Broken God (20 page)

Chapter 22.

It’s late, when Hermes wakes.

Hades comes for us, which pulls a startled hiccup from Iris.
She eyes the god nervously while trying to look like she isn’t terrified.

He smiles. “Don’t look so scared, sweetheart. I’m not here
to drag you to hell.”

“Mmm, but that is in your job description,” she says without
thinking, and drops her cards on my bed. I smoother my smile when her jaw drops
open and her eyes go wide. “Dude, I am so sorry. I have no idea why I said
that.”

“Because you are very honest, Iris. It’s a good quality to
have. One that I won’t discourage, especially not in this house.”

He glances at me, a quick question and I tense but nod once.

Only then does he take her hand.

Strange, the respect he pays to both of us.

Strange and vaguely concerning.

“Why are you not worried about me?” she asks, and I pause,
looking at Iris. She’s watching Hades, her eyes curious and patient. Like he is
a puzzle and she can’t solve it but if she waits long enough, he’ll tell her
all his secrets.

Hades stares at her for a long moment and then. “Do you know
I’ve spent a thousand years alone? I live half of my time in Hades, alone. My
wife returns to her mother. And I stay with the dead. It’s never going to
change. I thought, once, that it would. Just like I thought the twins would
find some peace together. But they won’t, and I won’t. We sit and say that we
are powerful and gods. But at the end of the day, I’m not anything but tired
and lonely. I know that we are dying.” He flashes a weak smile and shrugs. “I’m
just past caring.”

“Well that is…disturbing,” Iris says, slowly and Hades
laughs.

“Come. Let’s get you to meet the family charmer.”

“Hey!” I yelp, and Iris grins over at me, grabbing my hand
and tugging me along behind her.

Hermes is propped up on the bed, and looking bored and
irritated.

Never a good look on my cousin. He grins as I enter. “Where
the hell have you been?” he demands.

I nod at Iris and my cousin goes very still, his face blank.

“I went to get my Oracle.”

“Why?” he asks, and his voice is tight.

Strange.

Hades pauses, a half step in front of us. “Because she can
See who did this.”

“I don’t want that witch near me,” Hermes spits, and Iris
freezes, a tiny gasp escaping.

“Hermes,” Hades snaps, his voice whip sharp and angry.

“Interesting,” Iris murmurs, and my uncle half turns. Hermes
is still glaring at her, ignoring me completely and she drifts a half step
forward before I pull her to a stop.

“Lies and lies. Tricky web you weave, Thief.”

“Stay the fuck out of my head, witch,” he snarls, and I jerk
her back as he lunges, his power weak but strong enough that I feel the wind
shriek as he hurtles past.

“Oh,” She gasps, and I press a hand to her back.

“Apollo,” Hades snarls.

My hand comes away wet.

Wet.

Why is my hand
wet
?

Iris whimpers, her head craning back, and I look at my hand.

It’s bloody red, and her white dress is turning wet and
sticky and scarlet.

He hurt her. Del is in my arms and bleeding out.

I don’t think.

That’s important, a thing I realize later. I don’t think.

My power, dormant for so many hundreds of years, screams
free. It’s not the parlor tricks that I’ve done before. That I used to block Hades’
rage and cow Poseidon.

This is all of my power, ripped violently free, flaring
white hot through me and the girl in my arms, through new Olympus. I feel the
weak shields of my family, thrown up hastily as my power, the blinding light of
the sun, rips through the mansion.

I hear a howling, rising and falling like an ancient
drumbeat. A girl screaming my name. My uncle’s silent rage. And then it all
fades. All of it is gone, washed away, and clean, and gone.

There is only Del in my arms and the sting of betrayal.

Chapter 23.

“She’s wrong.”

“If she were wrong, he would be here.”

“She’s
wrong
!”

A soft sign. “Niece, I want her to be wrong as much as you.”

“She isn’t wrong.” I say, my voice rusty.

Fuck. It feels like I swallowed a handful of glass and
gargled it for a few hours.

I pat at the bed and my heart skips, terror ripping through
me. “Where is Del?”

“Not Del,” Iris grumbles, and I feel her shift closer,
sitting on the bed and curling into my side. I can’t see anything yet. Sun
spots dance in my vision, annoyingly.

