Chapter 25 Silver
SILVER
Iwoke up to the smell of spring, the sound of horses whinnying, running water, and birds singing. Before even opening my eyes, I knew we were no longer in Paris—or in Highvale for that matter. This place smelled, sounded, felt different. Fresher, more natural, but also stranger.
I made myself sit up, finding that felt like being punched in the stomach. I glanced down to my torso, bare of anything except my bra, expecting to see the ghastly wound. I didn’t. The hole that should have been in my stomach was closed up.
I blinked. How? I was so sure I was about to die, and now I was completely healed. Maybe I was dead, and this was heaven. But if that were the case, why did my midriff feel like I did seven thousand pull-ups?
“How long was I out?” I wondered out loud.
“Just a few hours.”
I hadn’t even seen him. Cas sat by my bedside, a book in his hand. He was shirtless again, but it felt a little less stupid than usual, because it was warm.
That observation made me realize another reason why I knew we weren’t anywhere familiar. The weather certainly didn’t feel like November in the northern hemisphere. All windows in this bare stone room were thrown open, sheer white curtains billowing softly, and the sunshine heated my face.
“Where are we?” I asked, baffled.
“Home.” He shut down the book. “You needed immediate medical attention. I know Kleos would have helped, but I wasn’t certain how long it’d take me to find her, even if I could find the bank and portal us into Highvale. This was faster.”
I still didn’t understand exactly what had happened, or where we were, but I gleaned, “You have a healer here.”
That was the only reason why I would have be better in mere hours after getting skewered.
“You can say that again.”
I reeled toward the voice, recognizing its timbre though I hadn’t heard it that many times. I was greeted by an infuriating, smiling, redheaded git.
“Hello, little sister.”
“You!” I seethed. Then I turned to Cas, glaring at him too. “You! You work together?”
Never would I have guessed that. Not in a million years.
Cas snorted. “Hardly.”
“Never have, never will,” Apollo confirmed. “I’m just crashing at his old place. It’s well known we can’t stand each other, so no one’s looking for me here.”
I wondered who Apollo was renowned to dislike, and came up empty. I was too tired to think hard anyway.
“And here is?” I started, half expecting evasions again.
“Bilskirnir, in Asgard,” Apollo replied with a shrug.
“About a thousand years ago, during yet another gigantomachia, most of the Norse gods died, so it was deserted. Those who hold seats in both pantheons still have keeps here. I didn’t.
” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s too bloody cold in the winter in this world. ”
The words finally made me connect the dots, as I remembered the bright lightning I’d seen just before passing out.
“You’re Thor,” I realized, feeling dumb for not making the connection earlier.
The man literally had lightning marks all over his arms. He might as well have been holding up a banner with name on it.
Cas remained motionless, but I didn’t need confirmation.
Apollo clasped his hand around Cas’s broad shoulder. “In a manner of speaking. Charles here absorbed Thor’s power, and managed to emerge victorious.”
“Charles?” I laughed, and immediately regretted it as it activated core muscles that absolutely did not want to be called upon for the rest of the year.
That did manage a reaction from him. “You’re judging old-fashioned names, Edith?”
“I just mean—that’s your real name?” I considered Silver mine, as that was the name I’d been given in this life, though I accepted that I once was Artemis.
He shrugged. “Everyone who used that name is dead. I prefer Cas.”
“Why didn’t you just tell us?” I asked, looking between my brother and the Norse deity.
I genuinely didn’t understand. None of us had anything against Thor. Did we?
“As I said, you would have jumped to conclusions,” Cas supplied.
I frowned, still not getting it. He absolutely could have revealed he was Thor, currently hiding my divine brother. I would likely have been a bit skeptical, then looked into it and shrugged it off.
“But—”
“Silver,” Apollo interrupted, smirking. “Thor’s only one of his names. You and I used to know him as Ares.”
I inhaled sharply. Ares, son of Zeus, god of war.
A million questions jumped to my mind. When I finally managed to voice one, what came out was, “We’re siblings?”
Because, ew.
Major ew. The guy had his fingers in there, just hours ago. Not to mention the many things I imagined myself doing to him.
