“Artemis is the goddess of the moon and the hunt, of hearth and childbirth. She’s the eternal virgin and lives in the forests, with her hounds and stag.”
“She sounds…nice?”
I laugh. Nice. My sister is a vicious bitch. But then, she’s a goddess. That comes with the territory.
“Her brother is the god of the sun. Of healing and song. He can create plague as easily as he can heal cancer. He’s a slut to his sister’s virginal purity. And he’s the god of prophecy.” I glance at Heath, whose staring at me, looking spooked. “The twins are actually rather powerful, within the pantheon. Two sides of the same coin, they stand just below Zeus and his brothers.” I grin, a quick fleeting thing. “That always pissed Hera off to no end.”
“Healing,” Heath whispers harshly, and his hands are shaking. “You can…”
I sober. Nod once. “I didn’t do it intentionally. Any of this.”
“If,” he says, and his voice shakes, a trembling thing. “If you are a god, how do you accidentally heal someone you’ve never met? How do you do that to my sister?”
“I wanted to make her smile. She was crying, and I wanted to make her smile,” I say. “My power was…is…touchy.”
He eyes me and then, “I don’t think I want to know.”
I hum an agreement.
“Why is she so…different?”
“Because she has my power living within her. She Sees the future, and every possible future. It’s…overwhelming.”
He watches her for a long time and then, “I don’t know that I believe you.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, softly. “But she needs you to support her.”
His face is troubled, but he nods. “What do I do?”
When I shut the door behind Heath, the sun was setting. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I glanced down at it.
I wasn’t surprised to see my sister’s name blinking up at me, and a few texts from Hermes. It had been almost a week since I made an appearance at new Olympus.
It was difficult for me to be there. The family was like a skin that didn’t fit quite right, something too tight and constricting, and no matter how much I twisted in it, I couldn’t get it to be comfortable.
It wasn’t that they had changed. They were my family. Bright and beautiful and decadent and devious and ever unchanging.
The problem wasn’t that the pantheon hadn’t changed.
It was that I had.
I didn’t fit there, and that stung. It made it hard, almost impossible, to be with them.
“Thank you,” Iris whispers, stretching in the sun chair.
I drop to my knees by her, and she makes a low noise in her throat as I press against her knees, her hand coming up to tangle in my hair. “You don’t have to thank me.”
“You helped. You didn’t think I should tell him, and you still helped me.”
I shrug against her knee, jostling her just a little. “It’s what you wanted, sweetheart.”
“Will you take me out?” she murmurs, and I roll my head up to look at her. There’s a faint red line on her cheeks and across her nose, and it makes me smile, a little.
She looks young and innocent, impossibly so, and I nod again, “Of course, Iris.”
Her smile is bright, and blinding. It’s a smile that is familiar and painful, and strange and new, and it tugs at me.
Falling in love is a slow slide, but it’s a steady thing.
We go to a concert hall.
Not the wild concerts in the open arenas or on the beach, or even the indie rock concerts in underground bars and clubs. They thrum across the city like beacons and I feel them tugging at me, a slow pulse.
And none are places I can take her, not with the press of people and the wild tangle of visions.
She dresses in a jade green sheath that does very little to hide her slight frame and sweet curves that are familiar to me, now. Her hair is tugged up in that maddening braided twist that itches for my fingers.
But when she reaches up to bind her eyes. That’s when I stop her.
“Trust me?” I murmur.
And her pale eyes find mine, and they’re searching. Open wide and searching, and I want her to trust me.
We’re doing this dance. This maddening dance, where she will trust me and then jerk away, spooked, and I am left holding nothing, waiting desperately for her to come back to me.
She’s grinning at me, as I lead her from my apartment.
Our apartment. Somehow it’s become hers as much as mine, and I smile at that bit of truth. I like her being in my space, sharing it with me. I like that she’s comfortable here, and that I know I will find her in my sun chair when I return, my kitten curled in her lap.
Iris eyes me with the curious distance that is so often her way of dealing with me, but it’s soft. Softer than normal.
And that makes something like hope stir in my gut.
I hadn’t lied, when I told her that I didn’t love her.
But if I were to say it today, nearly two months after she took my power and became my Oracle.
It would be a lie, or close to one.
A slow smile curls her lips, knowing and cocky, and she tucks a hand in the curve of my arm.
“C’mon, Apollo. Show a girl a good time.”
Her eyes go wide at the concert hall. Wide and almost reverent and she breathes my name like a prayer, and desire skitters up my spine.
This, in retrospect, may not have been the best idea I’ve had in my very long life. I smile at her as I lead her away from the stately crowds of well-dressed and wealthy, up into a corner box that almost hangs over the wide stage, and offers us privacy. Here, she can listen to the music and not be in the midst of all the shining threads of Vision.
Her eyes are soft and warm when she smiles at me, and then the musicians are playing, and for a moment, I forget even Iris.
Music is my favorite form of worship. More even than the Sun that channels my power and the visions that race along my skin and fill up my Oracle, music feeds me.
It soothes me.
To hear them now, playing with utter precision and skill, rips me away from this little booth with Iris and into a world of worship.
