Broken God (15 page)

It’s strange, how much her warmth, pressed against my side,
can
sooth
me. How much I missed it and how little I realized it was
missing, until it’s there again, a limb restored that I hadn’t realized was
missing.

“You look like a shepardess,” I say, finally, my voice
teasing and her voice is sleepy.

“You look like a feral hermit. I thought that was my position
in this relationship.”

That makes me laugh, a full body thing, and I drop my lyre,
pulling her close with both arms, until she’s sitting in my lap and almost
purring with happiness.

This is where I am meant to be. Where I’ve always meant to
be.

“I’m sorry,” I say, finally. Quietly, the words pressing into
her hair and she shudders against me. I hear her whisper against my chest, but
I don’t press for her to repeat herself. I don’t need to.

She is my oracle. My girl. The one I’ve loved, for so many
years I can’t remember a time I didn’t love her.

I don’t need to hear her apology to know that it’s there, any
more than either of us really need to say it.

That we are both here, says enough.

The pantheon would be aghast. My father would never imagine
stooping to apologize to the humans he has wronged.

But maybe that is what is different about us. What makes me
and Del different, what has always made us different. Maybe the respect that
flows, the give and take that marks our relationship and always has—maybe that
difference is what makes us work. What makes us better.

“Father, tell me
why”
She says, and I sigh.

“The world is changing, sweetheart. You and I both know
that.”

“The world has always been changing. It always will be. It is
the nature of the world to change.”

“We won’t always be able to adapt to that change. You know
that.”

She remains silent and I don’t press her. There is still,
under my skin, the itch to
know
to press her for more than she has shared, to press until
she tells me everything that has happened or will happen and how we will die.

My Oracle has my power, living within her, and this Del is
stronger than the ones who came before. That is always the way of it. The first
was the weakest, and each Del has grown and been stronger. I used to wonder why,
and then I stopped wondering. It is merely the way that Del is and I have
accepted that even though she is mine, there are something about her that I
will never understand. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she says, finally. Her
voice husky and serious against me, and I glance down at her. “I think you’re
playing with fire.”

Her eyes are sad, so very sad, and it occurs to me, too late,
that I should ask her why. To wonder what the hell she’s seen.

“But if this is what you want. I will Speak for you, Apollo.”

It is a week later that she finally Speaks. A week of
lingering in her bed, and ignoring the restless mass of supplicants outside our
temple. A week of laughter and tears, when she thinks I am otherwise occupied.
A week of music and coaxing a smile from her lips.

We’re there, still. In her bed. I’m laying naked on the
sheets, while she sits in a sheer robe a few inches away, her legs drawn up
almost demurely hiding herself from me.

“Father, this is a bad idea,” she says, again, and I nod.

I know the risks.

She eyes me, and bites her lip, worrying it red.

And then she Speaks.

High and high
and high, the fathers soar.

Low and low and
low, the gods will fall.

A tiger, kitten
black, power and power, steal your power.

Death and death
and death.

Oracle. Broken
and stolen and unknown.

Breaking you.
Breaking Olympus.

Dying and dying
and dying, they’re all dying.

The
goddess dying and the gods are bleeding
.

She
can
See
, oh gods, she
Sees
it all.

The fallen gods
are stealing and dying and dying and you are there. So shining bright. And sad.
Mad god, mad god, broken world, and Delphi is laughing, a mad priestess to a
broken god
.

Delphi blinks at me, and in her eyes, I see every Del I have
ever loved, every Del I have ever made, and they are screaming. All of them are
screaming, as tears slide down her face.

Kitten black,
tiger strong. Stolen girl, visions bright. You will all fucking die.

Hades stares at
me, and I resist the urge to twitch under his gaze.

I’m a god, for
fucks sake. The Sun God. I refuse to fidget like a little boy dragged in front
of his uncle and scolded for misbehavior.

Even if I want
to.

“How much of
it?” Hades says.

“I found the
black kitten a few weeks ago. She found me, I should say. She’s half feral but
she is a conduit for my power, and she settles it.”

Hades frowns. “I
still don’t understand how you need a conduit. The pantheon is in decline.”

“You have one
,”
I point out.
Hades waves a hand, brushing that aside.

“I’ve always had
Ce
rberus
,” he says
dismissively.

“And I have
always had Delphi and my raven
,”
I say. It’s not
a challenge of his strength. It isn’t. The man can blink and send my soul to
Hell.

But it’s not
not
either.

And from his
smirk, he knows it.

“So you’re a
badass, nephew. A badass with a kitten. What of it?”

“There was also
the girl. The stolen Oracle.”

Hades goes
still. His eyes narrow as he assesses me and I meet that dark gaze levelly.

“Tell me this is
a joke,” Hades says, his voice tight and dangerous.

“It was not
intentional.”

