Broken God

by Andrews,Nazarea

  Her eyes are big and pleading and furious and I smile at her. It’s sad and she shivers against me, her eyes bright and unfocused. When she looks at me like that, I know she’s not seeing me. And I am jealous because I want her to see me and I want to see what she’s seeing.

  There is a part of me that loves this girl. That cannot help but love her, because she is mine. The difference is that my girl was always chosen. Mine in truth before power tied her to me irrevocably.

  This. This thing we have going between Iris and me. It's everything, done backwards. The forced intimacy because of my power living within her doesn't feel right.

  Because I don't love her.

  I don't love her.

  I laugh at that, giddy with relief suddenly and her eyebrows go up as she watches me, amusement dancing in her pale eyes. “What?”

  “I keep wondering why I like you. It's not normal. I never like my Oracle, Iris. I need her, am consumed by her. She's part of me, the part that settled my power and makes me strong and allows me to be weak.”

  She's the best of me.

  “You. I like you. Your sweet and funny and fascinating. But I don't love you.”

  “Well, you've known me for like a week.”

  I grin at her flat, unimpressed tone. “I know.”

  “We can work together, Apollo. You don't need to love me for me to serve as your Oracle.”

  I nod and she flashes a smile at me.

  Trusting.

  Silly seer. She will love me and I will love her. It is who we are. What we are.

  Just.

  Not yet.

  Chapter 18.

  Teaching an Oracle takes time.

  Catching the killer of gods takes time.

  Falling in love takes time.

  If there is anything I have an abundance of, it is time.

  I spend weeks with Iris, in small towns outside of Seattle, where the population is tiny and manageable and she can play with the threads of Sight.

  I spend weeks at the sprawling estate of new Olympus, where decadence and betrayal ran like wine and none of us knew who was killing the gods.

  I spend weeks with Artemis and Hermes and it feels like home, like everything I had forgotten.

  I spend weeks relearning who I am and falling slowly.

  That surprises me most. Not that I fall. I expected that. But that it is slowly.

  I am not a patient man and the dance we are doing, it's slow and sweet and maddening.

  She will allow me close to her, let me hold her in the quiet hours of night and sway naked in my shower, head tipped back and eyes closed, all of the water pouring down on her and obscuring the shinning threads of Sight.

  She loves the shower.

  But then, she’ll push me away, turn icy cold and remote, her gaze closed off, hiding behind oversized sweaters and cryptic words and fury.

  Gods, she’s so angry.

  I forget, that this is hard for her. That she didn’t walk into it with her eyes wide open, knowing what it would mean to take my power, that it would drive her to the brink of madness.

  I feel guilty about it, strangely. With my other girls, they knew and never permitted me to feel guilty. It was almost an insult, for me to take responsibility for their madness. It was a choice they made. I had no right to take it from them with my guilt.

  But with Iris.

  Neither of us chose this and she swings between accepting it with a smile and fury, bristling with rage that shakes her and makes her withdraw.

  It’s worse when she does it and she’s in the grip of Sight. When she’s lost in visions and dangerous to herself and refuses to let me near her.

  It’s terrifying.

  I give her a deck of cards, and a tiny box that holds rolling papers and a small stash of weed, and a golden lighter that she delights in playing with.

  Del always spent more time than not stoned out of her mind, and I see no reason to change that with Iris.

  Being the vessel of a god’s power is hard enough, there is no good reason to do it clean and sober.

  But it’s no good. Not really. She’s too unpredictable, too prone to anger and sulking.

  I’m desperate. Desperate enough that when I reach out, it is to a mortal and her family, and it is not the worst idea I’ve ever had.

  But it is close.

  I leave her in my apartment, with Del as company, and I go see her brother.

  Heath Greene still doesn’t like me.

  Of course, Heath Greene doesn’t realize I am a god, and his sister’s patron, and the reason the cells that were multiplying faster than the medicine could work no longer are.