I let my power thread out, let it curl around the orchestra, and swell, rising with their playing, twisting around them and making them better and drinking it back in, a symbiotic loop that left me gasping next to her.
And she let me.
I could feel her watching, her pale eyes curious, but she didn’t push. She didn’t tug me back to her side when I leaned forward, my arms pillowed on the half rail and my chin tucked into them, eyes wide and watching, as the music swung and swirled around us.
She didn’t demand anything, but she touched me, once, a hand on my back, her fingers warm through the linen of my shirt, and comforting.
Iris is a mystery, at the best of times. And tonight she is even more so. She’s silent as we return to the apartment, and I can feel need humming along my skin like power brought to life. I want to pull her into my arms and my bed, and she’s distant. Skirting around me as she scoots into the bathroom and emerges a few minutes later in loose sleep pants she stole from my dresser and a red plaid shirt unbuttoned over a tank top. It’s vaguely ridiculous that she can look so fucking gorgeous in such casual clothing. It’s frumpy at best, and yet Iris tugs at that fucking twisted braid and it all comes cascading down, and she’s not just gorgeous. She’s breathtaking.
And she still won’t look at me.
She does this sometimes. A silent demand for space as she withdraws, sliding into pensive with the ease of blinking. It was fascinating and frustrating by turns and right now, it was frustrating.
Del and I had always been tactile. She liked to be touched, to be petted and have me ground her visions and power in my own. And I liked to touch her.
Symbiotic. We were always symbiotic.
But Iris doesn’t want that and I murmur a low goodnight before I retreat to my bedroom, leaving h
er in the living room.
I twist in the darkness, anxious, watching the moon move silver across my floor until I finally drift off to a fitful sleep. And wake to warmth and movement. Iris is moving against my sheets, shifting closer. She stares at me for a moment, her eyes shining in the light of my sister’s moon, and then she kisses me. And I come to life under it, my hands digging into her hair as her teeth nip at my lip and her tongue fucks into my mouth in a kiss so filthy and desperate it shakes me.
I am a god, and a slut, and I am shaken by this girl and her desperate kisses.
The world doesn’t make sense anymore.
Maybe it never really did, and I was merely lying to myself.
She shifts against me, pushing up so that she’s straddling my hips, her nails digging into my skin, thumb brushing over the open eye tattooed on my chest, as she sinks down on my cock, and she gasps, this broken noise that hits me hard, and I tug at her gently. She sobs and rocks against me, and I can’t see her, in the darkness.
The moon is hiding, giving me this moment of solitude and privacy.
When Iris comes, it’s with a gasp, and my name spilling broken from her and it drags my own orgasm from me, a rush of power and pleasure and I squeeze her hips, until she whimpers and shifts, my cock softening in her.
She curls against me in the dark, and I don’t ask any of the questions that are twisting in me, begging to be asked. Instead I press a quick kiss to her hair and tug her close. Pull the blanket over us and let sleep claim us both.
But I hear her whisper, when she thinks I am sleeping.
“Thank you, Apollo.”
Chapter 20.
The call comes three days later, when we’ve found a kind of tabula. She listens when I try to teach her and I listen when she Speaks, and Del doesn’t hiss at me as much, which I’m counting as a firm win.
It’s almost peaceful and I am basking in it because we haven’t had peace in a damn long time.
And of course, that is when it shatters.
The phone rings, and I shift in bed. Iris groans and rubs her face in my chest, and I nudge her to the side. “Too early,” she mutters and she’s not wrong.
The moon is still up.
I frown as I answer the phone, and I hear something I can only remember hearing once before.
The day she found me in the empty temple of Delphi, my mind shattered, lost in vision.
That was the last time I hear my sister cry.
I hear it again now.
“Apollo,” she gasps, and I sit upright, dumping Iris on the bed, and narrowing my eyes as I listen to my sister’s sobs. She sounds broken, and terrified.
Weak.
“Apollo, you need to get here. There’s been an attack.”
My mouth feels dry and I can feel Iris watching me, her eyes worried.
I ask, even knowing what the answer will be. “Who?”
She hesitates, for a heartbeat and then, “It’s Hermes. They attacked Hermes.”
The thing is that killing a god is a difficult, and messy business. There have been three deaths, now. Three members of the pantheon, godlings and demigods, children who were already fading and dying, found slaughtered.
Hermes isn’t one of those.
He’s a god of Olympus, the god of messengers and thieves and the apprentice of Hades.
He is strong, even now. There is no way that a minor god could do this.
My cousin is slumped on his bed, his torso bandaged. There is a long cut across his face, like he was sliced by a blade, but what the hell kind of blade could flay open a god like that? I stare at him, and my stomach twists and pitches, and I want, very badly, to throw up. Rage blisters under my skin, and it’s feeding off the rage of my half- siblings and cousins. Aphrodite sits in the window of the room, her legs pulled up to her chest, and her eyes are cold.
Aphrodite has always been sugar sweet and hot heat—a combination that kept most of Olympus on its toes and hid a volatile temper. But she’s cold now, and withdrawn. We all are. Heph leans against the wall near her, close but not touching. Ares stalks behind me, all brute strength and fury.