Apollo seemed to find that question highly entertaining. Cas—Thor, Charles, or even bloody Ares—grimaced. “Hardly.”
“But you’re a son of Zeus. I’m a daughter of Zeus. We are—” I started.
“Nothing, from a genetic standpoint,” Cas sneered.
“He’s right,” said Apollo. “You and I are siblings in the proper sense, as we were born from the same womb, but early in creation, there wasn’t such a thing as hereditary traits, hence why each of Zeus’s siblings or children are so different, in looks, in power, in affinities.
The concept of incest arose much later on, when children started to take in traits from their progenitors.
If we could unearth both of your original forms and check your respective DNA, no one would find familial links between you.
At the start, the gods were concepts, primal forces, not just flesh. ”
My stomach uncoiled. It was a little weird to say the least, but I remembered enough of my origin lectures to know that Gaia had birthed Ouranos by herself—and proceeded to reproduce with him to birth the titans, who, themselves, fucked each other a lot.
The same sort of thing had happened with Nyx, Lucian’s divine great-grandmother.
“Right. You’re my brother, he’s not,” I summed up, ready to embrace those facts.
From the beginning, I’d felt a kinship to Apollo. I wasn’t surprised when I realized I was his sister. My feelings towards Cas ranged from fury to something else I refused to look at too closely, but one thing was certain: brotherly affection had nothing to do with it.
“Moving on,” I decided. “Want to tell me what Ares, god of war, and Apollo, god of way too many things to list, are doing together?”
They exchanged a look. “As I said, I needed somewhere to crash. Ares—like almost all the Olympians—was sent to ferret me out by dear old Thunder Daddy, which he did.”
“Took me about two hours,” Cas boasted. “You’re shit at hiding.”
“And instead of delivering him, you gave him your Wi-Fi password?”
Apollo sighed deeply. “No internet on Asgard. No TV either. They barely have plumbing here. The world was abandoned centuries ago, so there’s nothing but goat statues and dusty weapons.”
“Hence why you were quite safe,” Cas drawled. “Anyone who knows you knows you can barely function without takeout or delivery. They’ll never think to check out lost worlds.”
Highly amused by their antics, I nonetheless brought them back to the main point. “So, you went against Zeus’s orders. I still don’t understand why you didn’t share any of that.”
“Zeus has eyes in most places, especially Highvale. Officially, I’ve been sent to observe you, as he assumed Apollo would eventually reach out. I need to be seen doing exactly what I’ve been sent for.” After a moment, he added, “He has Hestia. I have to be careful.”
“Hestia?” I took a moment to place Hestia in my mind—everything I remembered from lessons and general feelings, memories.
It wasn’t a lot.
“The goddess of the hearth, Hestia?”
Cas nodded. “She’s been good to me. Kind. Everyone else on Olympus is suspicious or downright antagonistic—”
“Hera’s nice to you,” Apollo interjected.
Cas winced. “Hera’s weird. Zeus noted I grew close to Hestia. He’s been threatening her to keep me compliant ever since.”
I refused to analyze my sudden dislike for the goddess I didn’t know anything about.
“He’d hurt his sister to get to you?” I questioned.
“Obviously,” Cas said at the same time as Apollo replied, “Duh.”
I opened my mouth, but before I managed a word, Cas said, “Enough with the questions. We’ve lingered too long already.
The portal I made reverberated through the nine bloody worlds, and it’s only a matter of time until this place is searched.
You need to go,” he said to Apollo, before turning to me.
“And your friends are likely concerned, as you’ve been unreachable. ”
Shit, he was right.
Apollo nodded, turning on his heels. “Well, until next time then, children. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Wait!” I croaked.
Cas’s jaw ticked. “If he’s caught here, Zeus will roast all three of us over a slow eternal flame until—”
“I have one thing to ask.”
Apollo snorted, leaning around the door frame. “Just one thing? Color me surprised.”
He was right of course, I could think of a million questions. But only one mattered. “What did you do with my magic?”
He stared at me for long second. “Are you sure you’re ready to open that can of worms? It’s much harder to hide when your power is strong enough to raze entire worlds.”
I nodded once, resolute. I was tired of feeling weak compared to the likes of Cas and him, prey to bloody humans turned berserkers. And I never wanted to flee from Zeus and leave Kleos to fight ever again.
