Broken God (18 page)

“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But she’s cold now, and withdrawn.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.

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.

The house doesn’t feel like that, anymore.

It feels like a mountain top fortress, where the gods whiled
away eternity and each of us had a place.

We never did do well, living on top of each other.

Now, we still are, but we’re spreading out. It takes twice
as long to reach the living room, now, and in that time, my cousins and
siblings meet.

I glance at her. “Trust me?”

Iris’s lips quirk into a smile. “Honestly?”

I laugh at that, and it’s while I’m still laughing that I
pull her into the godshall.

She sucks in a sharp breath and I squeeze her hand, but
don’t look away from the sight before me.

Turning your back on Zeus and his brothers is something only
an idiot would do and I quit being an idiot a few centuries ago.

“You bring a mortal with you, son,” Zeus drawls, lazy and
indolent from his seat between his brothers. Poseidon is glaring kind of aimlessly
at the world in general and Hades is watching Iris, his gaze neutral.

Both of them are waiting for Zeus to make a move, and he is
waiting for an explanation. I look at Iris, and her lip quirks up in a half-
smile.

She nods and I smile at her.

“This is Iris. My Oracle.”

There is a beat, of silence. While the words echo ominous
and repeating in the room.

And then
they explode, all of them, into furious noise.

Del
Spoke. And I went, quietly, insane.

That mattered. It wasn’t a big, flashy thing. It wasn’t an
explosion of power and me screaming at the heavens, the sun falling from the
sky and Olympus falling.

It was a slow slide. Losing bits of time. Wandering aimless.
Laughing at the inappropriate things that only I could see. Clinging to my sister
when she hunted and humming haunting melodies while she visited, and muttering
nonsense.

She noticed first.

Del kept me close to her, hid me away in the Temple, and sent
the other maidens away. I was a secluded god, a broken god, a mad god. And she was
mine, in every sense. It took two years for her to shed her power enough that
she could smuggle me away from Delphi. I still remember that night, even though
I was in the grip of madness. Her power was waning, returning to me, and I was
doing nothing to stop it, almost reveling in the rush of it.

After hundreds of years without my Sight, it was coming back,
and stripping away bits of who I was, and it was a fair trade.

If I could See, then an Oracle couldn’t.

And I could stop the vision. I could circumvent prophecy.

So it
slides
back to me, and I let it, and Del took care of me.

Artemis found us, in our little house on the windy mountains
overlooking the Aegean. Neither of us were willing to leave the sea behind. She
came with her hounds and a boy she was training to hunt who was more than half
in love with her, and her eyes, always so cold and hard, soften just a little.