Chapter 20

I forgot what it feels like to breathe.

A long time ago, I think.

None of this started with Hermes.

He just made it all come to the surface.

I can’t blame him for that. He didn’t know what he was stepping into.

All he did was come back. No one ever came back.

Not my dad, not my sister, not my mom.

Not even me.

I guess I latched onto whatever remnants of himself he had left to give me.

I think the obsession was mutual. He needed me, too. Just in a way no one else would ever understand

He couldn’t stay. I couldn’t leave. It should’ve been perfectly balanced.

And then I demanded to save him.

I didn’t know I could be his undoing.

I never would’ve left my stupid little apartment if I knew coming back to Olympus meant he’d have to face the wrath of a scorned king.

But something in me was always meant to be here. Something I might not ever understand.

Hera said Hecate. She had secret twins and dropped them off with some mortal family.

Iris said Melinoe. That Persephone is my grandmother and Thalia and I are some kind of discarded bastard daughters.

I don’t care.

I won’t care.

I haven’t seen Hermes since we fought. The last time I looked at him, I hated him.

Without him, I’ve forgotten how to breathe all over again.

The music stops, and my eyes crack open to a blinding sunlight.

Maybe the tightness in my chest is a little more bearable with Apollo around.

“Bad dream?” he asks too casually, his hair fluttering around his collar bones in the light breeze.

My eyes squint against the glow of his aura. “Why’d you stop playing?”

He leans back, planting his elbows in the grass behind him. “The song was over.”

“Then play another one.” Rolling over, I let my gaze trail over the landscape. This was all glorious once. Maybe months ago. Maybe it’s only been a few days. I don’t know anymore. The pond still shines like the first time. Like the sun fell out of the sky and decided to make a new home in the water.

It still smells like rot. All of it.

Apollo’s hand on my shoulder doesn’t stop the shaking. Nothing does anymore. My nerves have been shot since that day with Hera. Nothing’s been right since then.

“Zeus agreed to your terms. You’ll see him again soon enough.”

Soon.

Soon used to mean tomorrow.

Soon used to be a promise.

Now it’s a curse disguised as a god cloaked in lightning.

“Do you still have to do the prophesy thing tonight?” I ask, desperate for something to fill the void in my head.

I flip onto my back and stare up at the sky. Everything here is too bright. Too excited to exist.

“I do,” Apollo responds, his fingers trailing down my arm the same way they always do. The way that leaves goosebumps and heat all at the same time. That used to mean safety. Or maybe desire. I don’t know anymore.

“Do I have to be there?” I already know the answer. I don’t have to be anywhere. I’m never expected to do anything. No one looks at me. No one cares. No one talks about the fact that their once beloved golden god is being dragged through Olympus by a woman wrapped in shadow.

No one talks about the way Hermes disappeared.

No one cares.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“I’d appreciate you being there,” he says softly, his voice crackling through me like fire. His hand grasps mine as he sprawls in the grass next to me. “There’s always some sort of spectacle after the performance, anyway. Perhaps it’ll give you something to focus on.”

I can’t even pretend to try to smile. “Do you think he’ll be there?”

Apollo turns his head to look at me, and I mirror the gesture. The longer I look at him, the less he looks like Hermes. He’s just Apollo. Comfortable and warm and a little too touchy, but completely himself. He’s good. Kind. Caring. All the things I shouldn’t want right now.

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully, his eyebrows tilting upward in his signature sympathetic look. “I doubt it. Zeus is too focused on keeping order right now to loosen his leash.”

Nodding, I look back up at the sky.

Good. If he’s not there, Zeus isn’t touching him.

“I just want to know he’s okay.”

Apollo’s fingers squeeze my hand a little tighter as he bring my hand closer, until the back of my palm rests on his bare torso. “I know.” His stomach rises and falls with each even breath, his heat pressing into me in a way that feels suffocating. “When the time comes, I’ll help any way I can.”

He means the trials. Hera and Zeus’s brilliant solution to the chaos: make me earn the right to love him, like he’s some divine trophy and I’m not already bleeding.

Starting…sometime soon, hopefully. Olympus doesn’t operate on the same timeline as my brain, apparently. It feels like it’s been forever since that day.

“I know.”

I leave before he does. The walk back to the Pantheon feels less like an obligation when I’m alone.

Apollo offered his room to me after all the dust settled. But I couldn’t do it. It felt too much like moving on.