I wasn’t meant to be a liability.
If my friends, my family were bloody gods, I needed to stand proud next to them.
“I’m done hiding.”
He assessed me in silence for a moment.
“Godly spells aren’t reversible,” Apollo finally said. “We can add to them, blight them, bless them, but never undo them. I had to be careful in my wording in order to ensure your power wouldn’t remain sealed if we wanted to unleash it.”
“Well?” I pressed. “How can we do that.?”
“Your power’s sealed until I am no longer its guardian,” he stated. “That leaves several options. No immortal needs a guardian after majority, so it’ll naturally revert to you once you’re of age.”
“I’m over eighteen,” I pointed out.
Cas chuckled. “You keep considering yourself mortal, don’t you? The age of maturity for an immortal is twenty-five. It’s when our minds have finished developing.”
I scrunched up my nose. I’d heard that somewhere. “Well, I don’t feel like waiting a year. I want to be able to stop people from skewering me now.”
“Quite. That still leaves us with a couple of paths.”
“For one, we could kill you,” Cas stated to Apollo casually. “You can’t very well be her guardian if you’re dead.”
His pupils filled with fire. “You could certainly try.”
Staring at the two men, I was fairly certain they were both dying for a confrontation I had no time for. “We’re not killing each other. What else?”
Cas seemed woefully disappointed.
“Well, you were in need of guardianship because you were a squalling brat, unable to defend yourself. My spell still considers you under my care because you persist in pretending to be a mortal. A little stronger, a little faster, but nothing more.” Apollo smirked.
“Artemis has never needed my protection. If you let yourself become who you are, you’ll return to your former glory. ”
I glowered. “So here we are again. You trying to make me disappear.”
The man sighed, throwing his head back. “Again, I’ll say what I’ve told you before. You are no vessel. You were born Artemis. You’ll die Artemis. It doesn’t matter what you call yourself.”
“If that was the case, I’d have her power, by your own admission,” I challenged.
Apollo brought his finger to his temples, sighing deeply. “You’re opposed to it, challenging it, rejecting it,” he listed. “And not letting yourself feel it. Your deep, stubborn denial doesn’t change your nature, it just leaves you unable to profit from it.”
My jaw ticked. I hated that he made far too much sense.
“Artemis is a man-hating virgin who cares about hunting and not much else,” I summed up. “That’s not me. I’m not a bloody virgin, I’ve never hunted anything and—”
“She didn’t hate men.”
I turned my glare to Cas. “What?”
“Ares might not have known her well, but I have a few memories. She—you—got along just fine with Dionysus, for one, and also Apollo, though you bickered all the time. Sure, you’ve turned a few guys into various animals for spying on you, but you’ve done that and worse to women, too.”
That was somehow even worse.
“All gods constantly remind mortals of their place,” Apollo said.
“But wasn’t she a virgin goddess?”
“Come on, Silver,” Cas said, rolling his eyes like I was being unreasonable. “Surely you see what that was about?”
I honestly had no clue.
“You were raised by Zeus,” he stated. “He raped everything with tits—or pretty balls—and arranged marriages to suit his own purposes, dangling Aphrodite’s hand to anyone who could get Hera out of a trap.
A good half of the female Olympians opted out of sex.
It had more to do with the men around them than with any fervent desire for chastity. ”
Oh.
Oh.
That made far too much sense.
“You’ve become someone different than who you were in your first life because you were raised in another time, by other parents,” Apollo agreed. “But it doesn’t change the fact you’re Artemis.”
I was still unsure.
Cas offered me his hand, and I frowned at it, confused.
“Don’t be a coward, doll,” he taunted me.
So of course, I had no choice but to fall for it. I took his hands. Instantly, images flooded my mind.
I watched him look past a woman, small—reaching the shoulders of the dark-haired, gray-eyed woman with whom she was playing chess, and the chest of the blond man who liked to tease her.
More visions flew by, all of them glimpses. I could tell he—Ares—barely paid any attention to her.
To me.
Artemis, the original huntress, with her bow and hounds, her half-moon crown, her chariot and stag, had my face, my eyes, though her hair was black as night.
She was me.