

  High and high and high, the fathers soar.

  Low and low and low, the gods will fall.

  A tiger, kitten black, power and power, steal your power.

  Death and death and death.

  Oracle. Broken and stolen and unknown.

  Breaking you. Breaking Olympus.

  Dying and dying and dying, they’re all dying.

  The goddess dying and the gods are bleeding.

  She can See, oh gods, she Sees it all.

  The fallen gods are stealing and dying and dying and you are there. So shining bright. And sad. Mad god, mad god, broken world, and Delphi is laughing, a mad priestess to a broken god.

  Delphi blinks at me, and in her eyes, I see every Del I have ever loved, every Del I have ever made, and they are screaming. All of them are screaming, as tears slide down her face.

  Kitten black, tiger strong. Stolen girl, visions bright. You will all fucking
die.

  Hades stares at me, and I resist the urge to twitch under his gaze.

  I’m a god, for fucks sake. The Sun God. I refuse to fidget like a little boy dragged in front of his uncle and scolded for misbehavior.

  Even if I want to.

  “How much of it?” Hades says.

  “I found the black kitten a few weeks ago. She found me, I should say. She’s half feral but she is a conduit for my power, and she settles it.”

  Hades frowns. “I still don’t understand how you need a conduit. The pantheon is in decline.”

  “You have one,” I point out. Hades waves a hand, brushing that aside.

  “I’ve always had Cerberus,” he says dismissively.

  “And I have always had Delphi and my raven,” I say. It’s not a challenge of his strength. It isn’t. The man can blink and send my soul to Hell.

  But it’s not not either.

  And from his smirk, he knows it.

  “So you’re a badass, nephew. A badass with a kitten. What of it?”

  “There was also the girl. The stolen Oracle.”

  Hades goes still. His eyes narrow as he assesses me and I meet that dark gaze levelly.

  “Tell me this is a joke,” Hades says, his voice tight and dangerous.

  “It was not intentional.”

  He explodes into motion, and Hermes takes a half-step closer to me. His eyes are on our uncle, but the move is protective and it annoys me.

  I don’t need my thief cousin to protect me. He gives me a wry look, as if to say, shut up idiot, you do in fact need your thief cousin.

  I scowl and cross my arms, grumpy.

  “Is she dangerous?” Hades demands, suddenly, glaring at me.

  I shrug. “She’s as dangerous as Del ever was. She is untrained and going insane, but she has no real malice behind her.”

  This is what my family sometimes forgets. She is a conduit. She can see and she can speak, but Del doesn’t cause the future. She merely Speaks it. Destiny has never been my realm; it was the triplets. But the saying that knowledge is power is a very true statement, and the triplets have always been guarded about the way they spin fate. Del strips away that secrecy and exposes everything that we do and don’t want to see.

  And in that, she is very dangerous.

  Hades is silent, considering the new piece of information, that there is an Oracle with my power behind her, Speaking again, for the first time in a thousand years.

  And gods are being killed.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” Hades mutters. He rakes a hand through his hair, and then gives me a glare. “You know Poseidon has half the family rallied against you and then you want to tell me that your damn prophecy is coming true, and oh, your power is just as strong as it ever was and there is a new Oracle in Delphi.”

  My power jumps, heat lighting, under my skin. “She isn’t in Delphi. And this wasn’t bloody planned.” I snarl.

  “It never is,” Hades sighs.

  He’s quiet and then. “Fine. Fine. Go mind your mad prophet, and I will try to decide what the hell we’re going to do.”

  Artemis makes a low shocked noise. “What…you are going to help us?”

  Hades slides a glance at her. “You trust him. Why are you surprised that I am choosing to do the same?”

  “Because the prophecy is coming true. That means we’re dying.”

  Hades shrugs. “We’ve been dying for the better part of a thousand years, niece. We’re just too fucking stubborn to realize it.”

  Silence reigns for a long moment, and then Hades sighs. “I am tired. We all are. Our time passed and we refused to let go. Hubris, I think. That more than anything, has sustained us. But it’s time. Past time. If it weren’t, the gods wouldn’t be being killed.” He grins, a tiny little thing that is out of place in this situation. “We are gods, after all.”

  “Go to your girl. Wait for Hermes to call you. I’ll handle the family.”

  Hades takes a half-step toward, before he goes still and twists to look back at us. “If I learn that you are the one killing the gods, I will spend eternity torturing you in Hell. You should be very aware of that.”

  I suppress my shudder and nod. Hades glances at Hermes, something silent passing between them before God of the Underworld slips from our room and we are left in his chilly wake.

  Hermes runs interference for us, and it doesn’t take long for Artie and I to slip out of new Olympus. She’s quiet, neither of us talking about the threat from Hades, or his promise of help. Artemis is a quiet woman, by nature, when she isn’t badgering me into taking better care of myself. And I appreciate it, as much as I appreciate anyone who refuses to let me be.

  Her worry comes from a good place. It always has. It still grates, like a splinter under my skin that stings when I press on it, and I know better, know not to press, but maybe I like that sting too much.