“Artemis,” I whisper and she shifts closer. Takes my hand.
“Where is he?”

Silence, and then. “He left Olympus.”

For a long moment, I don’t say anything and then, “You know
this is him. He killed three of our cousins, sister.”

“It’s
Hermes
,” She almost pleads.

Hermes. The trickster, the thief, the apprentice to Hades,
the cousin who took one look at two confused children in Olympus and befriended
them, and never, never looked back.

“You will pick her. Her word. Over
Hermes
?”

I stare at her, and tug Del—Iris—closer.

“She’s mine, sister.”

Artemis snarls and I shift. Sit up.

“There’s something you don’t know,” I say. “About Del’s
prophecy.”

Artie goes still and I force a smile.

“She said it would hurt. That the only one capable of
hurting me would be the one to kill us.”

She’s pale, and I feel Del—Iris—squirming at my side. She
shifts away until I let her go.

“I always thought she meant you. You’re the only one I cared
about enough to think could hurt me. But you aren’t capable of that. You
couldn’t hurt me anymore than I could hurt you. But Hermes. Hermes could hurt
both of us.”

“No,” she whispers.

“Sister. It’s prophecy. Cold and unfeeling and unavoidable.”

“Why?” she whimpers, and I pull her into me, rocking her as
she breaks.

My strong sister, falling apart in my arms, great shaking
sobs that rip my breath away. “Why would he do this?”

I have an idea. A very good idea. But. Until we speak to him,
we. We won’t
know
.

“Bring him home, Artemis. Bring him home and we’ll find out
why.”

Her head comes up. Curious and almost hungry. “You want me
to hunt him.”

I shrug. Nod.

And she smiles.

The first time Artemis hunts, we’re five. She had
before. Lost things and toys. Our mother when Leto wandered away and left us in
the care of a nursemaid.

But the first time she hunted, purely to hunt, we
were five. She overheard the groundskeeper speaking to Leto about a wildcat
that was picking off our sheep, and this light came to her eyes.

Don’t.

She looked at me, and her gaze, even then, was
cold. Disdainful.

Sister, it’s dangerous.

She didn’t answer me.

She only smiled.

It took her two weeks. Two weeks of slipping out at
night, and following the moon. Of tracking and trapping and coaxing the hounds
to follow her.

It should have left her exhausted, but every night,
she crept back into our room as the moon began to fall, and she fell into bed
next to me, her tiny body smelling of the wind and the grass, wild and free and
savage, and she slept like the dead as I rose with the sun, chased it through
the endless warrens and alleys of our home. She woke and ate and sat dreamy at
my side.

I have never seen my sister as happy as she was on
that first hunt, when she was chasing merely because it was intriguing and she
couldn’t
not
.
When she came home high on the hunt and covered in grass seeds and burrs.

The day she came home covered in blood, I knew she
had found what she would be. She was addicted to that. The scent of blood, the
taste of prey, the puzzle of the chase. Artemis teased me for chasing the sun.

I smiled, and nodded, and never said a word as she
slipped from our bedroom to chase the moon and her prey.

My sister is a hunter, the best the world has ever seen,
and I have never known her to fail in finding her prey.

It takes three weeks.

Three weeks, and I am trapped in new Olympus the entire
time.

Here is what I know: my family is petty and malicious and
spending extended amounts of time with them makes me vaguely violent.

The worst part is that my sister is not here, and my cousin
is why we’re all on edge. I’ve been stripped of my buffers, the ones who stand
between me and the rest of the crazy, and it makes me tense. Nervous.

Angry, if I’m honest.

I send Iris away, have her brother come for her. I don’t
want her near my family, not when they are on edge and dangerous.

Dion is almost sedate, in those long weeks. He spends them
in his room, and then he crawls into mine, and I’m startled to realize he is
painfully sober.

He’s the one who asks.

“When she said we would die. What did she mean? We’re gods,
brother. How do we die?”

I have a theory about that.

But I just shrug.

“I don’t know, Dion. I think, though, it’s like everything
else that’s happened to us.”

He looks at me, eyebrows raised, whiskey- golden eyes
peering at me, intent. I summon a smile and pour him a cup of wine. “It’s a
choice. And a slow slide.”

Chapter 24.

Iris comes first.