He explodes into
motion, and Hermes takes a half
-
step closer to
me. His eyes are on our uncle, but the move is protective and it annoys me.

I don’t need my
thief cousin to protect me. He gives me a wry look, as if to say, shut up idiot,
you do in fact need your thief cousin.

I scowl and
cross my arms, grumpy.

“Is she
dangerous?” Hades demands, suddenly, glaring at me.

I shrug. “She’s
as dangerous as Del ever was. She is untrained and going insane, but she has no
real malice behind her.”

This is what my
family sometimes
forgets
. She is a
conduit. She can see and she can speak, but Del doesn’t
cause
the future. She merely Speaks
it. Destiny has never been my realm
;
it was the triplets. But the
saying that knowledge is power is a very true statement, and the triplets have
always been guarded about the way they spin fate. Del strips away that secrecy
and exposes everything that we do and don’t want to see.

And in that, she
is very dangerous.

Hades is silent,
considering the new piece of information, that there is an Oracle with my power
behind her, Speaking again, for the first time in a thousand years.

And gods are
being killed.

“What the hell
am I supposed to do with this?” Hades mutters. He rakes a hand through his
hair, and then gives me a glare. “You know Poseidon has half the family rallied
against you and then you want to tell me that your damn prophecy is coming
true, and oh, your power is just as strong as it ever was and there is a new
Oracle in Delphi.”

My power jumps, heat
lighting, under my skin. “She isn’t in Delphi. And this wasn’t bloody planned.”
I snarl.

“It never is,”
Hades sighs.

He’s quiet and
then. “Fine. Fine. Go mind your mad prophet, and I will try to decide what the
hell we’re going to do.”

Artemis makes a
low shocked noise. “What…you are going to help us?”

Hades slides a
glance at her. “You trust him. Why are you surprised that I am choosing to do
the same?”

“Because the
prophecy is coming true. That means we’re
dying
.”

Hades shrugs.
“We’ve been dying for the better part of a thousand years, niece. We’re just
too fucking stubborn to realize it.”

Silence reigns
for a long moment, and then Hades sighs. “I am tired. We all are. Our time
passed and we refused to let go. Hubris, I think. That more than anything, has
sustained us. But it’s time. Past time. If it weren’t, the gods wouldn’t be
being killed.” He grins, a tiny little thing that is out of place in this
situation. “We are gods, after all.”

“Go to your
girl. Wait for Hermes to call you. I’ll handle the family.”

Hades takes a
half
-
step toward,
before he goes still and twists to look back at us. “If I learn that you are
the one killing the gods, I will spend eternity torturing you in Hell. You
should be very aware of that.”

I suppress my
shudder and nod. Hades glances at Hermes, something silent passing between them
before God of the Underworld slips from our room and we are left in his chilly
wake.

Hermes runs
interference for us, and it doesn’t take long for Artie and I to slip out of
new Olympus. She’s quiet, neither of us talking about the threat from Hades, or
his promise of help. Artemis is a quiet woman, by nature, when she isn’t
badgering me into taking better care of myself. And I appreciate it, as much as
I appreciate anyone who refuses to let me be.

Her worry comes
from a good place. It always has. It still grates, like a splinter under my
skin that stings when I press on it, and I
know
better, know not to press, but
maybe I like that sting too much.

Maybe I’m a
little addicted to the caustic care, the tiny frown that forms in a wrinkle
between her eyes and her lip caught and worried between her teeth.

“You know that
having an Oracle doesn’t fix you.”

“I didn’t know I
was broken,” I say, my voice mild.

Her gaze is
searching and sad when I slide a glance at her. So damn sad it almost takes my
breath away.

“We’ve been
broken gods for a very long time, brother.”

I open my mouth
to say something, but I have no idea what, so I close it again, wordless, and
reach blindly for her hand.

She catches my
flailing, she has always caught me, and I hold her hand as we drive through the
countryside, and her hand finally stops trembling in my grasp.

It takes me
until we reach the apartment to understand.

Artemis is
scared. We are dying. If everything I’ve endured for two thousand years wasn’t
enough to stop the prophecy, nothing will.

We are dying and
there is nothing to stop it.

Chapter
17.

Iris is changing
things.

It’s not the
kind of change that is reshaping new Olympus. It’s the kind of change that
makes me blink at the clean kitchen, and the low light in my apartment. The bag
of clothes slung on the couch and cups of tea scattered around the room, in
various stages of being drunk and discarded. She’s leaving a mark in a physical
way that makes a smile stretch across my lips and makes Artie roll her eyes as
she pushes me further into the room.

Iris is humming
and swaying, side to side at the window, her eyes half shut as she stares at
the city, fading into darkness.

“It’s shiny,”
she says, her voice remarkably lucid.

