Broken God (13 page)

I know why.

Of course I do.
It's why I've resisted making a new Oracle for so long. Not just because it was
destroying the girls, and I couldn't stand to do it again.

There was the
prophecy.

Dead dead dead and dead
.

I shiver.

"I didn't make
her Oracle
,
intentionally
,"
I mutter.

Artemis shifts.
"How the hell did you accidentally make an Oracle? I remember Del,
brother. I know how it's done, and there's no way to do something like this on
accident."

"She offered
herself. She didn't do it intentionally. But she offered, in exchange for her
brother's health."

An offer isn't
enough. I know that as well as Artemis, and her gaze narrows at me. "Why
did you accept her sacrifice?"

Because I am tired.
And lonely. And my own sanity is a wobbling thing that shifts on daily basis,
and my family is dying, and she was there, gorgeous and sweet and willing.

I am a god, but I
have spent so many years living as a man, and I can only be a good man for so
long before I stumble.

"I'm sorry,
sister." I whisper.

"How are you
going to contain this
?"
she asks, ignoring my apology.

Artemis likes to
ignore thing she thinks are ridiculous or pointless. Could be why she's spent
so much time over the years ignoring me.

"I need to
talk to her. Get to know her. The family--I don't know how to keep this from
them."

"You could act
crazy," Hermes says, lazily, and I give him a dirty look. he shrugs.
"Just an idea, cousin."

"It's not a
bad idea," Artemis says, her voice low and musing.

"I'm not going
to bind myself to a story that makes me weak and limits my power," I say,
firmly and she rolls her eyes.

"The family
will have to accept that this is what we have to work with."

"Accept that
you are not avoiding Del's prophecy, you mean," Artie says.

I don't respond.

Because yes. That
is what I mean. And I know my family.

They are going to
be
furious
.

Chapter
14.

When I lower Iris
into my bed, she blinks at me, startlingly lucid and heartbreakingly beautiful.

“Why does your
family hate me? They haven’t even met me.” She frowns and pokes her tongue into
the corner of her lips, a tiny pink point of distraction. “You really know how
to up the game of meet the folks, you know that?”

“Sorry,
sweetheart,” I murmur and she tugs at my sleeve, until I’m slipping into the
bed with her, and she rolls onto her side, facing me, her fingers tangling in
my shirt, eyes gleaming in the darkness.

“I don’t want them
to dislike me.”

“It’s not you,” I
whisper. “It’s—complicated.”

She frowns. “That’s
a fucking cop-out, Apollo.”

“You don’t want—“

“I’m your Oracle,
right? That means I am the conduit for a part of your power. I have part of you
living inside me, right?”

I nod, because.
Yes. How the fuck does she know that?

She shrugs. “Del
told me.”

And that. That
makes me go very still.

“Explain yourself,
Iris,” I say, my voice low and cold.

She shrugs, her
eyes drifting past me, going distant. “I can see the threads. All of them
twisting and changing and then the one that will be and
it’s…
its….
it’s confusing.
It's so bright and when I look at you and your sister, it's like the whole
world is burning
.”

“But then I see
her. Del puts herself between us and everything I see is filtered through her and
her memories.” she shivers and then, her gaze darts to me. “She loves you. They
have always loved you. They miss you, but each of them are here. It's nice.
Knowing that there are a hundred other girls who have done this. Who have gone
crazy for you.”
She
smiles, then.

“
They
told me. How it
works and what I do. What you need from me. They told me how you blind yourself
for your family. Is that why they hate me? Your family?”

I shift on the bed,
pulling her close, until my chin rested on her hair and her breath tickled my
skin. “
They
don't hate you,
Iris. They are terrified of change. We've spent over two thousand years wasting
away. Losing our worshipers and our home and seeing our powers wane. And there
was
the
prophecy.” I
hesitate and look at her. “Do you see the last Del?”

Her eyes take on
that haunted, unfocused gaze, and she nods, slowly. “She was a thin girl, with
long gold hair and eyes that appeared lavender in the sun. She liked to sit in
her bed and tell you about the world that was to come and the lives the little
Shepard girls would get to live, and she loved you so much it hurt. She told
you not to ask.”
Iris
blinks at me, curious and afraid.

