Chapter 12
Sebastian
There were a lot of things wrong with me.
Morally, that was. Other than that, I had my shit together.
I’d gotten lucky and avoided developing a pesky little moral code, spending most of my life doing exactly what I wanted.
So tell me why I felt guilty for Persy reading to me.
The guilt raging through my chest was only appropriate for someone who had just knowingly betrayed their closest confidante.
I didn’t have confidantes.
I must have been getting sick or something. That was the only reasonable explanation for how tight my shoulders or how hot my skin felt, each of those sensations growing more severe with every word that fell from Persy’s full lips.
I’d never been sick. Gods didn’t catch colds or whatever humans called it when their nose got all stuffy and they got snot everywhere. I only knew how to heal it.
“Can I help?” Persy asked, shutting the book softly when she realized I’d turned off the burner to the stove. She could help by staying far, far away from me, but that went without saying.
She was being slightly jumpy. I didn’t like it.
“You can sit down,” I said, ignoring her attempts to reach for a plate behind her. I turned, blinking hard to try to shake the image of her perched on a countertop from my mind.
This sickness was invading my mind too, making me do incredibly stupid shit like try to brace my hands on either side of her legs before I realized that would likely earn me a knee to the groin.
Nevermind the fact that was a complete and total invasion of her privacy.
I was engaging in some truly spectacular mental back flips trying to separate the obvious fact that she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life from any sort of … attraction related to that.
I could appreciate art, and art she was, without letting my brain conjure up dangerous images about her.
Or I thought I could. I was doing a mediocre job of it so far.
Persy grumbled something under her breath, but it was muffled by the sound of her feet hitting the floor with a light thud.
I let out a breath, relief snapping through my chest.
I made quick work of plating the food, a rice and meat dish that cooked for hours and was intended to be a welcome distraction. I could feel Persy’s eyes on me with every movement.
With a deep breath, I tried to calm myself. It wasn’t her fault that she was more observant than anyone I’d ever met. That was a gift, a talent.
My reaction to it was my problem to deal with.
That sounded like something someone with a moral code would say, but I was ignoring that.
By the time I was seated across from Persy, I was feeling itchy and tense. There were too many reminders of why I went through life the way I did.
Calpurnia this morning, trying to pry trauma or history or whatever it was she thought would help her understand me.
Penn this afternoon, reminding me of Penelope and the way she viewed the world, everything in intense, almost painful swaths of color.
“I really am thankful for your offer to help Penn,” Persy said, studying me over the rim of her wine glass. “He’s…” she trailed off, her eyes going slightly unfocused. “He needs grace. Kindness.”
“I am capable of that, despite what you might think,” I snapped defensively. Persy jerked back, blinking rapidly as her eyebrows lifted in the center.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said softly, and damnit if that dulcet tone didn’t make me feel like an asshole. I let out a noncommittal sound, hoping she took my silence as leave to speak.
She had a habit of doing that. A habit I wouldn’t mind if it stayed.
And she talked alright.
“Why did you tell Reyna that you wouldn’t involve me in your plan?”
Thank the Fates I wasn’t holding my wine glass or it would have shattered in my hand. “Who told you that?” I gritted out, the words barely making it past the clench of my jaw.
Persy blinked, somehow more shocked in the face of that brutal tone than she had been in the early days of my confinement in the old cells. “Your—” she cut herself off to clear her throat, which only felt marginally more painful than having to hear her stumble over her words. “The antidote. It worked. Reyna told Adrian everything and he sent me an Iris letter earlier asking if I could ask you and I figured it would be better if you heard it from me but that’s—” Another deep breath and her sentence was lost.
I took a matching breath, practically begging my body to comply and calm the fuck down. I didn’t think I was scaring her, but if I was, I’d launch myself into the sun. “I don’t like to snuff the light out of beautiful things.”
Persy’s eyes flared in a way I’d never seen. Like brilliant white rays of sunlight punching their way through thundering clouds. “Would you have killed me?”
That was fucking ridiculous.
She needed to stop pressing this subject, because she would never, not in a million years, get the truth from me.