But when Hades steps into the room, it goes still and silent, the gods cowed by the dark, furious god.
There are few things as awe inspiring and terrifying as Hades in full fury.
When he sits next to my cousin, it’s gentle, and his voice is soft as he asks, “What happened?”
Hermes summons a very wry smile. “I didn’t see them.”
“How did you get caught?” Hades asks, softly.
“A net, of all fucking things.” Hermes snorts. “I got cocky. Golden net spun across the crossroads.”
Hermes favorite things. The trap was set deliberately. Hades’ eyes were cold and I shiver when he turns to me.
“A word, nephew.”
I nod, but I step closer to Hermes, first. Brush a hand over his hair, and let power spin through me, through him. Hermes eyes squeeze shut and he makes a noise, a high- pitched whine before he slumps against the bed.
The entire room is silent, and this time, the gods are quiet because of me, and not the lord of the Underworld.
They’re silent as we leave, and I shiver in that quiet. In the sudden absence of my family’s whispers and plotting.
This isn’t our norm, but then the attack against one of our own is not normal either.
Hades leads me to a suite of rooms I had not yet been to. It’s dark and light, blackest night mixed with white marble, the white so bright it gleams in the blackness.
These are his rooms, the rooms that he shares with Persephone, and they are so clearly a blending of my aunt and uncle that it’s almost unremarkable in its simple, savage beauty.
I wonder if this is what their home in Hades looks like.
“You have an Oracle. I want her here. I want to know what the hell happened to Hermes.”
I go still. “Uncle, you know that it never goes well when the Oracle plays with the fates of the gods.”
“You bound yourself, Apollo. Your girl didn’t do that. You took your power back, knowing it would drive you mad. This isn’t a request. Bring her to me.”
Power flares, a dark wave from him and I shudder as it washes over me like a cold wave, and that’s when I realize just how pissed he is. How scared.
Because he’s lashing out, all thoughtless fury and commands, and wild power.
It’s not the consummate control I’ve always seen from my uncle.
So I shove back, sharp enough with a wave of white hot light that he flinches and his wall of darkness falters and scatters under my assault. He stares at me for a long, tense moment, and that instinctive fear rises up, choking me.
“She’s new, Uncle. New and scared. I will bring her here, and you will accept the consequences of that.” Scared or not, my voice is sharp and demanding, all imperious fury and I’m kinda amazed and proud that I’m able to pull that off.
“You won’t hurt her. None of them will, or the next blood to spill will be at my hands.”
Hades smiles, slow and almost proud. He nods once.
“As you say, nephew.”
I snort my opinion of that, and turn to leave. “Why did you heal him?”
Hades is still standing in his black and white marble room, eternally patient and unchanging as he stares at me.
“Because he’s family, Hades. In this whole fucking place, he and Artemis are the only family I have. I’ll always protect them.”
Iris is, predictably, pissed.
I’ve noticed something about her. She doesn’t express emotion well. So when she’s afraid, it comes out as anger. Or sex. Or anything but the actual emotion she’s trying to keep from me.
It’s annoying but I understand it, and I’m willing to let it slide.
“You said they hated me.”
“They do,” I say, rummaging in my closet. Artie left some clothes here, and they should do to dress an Oracle.
“Then why the hell would I want to meet them?”
I don’t tell her that this isn’t about what she wants. Because it’s not. It’s not about what I want either. It’s about what my family needs. That’s what it’s always been about.
I drop the clothes on the bed and move around it to catch her hands in mine.
“I need you to trust me, Iris. I’m not going to let you get hurt. Not by my family, or yours or anyone else. Can you trust me?”
She stares at me, for a long moment, and then nods. Goes up on tip toes to press a kiss to my cheek and then moves away.
“I’ll get dressed.”
My family is a bunch of gossiping whores. We have always been, and we, in truth, will always be. I’ve accepted it about us.
When I first came to Olympus with Leto and Artemis and Hera turned her back on us, the bastard brats of her husband. That was the first time I heard the whispers. The first time they swept through the halls of Olympus and twisted around me and Artie in a poisonous cloud that choked everything and colored our first look at the place that was to be our eternal home.
It feels the same way, as we walk into new Olympus. I pull up to the sprawling mansion and she stares at it. She’s wearing white with gold accents, my colors, and green emeralds sit at her wrists and drip down from her ears.
She looks imperious and innocent and so very wise, all the things that my Oracle always is. And her eyes are bright and unfocused, as we walk up to the house.
My family knows me, too well. They will never mistake Iris for anything but what she is. My Oracle. The girl I adore and gave my power to, however unintentionally.
She holds herself well, though. She keeps her head up and her gaze moves around the hall with a bemused curiosity as I lead her into the hall.
Athena is in the hall, and her gaze is sharp and angry. Like she is judging us.
Judging me.
“You brought one of your whores here? Our cousin is on—“
“Hades asked me to,” I say, my tone sharp and brooking no argument.
She goes silent, and I can feel Iris watching me as I reach for her hand, and tug her into new Olympus.
Broken God Page 14