  In short, the boy knows too little to be appreciative, and though part of me would like to correct him about my small place in the universe, I don’t. Iris knows exactly what I am and she’s Seen enough to know that I am to blame for Heath’s renewed health. Heath also doesn’t also need to know.

  But as I stand next to his hospital bed, I consider that it might buy me some good will.

  And gods know I could use that.

  “What did you do?” he says, not bothering to look up from the book he’s scribbling in.

  I blink and almost ask what he means, but then he looks up at me and his gaze is sharp and assessing.

  “Did you hurt her?”

  I shake my head. “I would sooner cut off my own hand than, then hurt her.”

  His eyes go wide and considering, and then, “Dude. Anyone tell you you’re kinda intense?”

  I consider that and give him a slow smile. Intense is one way to describe it.

  “So what? She calls, but she hasn’t come by. And you wouldn’t be here without her without a reason. What’s going on?”

  “I have a twin,” I say, instead of answering his question, and his eyes go wide. “Her name is Artie. You would like her, I think. She’s spent the better part of our lives, making sure I don’t do something she considers unforgivably stupid.”

  “Sounds like a good sister,” Heath says, grudgingly.

  “The best,” I agree. “Iris is going through something. She might not tell you everything—I don’t think you’d believe her, if she did. But she could use her family.”

  Heath is staring at me, and his eyes are somewhere between grateful and furious. I shrug one shoulder. “She doesn’t want to get you involved.”

  “And you decided to ignore what she wants?”

  “Yes,” I say simply. “Because what she wants isn’t necessarily good for her.”

  He grunts at that, and shifts in the bed. Sits up. “Get me some fucking clothes, then. Let’s go see my broken- winged sister.”

  She is furious.

  She’s sitting in the sun chair, Del curled like a liquid black scarf around her shoulders, a cloud of smoke hanging around her head. Her hair is braided loosely and pulled up in some complicated knot that I think, if I tug just a little, it will all fall to pieces, and cascade all that silky dirty gold over my hands and I could draw her head back, expose the length of her neck and kiss her until that bristling hostility faded away.

  I won’t.

  Of course, I won’t.

  But the urge is there, making my fingers almost twitch with need.

  She blinks at me, hazy with Sight and weed, and a slow smile twists her lips.

  And then Heath steps into the room, behind me.

  Her eyes fly open, and her posture snaps straight. “Get out,” she almost spits, and it draws him up short, like he’s not sure how to respond. “Get the fuck out!” she screams. Del hisses, and she dumps the cat on the ground as she darts away, curling in a corner of the apartment, her face pressed into the wall. “Out, out out out, Apollo, get him out.”

  I reach for her, and she stares at me, her eyes wild and furious and afraid. “I can See, Pollo.”

  The words are almost ripped from her, desperate, and I turn, abruptly, shoving Heath into the tiny bathroom. “Stay,” I snap.

  “What the fuc—“ I slam the door behin
d me, and then scoop her into my arms, carrying her back to the sun chair. I tug her against me.

  “You shouldn’t have brought him,” she almost whines, her body trembling above me. “I don’t want to know.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed. I forgot. Dammit all, I forgot.

  There was a reason we kept Del in Delphi, in a tiny temple with my handmaidens, separated from her family and the loves of her life before service.

  Because no one should see how their family would die.

  But she saw him, when she woke with my power and it ran raw and unfocused, and I forgot.

  I fucking forgot.

  “Iris,” I whisper, and press a kiss to her hair.

  “I can’t tell him, can I?” she says into my chest, and I shrug.

  “He’s your brother, sweetheart. You can tell him what you want. You can’t control what happens after you tell him. But I won’t forbid it.”

  She smirks at me, a watery, defiant thing and I roll my eyes. “I know. I can’t forbid you to do anything.”

  She kisses my cheek and swings up off my lap. “Good boy. You’re learning.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  She nibbles her lip and then. “Blindfold me.”