She comes with a rush of fury and babble of visions, trailed
by her twin.

“Mortals aren’t welcome here,” Athena snaps, coming to a
standstill in the hall as Iris and Heath enter the room. I slide a glance at
her, but Iris answers before I can.

“Yeah, see, I don’t care,” she says carelessly. “I’m the Oracle
of Delphi and he is my guard. We’re permitted in Olympus, if my god is here.”
She points at me. “And oh look. There he is.”

I swallow my laugh at Athena’s infuriated growl, and when
she swings her furious gaze toward me I shrug. “She’s not wrong.”

“Then seclude her,” Athena snarls. “I don’t want a fucking
mortal in my home.”

She’s
stalking away before I can respond, and I catch Iris’s arm. “You should have
told me you were coming.” I scold, gently.

She bats her eyes at me, all fake innocence. “You want me to
leave?”

I snort and drag her down the hall, toward my room, and
Heath trails us. “Why are you here?” I ask, when we’re tucked into my room.

“Artemis will be back tonight. I thought you might want some
support.”

I shiver at the quiet complacency in her tone.

The sure knowledge.

Then she turns to me, and her brother is forgotten as she
steps into my space, and kisses me, deep and hungry. Until the room spins and I
don’t care about little things like my cousin’s betrayal.

Until Heath huffs and says, “Okay, cut it out. We have shit
to talk about.”

I blink at him, and feel the real desire to snap his neck.
Iris pulls back regretfully and nods. “He’s right. We need to talk.”

How will we die?

It took me three years to realize that Del told me
how we would fall. But she never told me how we would die.

Epilogue.
 

In the end. It is easy. It is painfully easy.

It is as easy as breathing. I've had two thousand years of
experience, and none, and it still feels easy. The hardest part is telling Artemis,
and even that is easier than I expect. She knows, I think, when she first
enters the new Olympus, clad in blood- stained silver. She looks at me and
Heath, just behind Iris.

Then she nods, once, as if resolving something in her mind.

It was easy, after that.

Tie up some lose ends. And slip away.

A slow slide into the darkness, and a shedding of the life I
didn't want.

The world is much larger than it was, when I left Olympus,
so long ago. It was harder then. And I still managed it.

This? This is painfully easy.

Sometimes, when I'm sitting outside, on the rocking swing
that Heath put up when Iris kept sitting on the wooden porch, sometimes I miss
it. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision.

Then her words echo through me and Iris snuggles into my
side, and I relax. Let go of the fear chasing around in my chest, the wonder if
I am still me without--

"You are everything," she whispers, in our bed at
night.

"You are not only your power," Del whispered, a
hundred thousand times, throughout history.

I wonder if the others will learn that.

Hermes looked like hell.

Worse than.

There had been some concern that Artemis would be
gentle. She loved our cousin. I don't think this would change her opinion of
him. But when he was dragged into Olympus.

I realized how wrong we had all been.
  
My sister is outraged, and she took all of
that fury out on our cousin. His leg is broken, and he limps in on it, none of
his speed or grace in evidence. His face had been beaten so badly he is almost
unrecognizable. There's a shamed air about him, and he avoids looking at us as
Artemis prods him in the back, nudging him up the hall of the gods.

A hound snarls and paces alongside, snapping at
Hermes whenever he slows.

He doesn't slow often.

The family is quiet, the kind of preternatural
silence that we never have. The gods are always plotting, aligning themselves
with and against the others, plotting who will be stabbed in the back next.

But now, we are quiet. Now we watch as one of our
own parades in front of us, broken and on his knees.

And there is no pity.

"Why?"

The question comes from Hades, and it snaps
Hermes's gaze up.

"Because we're dying, Uncle. Even you.
Persephone has been dying for centuries, and you've done nothing. We are not
all gods of the underworld. And for those of us who aren't, we are dying. Can
you comprehend that?"

"What does killing your cousins do but kill
the pantheon faster."

Hermes's gaze goes disdainful. "Do you really
believe that is all it was? Killing my cousins? I don't give a fuck about them.
Think about what I am, uncle."

There is a breath of silence and then, "A
thief. You are a thief. You're stealing their power," I murmur.

Hermes turns a wide smile on me. "You always
were the one who made the logic leaps none of the rest of us could. Do you have
any idea how much Thea hates you for that?"