  Maybe I’m a little addicted to the caustic care, the tiny frown that forms in a wrinkle between her eyes and her lip caught and worried between her teeth.

  “You know that having an Oracle doesn’t fix you.”

  “I didn’t know I was broken,” I say, my voice mild.

  Her gaze is searching and sad when I slide a glance at her. So damn sad it almost takes my breath away.

  “We’ve been broken gods for a very long time, brother.”

  I open my mouth to say something, but I have no idea what, so I close it again, wordless, and reach blindly for her hand.

  She catches my flailing, she has always caught me, and I hold her hand as we drive through the countryside, and her hand finally stops trembling in my grasp.

  It takes me until we reach the apartment to understand.

  Artemis is scared. We are dying. If everything I’ve endured for two thousand years wasn’t enough to stop the prophecy, nothing will.

  We are dying and there is nothing to stop it.

  Chapter 17.

  Iris is changing things.

  It’s not the kind of change that is reshaping new Olympus. It’s the kind of change that makes me blink at the clean kitchen, and the low light in my apartment. The bag of clothes slung on the couch and cups of tea scattered around the room, in various stages of being drunk and discarded. She’s leaving a mark in a physical way that makes a smile stretch across my lips and makes Artie roll her eyes as she pushes me further into the room.

  Iris is humming and swaying, side to side at the window, her eyes half shut as she stares at the city, fading into darkness.

  “It’s shiny,” she says, her voice remarkably lucid.

  I slip up behind her and slide my arms around her waist, pulling her back into me. She nestles back, leaning her head against my shoulder and blinking at me, sleepy and sweet and pliant. “Where were you?” she asks, and there’s my girl. I almost shiver at the tone, the sharp demand that sings through me, and I lean down, press a quick kiss to her lips.

  “Family called,” I say softly. Something flickers in her eyes for a moment and then it’s gone and she smiles. “Everything okay?”

  I shrug. “No.”

  “Apollo,” Artemis snaps.

  I look back at her and she scowls at me. “You can’t tell a stranger the business of the pantheon.”

  “This isn’t a stranger,” I say, calmly. “It’s Del.”

  At my feet, Del snarls softly, and digs her claws into my ankle. I make a low, pained noise, and Iris giggles.

  “Call her what you will, she’s my Oracle, and I won’t lie to her.”

  She stares for a long moment, and then huffs. Her gaze goes to Iris, still standing wrapped in my arms, and she gives the new Oracle a kind of grimacing smile. “Welcome to the family, little sister,” she says, all grumpy resignation.

  Iris blinks. Artemis retreats, and I see the stag on her back, the horns shifting as they peek above the lower collar, and then she’s slamming out of the apartment.

  “She’ll be fine,” I say, brightly. Grin down at Iris. “She jus
t needs to work off some anger, let her power run. She’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “Why did she call me that?”

  Little sister.

  Words I haven’t heard from Artemis is so long it’s almost amusing. Except it’s really not.

  I shrug. “Artie has a strange bond with my Oracle. Always has. She looks at you like an unwanted sibling.”

  “Why?”

  I smile. “Because you’re mine. My Oracle, and she has to accept you, but she doesn’t necessarily like it.”

  Her eyes go distant again, unfocused and staring at something past me or maybe just past.

  “Yes. They find it amusing how much she fights for your Oracle’s place in the pantheon.”

  I feel a sharp tug of want. It hurts, that she can see them, hear them, and I cannot. I am a god, and even in the depths of my madness, I was never seeing Del.

  Hearing her voice, the sharp tartness and sweet melody and high whine, the low husk, all of the variations that sung the same tune-mine, mine, mine-I’ve spent a thousand lifetimes waiting for it and knowing it would never come, and now she stands in front of me, and it hurts a little, that she is given the thing I am not.

  Still. “I’m glad you have them.”

  It’s a strange sisterhood.

  “This is strange,” she says, after a long beat of silence.

  I slide a glance at her and she shrugs. Nods between us. “This. This thing between us. You loved them.”

  I take a breath. To deny it. To tell her that it’s not what’s been between us.

  But it is. It always has been. I have always loved my handmaidens, and my Del most of all. It is like loving Artie. Like loving myself. Effortless.

  Natural.

  “We’re doing this backwards,” I tell her, honestly. “I fell in love with Del, and made her my Oracle. With you. You are my Oracle, and I adore you.”

  Something like fear flickers across her face, there and gone so quickly I almost miss.

  Almost dismiss it.

  “What about that bothers you?” I murmur.

  She looks away, and shrugs. “It’s a strange thing, to be jealous of a dead girl. A hundred dead girls. But they’re all the same, and they’re all me, because they’re all in me, and I love them.” She shifts, anxious in my arms, and I let her go as she pulls back, a little. “I hate them because they loved you and you loved them. But I love them, because they’re me. They’re the thing that I’ve become. Oracle. Yours. How can I hate and love them, in the space of the same breath?”