A painfully familiar
combination in my girls.

“What did you ask
her, Apollo?” she demands her voice shaking and I can hear Del, her voice
strident and desperate, telling me no, telling me not to ask, telling me that this
would break me. I shudder.

I should have
listened.

“Apollo,” Iris
snaps and I look at her. Wide eyed and lost. I am a god and I am still wide
eyed and lost.

“I asked how
Olympus would die.”

It was the question that broke Olympus. Broke me. Broke all of
us. I think I knew even as I asked that it was a bad idea, the worst idea I’d
had in ages.

Del sat staring at me, her eyes wide and surprised, and she
shakes her head, slowly. “You don’t want this.”

“Del,” I started and she shakes her head again, rolling off the
bed and screeching. “
No
, Apollo. You don’t want this. I won’t give it to you.”

I flinch. Because she’s refusing a request from me. Me. Her
god
. She shouldn’t be able to refuse me, much
less want to.

Del had always played by her own rules, though. I suppose it
wasn’t that surprising that she could refuse me this.

“You’re playing with fire
,” she
snaps, stalking around the tiny bedroom. I huff a sigh and
twist to sit up, my legs crossed under me. A raven is sitting on the window,
watching my Oracle pace with big golden eyes and I feel a surge of affection,
because I am almost whole, here, now.

My power has always been a fractured thing, since I first made
Delphi an Oracle, and took my raven as a familiar.

But with them both here and the sun bright overhead, it feels
like I am whole and strong, and I lean up on my knees.

“Delphi, I need this. I’ve seen the future before, and I’ve
never
gone
crazy. That’s what you give me. But it does no good to me to be the god of
visions if you won’t See what I need.”

“You don’t need this,” she says, immediately, her voice harsh
with conviction.

“You don’t get to decide that, Oracle.”

She flinches.

I have never reduced Del to her title and nothing more. She’s my
friend, my servant, my partner. She’s a part of me, as close to me as someone
can be that isn’t my sister. She is DEL.

She straightens, then, and I feel her withdrawing, pulling her
title and duty around herself like a shield. When she speaks to me, it’s in the
cool tones of the Oracle.

Not my warm, sassy Del.

Not her at all.

“I cannot See the fate of the Gods, Lord. Mayhap you can offer
sacrifice. Or accept that this is clouded by destiny and all will be learned in
time.”

I snarl softly and she glares, her eyes bright and furious.

I leave her like that. Retreat to Artemis woods, and when
killing with my sister doesn’t soothe me, I find Hermes, in a brothel outside
of Rome. We are called different names here. It makes me uncomfortable, and
Hermes grins at me as I settle next to him in the brothel.

“You are upset, cousin,”
he
says. I shrug, and he sighs. Slaps the girl on
his
lap lightly on the ass. She scurries off and Hermes
focuses
on me, pouring wine and sliding the cup across to me.

“What?”

“I fought with Del,” I say, glaring at the wine.

His eyebrows hitch up, surprised. “You? But. She’s your blind
spot.”

I frown at him, confused and Hermes laughs. “Delphi could rob
Olympus and you would still smile and tell us how sweet she is. You won’t even
hear Artemis insult her. She’s always gotten a free pass from you, despite her
bad behavior or her lack of respect for your power.”

“She is a living embodiment of my power
,”
I
snap, a little annoyed that he doesn’t seem to understand just how much she
gives up.

“I know. It’s why none of the pantheon argues too much. You are
the only one of us who has that.”

There is something in his tone that draws my head up and I frown
at my cousin. “You sound almost like you are jealous, Hermes.”

“I am,” he says, easily. “She loves you, and is yours,
completely and unreservedly. That kind of worship is intoxicating.” He shrugs.
“But you are bound to her. You own her as much as she owns you. That’s why you
dislike fighting with her. She isn’t a priestess that you can just give an
order to.”

“So I allow her to defy my orders and let her decide what I will
know of the future?”

“No. You reach a place where you are both happy. She is your
Oracle, but she knows more than you can, so trust her if she says that it’s not
safe, it’s not safe. Del isn’t going to fuck you over, just for kicks.”

I frown, deeply, at the table, and Hermes sighs.

“Or, do what you want. You usually do anyway.”

Chapter
15.