I slip up behind
her and slide my arms around her waist, pulling her back into me. She nestles
back, leaning her head against my shoulder and blinking at me, sleepy and sweet
and pliant. “Where were you?” she asks, and there’s my girl. I almost shiver at
the tone, the sharp demand that sings through me, and I lean down, press a
quick kiss to her lips.

“Family called,”
I say softly. Something flickers in her eyes for a moment and then it’s gone
and she smiles. “Everything
okay
?”

I shrug. “No.”

“Apollo,”
Artemis snaps.

I look back at
her and she scowls at me. “You can’t tell a stranger the business of the
pantheon.”

“This isn’t a
stranger,” I say, calmly. “It’s Del.”

At my feet, Del
snarls softly, and digs her claws into my ankle. I make a low, pained noise,
and Iris giggles.

“Call her what
you will, she’s my Oracle, and I won’t lie to her.”

She stares for a
long moment, and then huffs. Her gaze goes to Iris, still standing wrapped in
my arms, and she gives the new Oracle a kind of grimacing smile. “Welcome to
the family, little sister,” she says, all grumpy resignation.

Iris blinks.
Artemis retreats, and I see the stag on her back, the horns shifting as they
peek above the lower collar, and then she’s slamming out of the apartment.

“She’ll be
fine,” I say, brightly. Grin down at Iris. “She just needs to work off some
anger, let her power run. She’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Why did she
call me that?”

Little sister
.

Words I haven’t
heard from Artemis is so long it’s almost amusing. Except it’s really not.

I shrug. “Artie
has a strange bond with my Oracle. Always has. She looks at you like an
unwanted sibling.”

“Why?”

I smile
.
“Because you’re
mine. My Oracle, and she has to accept you, but she doesn’t necessarily like it.”

Her eyes go
distant again, unfocused and staring at something past me or maybe just past.

“Yes. They find
it amusing how much she fights
for
your Oracle’s
place in the pantheon.”

I feel a sharp
tug of
want
. It hurts, that
she can see them, hear them, and I cannot. I am a god, and even in the depths
of my madness, I was never seeing Del.

Hearing her
voice, the sharp tartness and sweet melody and high whine, the low husk, all of
the variations that sung the same tune-mine, mine, mine-I’ve spent a thousand
lifetimes waiting for it and knowing it would never come, and now she stands in
front of me, and it hurts a little, that she is given the thing I am not.

Still. “I’m glad
you have them.”

It’s a strange
sisterhood.

“This is
strange,” she says, after a long beat of silence.

I slide a glance
at her and she shrugs. Nods between us. “This. This thing between us. You loved
them.”

I take a breath.
To deny it. To tell her that it’s not what’s been between us.

But it is. It
always has been. I have always loved my handmaidens, and my Del most of all. It
is like loving Artie. Like loving myself. Effortless.

Natural.

“We’re doing
this backwards,” I tell her, honestly. “I fell in love with Del, and made her
my Oracle. With you. You are my Oracle, and I adore you.”

Something like
fear flickers across her face, there and gone so quickly I almost miss.

Almost dismiss
it.

“What about that
bothers you?” I murmur.

She looks away,
and shrugs. “It’s a strange thing, to be jealous of a dead girl. A hundred dead
girls. But they’re all the same, and they’re all me, because they’re all in me,
and I love them.” She shifts, anxious in my arms, and I let her go as she pulls
back, a little. “I hate them because they loved you and you loved them. But I
love them, because they’re me. They’re the thing that I’ve become. Oracle.
Yours. How can I hate and love them, in the space of the same breath?”

Her eyes are big
and pleading and furious and I smile at her. It’s sad and she shivers against
me, her eyes bright and unfocused. When she looks at me like that, I know she’s
not seeing
me.
And I am jealous
because I want her to see me and I want to see what she’s seeing.

There is a part
of me that loves this girl. That cannot help but love her, because she is
mine
.
The difference is
that my
girl was always
chosen. Mine in truth before power tied her to me irrevocably.

This. This thing we
have going between Iris and me. It's everything, done backwards. The forced
intimacy because of my power living within her doesn't feel right.

Because I don't
love her.

I don't love her.

I laugh at that,
giddy with relief suddenly and her eyebrows go up as she watches me, amusement
dancing in her pale eyes. “What?”

“I keep wondering
why I like you. It's not normal. I never like my Oracle, Iris. I
need
her, am consumed by her. She's part
of me, the part that settled my power and makes me strong and allows me to be
weak.”

She's the best of me.

“
You
. I like you. Your
sweet and funny and fascinating. But I don't love you.”

“
Well
, you've known me
for like a week.”

I grin at her flat,
unimpressed tone. “I know.”

“We can work
together, Apollo. You don't need to love me for me to serve as your Oracle.”

I nod and she
flashes a smile at me.

Trusting.

Silly seer. She
will love me and I will love her. It is who we are. What we are.

Just.

Not yet.