My half-sister makes a startled noise, but I ignore
it. And his claim. "You can't divide us, cousin. Even if Athena does hate
me, she didn't kill. We have always loved almost as fiercely as we've hated,
and none of us have ever killed. Until you."

"Do you want me to apologize, Apollo? For
taking what I need to survive? Do you truly expect that of me?"

"No," I say, simply.

Because why would he. Gods don't apologize. We
don't fade, and we don't die, and we don't apologize. Except.

We are all doing that. We are all dying.

"How will you punish him?" Heph asks, his
voice a low rumble through the room, and Hermes's head bows.

They stripped his power.

And Iris watches me while it's done, something knowing in
her gaze.

You have to choose, Apollo.

How do gods die, Iris?

A sad smile.
They break their power.

In the end, that's what they did. The stripped Hermes of his
power. Stripped him of the very thing that made him who he was. Hades would
have taken him to the Underworld then and there, but the triplets refused to
allow it.

It was fitting, what they did. Stealing his power and his
memories, and reducing him to the quiet mortality that he hated so much.

We left within the month.

I saw Hades, before we did. The family stayed in new
Olympus. I think all of them felt their mortality in ways none of us had,
before Hermes began stealing power.

And now, we knew. How the pantheon would fall.

We would cannibalize each other. Stealing power from each
other until there was nothing left and we were all dead.

I left.

Before the others could turn on me.

I took Iris and Del, took Heath and broke my own power.

Hades knew. He stood by my side, and I shattered it,
shattered my tie to the sun and song, to healing and prophecy, even to Artemis.

That was hard. Harder than I anticipated.

Maybe because I didn’t. I never planned for Artie to be part
of what I gave up.

Mortal life was…different.

Heath found a deserted cabin in the mountains of West
Virginia, and we moved there. Iris never addressed staying with me. She merely
packed up my apartment, kissed me when I protested, and moved us halfway across
the country.

There were weeks, that first few months, when I couldn’t
breathe. When I was desperate for my sister, for my power. When I would spend
days in the big empty bed, and shake. I could hear them, whispering about me.

Once, when Iris was busy outside, I roused myself to ask
Heath why.

Why were they here.

She won’t leave you. I won’t leave her.

It was that simple and that complex and it sent me back to
my bed for a week, as the fresh reminder of my missing sister spiraled through
me.

Learning to live again was a slow thing.

There were days when I reached for my power and felt a
sudden stabbing reminder that it was gone.

Days when I’d laugh and turn to find Artie, and remember
that she was gone.

But slowly. Slowly.

It changed. I reached for help instead of power, and Heath
was there, with a quick smile.

I reached for Iris, instead of Artemis, and she was always
at my side.

Why?

I never asked, but she told me. It was after midnight, as
the year ended and another began.

I’m yours, Apollo.
She whispered it into my skin as she moved over me, pressed
into me.

Even if you aren’t a god. You’re mine. And I’m
yours.

She rode me slowly and kissed me with such care that I
barely felt the slow climb of arousal, barely felt the hot pulse of it in my
gut until I was gasping and coming, inside her.

Later, as she slept across my chest and I stare into the
moon through the small window of our room, I wondered if this is what I had
always been.

I was Del’s and Del was mine.

I didn’t need to be a god, for that to be true.

Artemis came, six months later. Her power broken, her hair
long and wild, her eyes haunted.

I hugged her, my very mortal sister. And the world that had
felt so strange felt a little bit right.

I chase the sun. Still.

Artie says it’s my nature, laughs and leans into Heath when
I blink at them, wide- eyed and blind from sunspots.

Iris agrees, and kisses me soft, until my arms slip around
her waist and I am home.

I ran from
this, for so long. Fought it and feared it. Drove myself mad, trying to outpace
my own destiny.

This was always where I was meant to be, though. But now I’m
human, and I have my twin and my Del. There is very little more that I could
ask for.

I chase the sun, and when I do, I feel very close to
her
. To all of the girls who came before, that I loved, that
taught me who I was as a god, and how to be a man.

I leave their ghosts, and the sun, behind, and step into our
shadowy cabin, and into the embrace of my family.

Godhood a thing broken and forgotten behind me.