Artemis is curled
on my couch. She looks tired, big circles under her eyes that worry me a
little.

“Sister,” I murmur.
She shouldn’t be this tired and wan, not at night, with the moon rising and the
wind blowing a hunt song.

“The family is
whispering, Apollo,” she says, at last. I was expecting it. Because of course
the family is talking.

Once upon a time,
my family was powerful. They ruled the world, and the humans, and played our
endless games with them. But then we got lost in our own pettiness. In being
worshiped and everything we believe was
owed
to us. We began to believe our own lies. We bought the stories of our won
grandeur, and it
destroyed
us.

It wasn’t the only
thing that destroyed us. I played a part in that.

“What are they
saying?” I ask, shifting her legs and settling them over my lap as she sinks
deeper into the couch. She frowns up at me.

“There is talk that
you are the killer
,”
Artie says, not bothering to couch her words delicately. Hermes laughs into his
water, but dodges my eyes.

“I take it Uncle
Poseidon is leading that faction.”

She shrugs.

Poseidon hates me.
He’s hated me and Artemis since before we came to Olympus. When we first
arrived in the golden halls, we were afraid of Hera.

Everyone knew
Zeus’s wife hated his bastard children, even the ones who were gods.

But Hera was open
in her hate. She was a known quantity. Something we knew to avoid and learned
to anticipate. And she was weak enough that she was no real threat.

Not to us.

Poseidon, though.

His hate was a slow
burning, hidden thing. When we were living on the island with Leto, there was
this one summer day, when I was swimming, and a current caught me. I wasn’t
deep, but the current was strong and hidden, and it jerked me under and away
from shore, and out into the sea.

I was calm, even
though I should have died. My sister, even then, was a hunter, and she was
always able to find the thing she hunted. And my sun gleamed down on me,
keeping me warm and buoyant, a bright promise of power, as I floated on my back
and waited for my sister to pull me from the sea.

His hate was like
that current. Deep and hidden and deadly when it caught.

It was dangerous
because it came as friendship, family and loyalty, everything I trusted most
wrapped around a shiny blade, slipping between my ribs.

That was the third
lesson we learned in Olympus.

We might be
related, but that didn’t make us family. Not the kind of family I had learned
to expect from Leto and Artemis. The gods and goddesses played to their powers
and needs, and fucked each other
over
as often as they actually fucked each
other. Family meant only that our downfall would come at the hands of
one another
.

But it never meant
that we were safe with the family.

It’s why leaving
was so easy. Why even now, I want nothing to do with them. Why the whispering
of them is neither surprising nor upsetting.

“Poseidon has
wanted to blame me for the family’s decline since I left Olympus,” I say,
shrugging.

Artemis frowns. “He
didn’t have dead bodies to work with. And he didn’t have you fucking helping by
disappearing and making a new fucking oracle.”

I glare at her.
“That wasn’t intentional.”

“Do you really
think they’ll care?” she asks, her voice a sigh. All of the fight is gone from
her, and she’s just…tired.

We are all so
fucking tired.

“Will it help if I
come back to the house? Face the whispers and put them to rest?”

She bites her lip
and shrugs. “It won’t hurt. They
…they are
….they’re
angry and scared,
Apollo. And you know that they don’t make good decisions when they’re acting
out of fear.”

“We make good
decisions?” Hermes asks, a lazy smile on his lips.

Artie gives him a
dirty look.

“What are you going
to do with the Oracle?” Artemis asks, returning her attention to me when Hermes
doesn’t seem suitably impressed with her fierce stare.

I shrug. “I don’t
want the family to know about her. Not yet. They aren’t ready to hear the harbinger
has come into her power, and I’m not ready to deal with all of them furious. I
need a few people to trust me before it breaks across the pantheon.”

Hermes shifts when
I look at him, and his face takes on a slightly pained expression.

“C’mon, Pollo, you
know I hate when I have to ask him for help.”

“Think we’re past
your feels, Hermes,” Artie says, tartly, and my cousin grins, all lecherous and
teasing.

“We’re never past
my feels, Artie.”

He looks at me and
huffs a sigh. “You know he might not listen.”

“We won’t know
until you speak to him,” I say.

Hermes huffs and
curses under his breath. And I know we’ve won.