I accepted Callie’s offer to stay in her room. The human room. It feels more like home. Less like I’m pretending not to think about the looming threat of trials I’m not designed to survive.

Survive.

That word’s weird to me now. I guess I’ll survive everything if I’m truly the daughter of an immortal. If I’m an immortal.

The word tastes like poison.

Death was never something I wanted to achieve, but it being out of reach was never something I’d considered. Being alive forever would be exhausting.

Dionysus offered to give me Ambrosia once. Some sort of honey substance that provides immortality. He just wanted to see what it would do to me.

I refused, of course.

If there’s any mortal left in my immortality, I want to preserve it.

The parties stopped at some point. No more naked nymphs or midnight sips of Nectar. Callie and Dionysus keep to themselves as much as I do. Maybe I just have that effect on people.

I think Olympus is just finally realizing how lonely it is without Hermes.

When I push open the door to Dionysus’s room, Callie is sprawled on the couch with a book in one hand, a glass of wine in the other.

She doesn’t look up as she motions toward the open bottle on the bar.

Yes, please.

I pour myself a glass in silence and recline in the armchair opposite her.

“How’s Apollo?” she asks in a tone I don’t appreciate, swirling the blood red wine around in the glass.

“Fine.” I take a sip, then wipe my mouth with the back of my sleeve. “How’s the book?”

“Fine,” she responds, her eyes not even pretending to read the words on the page.

She’s always like this. Cold for no reason. I think something’s wedged between her and Dionysus. He’s not around often anymore. She’s around too often.

“Are you coming to the prophesy thing tonight?” The wine tastes like grapes and sadness. I don’t even like wine.

“Yep,” she mutters in a clipped tone. “Someone has to translate for you, right?”

“Right.” I let my eyes drift around the room. I swear it looks different in her every time I walk in. A picture out of place, the fabric of a chair replaced, sometimes even the walls are painted a different hue. The perks of god powers, I guess.

She finally closes the book and rests it on her chest. Her green eyes pierce through something deep in my soul as she lets out a long, annoyed sounding sigh. “When are you gonna stop moping around all the time?”

My lip curls as I cock my head to the side. “When are you gonna stop being a bitch all the time?”

A smile cracks through the hard exterior of her expression and she sits up to rest her elbows on her knees. “You’re not wearing that tonight, are you?”

“What’s wrong with it?” My gaze trails down myself. A loose sweater tucked into loose pants. Something to hide the way my main sources of nutrition has become alcohol and pure adrenaline.

“You look like my dead grandpa,” she responds with a snort, then rises to her feet. “These things are actual formal events. You belong here now. You should dress like it.”

Goddamn it, Callie. I don’t want to belong here.

It’s hard to disagree with her. I’m pretty sure she’s always right.

Even so, the weight on my chest doubles as I slip into the golden dress.

The last time I dressed up, it was with Hermes. He looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He adjusted the dress when it sagged around my ribs and didn’t say anything but how much I looked like I was meant to be here.

Callie is not Hermes.

“Girl,” she drags out as she pinches the material at my back. “When did you turn into a bag of bones?”

“I’m not a bag of bones,” I respond through gritted teeth. “If I was, how the hell would I keep up with Hera’s training?”

“Sheer willpower, baby,” she says in a sing song voice, wagging her hips like this is something to be excited about. “Seriously though, you look terrible.”

I force a pinched smile at her in the mirror. “Thank you, Callista. You always know how to make me feel better.”

She holds her hands up like there’s any innocence left in her. I’ve heard the stories about her and Dionysus. “Someone needs to tell you! You look like you’re about to blow away.”

Rolling my eyes, I step away from her, the dress now secured semi-tight around my waist. “I get it, okay?”

“Uh oh, did someone get in trouble?” Dionysus strides through the door like someone invited him, bouncing on the balls of his feet with each step.

His hair is tied back with some kind of laurel, a smear of eyeliner around each eye in a way that looks blatantly sinful.

“Get out,” Callie commands in a low voice, her expression turning cold in exactly zero seconds.

“I would,” he responds in mock sympathy, “but unfortunately, I’m here to collect you two for the ceremony.” The word rolls of his tongue like it disgusts him.

I remember a very similar time when he came to collect me. It wasn’t Callie standing beside me then.

Callie rolls her head around on her shoulders, then places a hand on my arm. “You ready?”

“Nope.” It takes everything in me not to scream at both of them to stop being so nonchalant about all this. About everything. All the time.

The walk through the Pantheon feels like a death sentence. I don’t know if it’s for me, or them.