  My heart seizes.

  Binding her powers is….

  Gods, it’s dangerous.

  “Iris,”

  “Just until he leaves. I can’t See him, Apollo. I can’t. Please.”

  Which is how I find myself pressing a length of black satin to her eyes and tying it, tighter, Apollo she admonishes—at the back of her skull. She heaves a sigh, a happy noise, and then sits in the sun chair.

  Del hesitates a moment, her gaze swinging from me to the bound Oracle, and I know that her disgust is mirrored in my own expression. Still. This is her choice.

  I won’t order her to do anything, any more than I will forbid her.

  “Bring him in,” she murmurs.

  Delphi was shaking.

  Shaking like leaves rattling down on the changing winds that shake through the dying grasses and turn our sea stormy and cold.

  Shaking, shaking, shaking, like a dying thing.

  Her smile was brittle and cool, while her guests are here. I lounged not far from her, but unassuming.

  A deaf mute who could watch the sheep and tend her fire and smile dumb reassurances at her brothers who stared prickly and suspicious over the flames at her and me and back again.

  She’s shaking, shaking, shaking.

  Oh, but she was strong. When they smiled at her, all suspicious and bright eyes, she gave it back. Happy and light, a wily smile curving up her pretty lips and I had to bite mine to keep from laughing.

  Gods, my girl was brilliant. She had been playing them for hours, dancing around their questions with rambling answers that said nothing, and food that was just the wrong side of disgusting, without being so overly bad they could say something without insulting her. And any time their gazes strayed toward me, she would bring up the herds, the dogs, the bandits on the roads, her parents. Anything that would send the oldest—Dealph—busy and ranting, while she arranged her face in an appropriate response and listened with rapt attention.

  It had been hours and the night was beginning to wind in on us, and I could feel it on the wind, the whispers of dogs howling, and feet running, the whistle of arrows on the wind and a silver coated laugh.

  My sister was hunting and she was coming.

  I eyed Del and her brothers, and wondered if their blood would spill, or if my girl was bright enough to get them out before Artemis could kill them.

  It was an interesting consideration.

  But she was shaking. Shaking and shaking and shaking, her distractions becoming more and more obvious, her words making less sense, and her eyes rolled to me, in fright now.

  She was scared, and it hit me suddenly.

  I shift, and uncurl from where I sit, crossing to her in two strides, and her brothers are shouting. I can hear them. They don’t register, really, but I can hear them.

  “Del,” I murmur and the younger brother curses, falling away from the fire.

  I forget, I think, to mask my voice. Del is used to it, used to the echoes and reverberations, used to the raw power.

  Her very mortal, very ordinary brothers, are not.

  “Make them leave,” she whispers, and her voice is pleading. Begging for something I have the power to give.

  But.

  “Why?” I ask, and her eyes flick up to mine. Wide and wide and frightened, gods so frightened.

  “Shhh, sweet,” I murmur and flick a hand. Power surges up and through me and I feel my cousin, the prick of his interest as he turns to me, somewhere in the world, called by a thought and need.

  “Pollo, help,” she begs.

  “Get away from her,” an angry voice snarls, and then another snarl pitches over his, and the wind isn’t howling.

  Her eyes are wide and terrified and I know now, what she Saw.

  I turn to look at Delphi’s brothers and make a silent promise.

  My girl will never face this again. Never look at her family, the ones she loved, and See their future.

  “Don’t run,” I mutter, tugging Del closer, and she laughs, a low moan into my chest. I press a kiss against her hair.

  “What?” Dealph demands, his eyes furious and I flash a smile, deadly and insane, and repeat myself.

  “Don’t. Run.”

  One will. I don’t need to ask. I stretch my power, let it brush against Del, just softly, and it’s there. A death in the dark, and my sister, gilded in silver and crimson blood, stalking through the moonlit forest.

  A dashing body, gold tipped wings and my sister’s screams.

  I huff a sigh, and lean down. Tilt Del up to kiss me. “Stay here, sweetheart,” I whisper, and I hear her brothers shouting, so very distant.

  She nods. I whisper against her lips, a breathless apology and she shudders, nodding against me. Feel her tears on my palms. I take the heartbeat to wipe them away and wait for a weak—gods, so weak—smile twist up her lips and then I’m gone. Yanked away by the furious brothers who should never have come here. She makes a noise, choked and I see red when I see the younger brother—what is his name—holding her, restraining her.

  Power flares from me, a hot wave of fury and blinding sunlight and plague, twisting on a note of music that screams into my sister’s hunting dirge, and the world shatters into primal force.

  Running. We’re all running. I can hear Del’s screams, the grief that rises like a ghostly song and it speeds me on my way, her brothers chasing, and the howling of my sister’s hounds behind us.

  Faster, cousin.

  Thunder cracks and lightening doesn’t follow, and I know he’s close.

  Rain and rain and screaming and rage, and I feel so very alive.

  Don’t run. Don’t run.

  I still, on a wide open cliff, and they’re upon me, slamming into me, all the rage of a mortal man, and I want to laugh as they tear at me, want to tell them it will never touch me.

  Only one mortal can touch me, and she is weeping in a cave miles behind us.

  I laugh, wild and crazy and taste blood and mud and rain when Dealph kicks me, spinning me through the mud and then.

  Hermes!

  I scream my cousin’s name, but it’s too late.

  She comes from the rain like a nightmare brought to life, silver touched and fierce, a bloody smile on her lips and rage in her eyes. A primal goddess demanding her due. For a moment, as the human men lean over me, and the rain falls, and I am suspended between them and my sister, I know.

  This is everything we will ever be.

  This is everything we were meant to be.

  She smiles and I greet her, and the ground trembles under the force of my voice. “Hail, Artemis, goddess of hunt. Well met, sister.”

  She flashes a mad smile, and there is no reason in her eyes.

  Her fingers snap as the wind screams, and she is screaming r
age as her hounds tear Dealph to pieces, and Hermes steals Delphi’s only living brother.

  And far away, she is shaking and screaming grief.

  Chapter19.

  Heath stops in the doorway.

  “You need to not ask. She’ll tell you what she can,” I say, moving away from him to lean against the wall by the sun chair.

  Del curls in Iris’ lap and glares at Heath. She’s on edge, picking up on the tension in the room, and in Iris.

  And it occurs to me, for the first time. Del isn’t mine. She’s very much Iris’s cat and I am merely the god who found her and brought her to her mistress.

  The cat twists her head and blinks at me, narrow-eyed acknowledgement of my realization, and then it’s refocusing on Iris and Heath.

  “What the fuck, Iris?” he breathes, and Iris laughs, this high- pitched, crazy thing.

  And then she tells him.

  Everything.

  Heath waits until she’s drifting off, Del pressed against her side, to even look at me.

  “She’s insane.”

  “She is,” I agree, calmly. “It doesn’t mean she’s wrong or lying to you about anything she said.”

  “C’mon, dude. You aren’t fucking Apollo.”

  I lift an eyebrow. “What do you know about the Greek pantheon?”

  He blinks at me and I wait, patiently. I can outwait this boy on my worst day, and today is far from that. My Oracle wants him to know what we are. It matters to her, and I will always give my Oracle what is within my power to give.

  “Um. Zeus. They fucked around in the Trojan War. Lots of fucking and killing. Hades killed folks.”

  “Hades doesn’t kill anyone,” I say, grumpily. “He merely presides over the realm of the dead.”

  “Hades isn’t real,” Heath says, slowly.

  “What do you know about the twins?”

  “Not much,” he admits, looking faintly embarrassed. Good. He should be. We’re the fucking Moon and Sun. Not knowing about us is just insulting.