I breathed in, uncaring if my nostrils flared and my expression turned threatening. She’d do well to heed that warning. I’d never lay a hand on her, but this subject was off fucking limits in ways she couldn’t even begin to understand.
My silence, as usual, only spurned her on. She leaned closer, and for the first time I realized why people kept tables between them while they ate. Sitting next to each other, there was no barrier between us.
When she leaned in, she came dangerously close. “If something had happened to him and I stepped in as heir, would you have done it? Would you have killed me?”
The way she was asking seemed more curious than anything. Trying to figure me out or whatever.
“No.” The word was nothing more than a grunt.
Persy leaned in even closer, her hair slipping over her shoulder and coming dangerously close to brushing my knee. I could feel the static wafting off her, like her power was starting to flare. “Why?”
“I promised to help you shut down this conspiracy,” I said, pushing back into the chair to try to get some fucking space, even though my knee itched with the urge to bump into the smooth ends of her hair. “Answering that is unnecessary.”
Persy didn’t like that answer. Not one bit. Her lips turned down in a frown, the expression entirely unnatural on her face. She was supposed to be smiling. “Why?” she repeated. “Is it something I did?”
“No.” It was a half-truth. She didn’t do anything intentionally.
Persy’s eyes raked down my form and up again, like my legs or torso could give her the answer she was looking for. “I don’t want to push, but I need to know. Adrian is convinced it means you’re planning something. I told him that wasn’t true, but without an answer…”
She didn’t have to finish. He’d believe the worst. I wasn’t sure that wasn’t accurate.
I breathed in, needing to close my eyes to flight the flash of heat that lashed through my chest when Persy’s perfume snuck it’s way up my nose.
“What if I gave you something else?” I cringed even as I said it. I should just lie and hope she believed me, but something was stopping me.
“I can’t promise that will work,” Persy said, and it sounded like she was speaking directly in my ear. “But if you promise that it was—if you can give me some assurance that it wasn’t to keep me alive for something else, I can give you time.”
I scoffed opening my eyes. “So you need to know, you’re just giving me time?”
Persy’s eyelashes fluttered, like she was trying to keep her expression neutral. “I do.” Her voice was soft, but firm. “I cannot change the fact that as a consequence of your actions, there are some things I need to know. All I can do is try to find the easiest way for you to tell me.”
I had half the mind to just tell her and suffer the consequences, but there was no good way to do it. Not when there was simultaneously no explanation at all and a very good one. I ran a hand down my face in frustration. Then, I made a choice. “I’ll tell you.”
I expected Persy to smile. I did not expect her to rear back slightly like that wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear. “Just,” I said, speaking with a forcefully calm tone. “Give me a second.”
There was her smile. Guess it worked for both of us to keep the truth a secret for longer, though I wasn’t sure Persy even realized it. “I can, um,” Persy blinked, like she’d spoken without intending to. “I can tell Adrian to give me some time.”
There was relief in her voice.
Suddenly, it became very important to me that she realized that she couldn’t trust me. There was no relief where I was concerned.
She was good, but she hadn’t changed me enough in a month and a half to find comfort in anything I said. No teaming up with me against her brother.
“Go ahead,” I snapped, the words feeling bitter and wrong on my tongue. “I’ve been kind enough, healing his wife and giving him a list of people involved. He can stay the fuck out of my business. You don’t need to play messenger. If he has something he wants to ask me, he can do it himself. He doesn’t need to trick me into answering by making you smile at me and hope I spill my guts.”
Shit.
Fuck.
No.
Persy’s eyes flooded with sadness. It was almost as if I could see the rain pouring from the clouds hanging there. If her eyes welled up in real life…
“Persy,” I said gruffly, the words scraping my throat. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
She pulled back even further, her back ramrod straight. She held her hand out in between us, and it was only then that I realized I’d moved to follow her. “No.”
Our mouths opened at the same time.
“You don’t get to speak to me like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
The sentences were overlapped and clunky. Persy’s lips parted in a slight gape while I loosed a deep sigh. “I’m sorry I spoke to you like that.”
I guess when I got started, it just wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d apologized to someone.
Persy rolled her shoulders back, sitting an inch taller. It reminded me of the way that animals tried to make themselves bigger when there was an incoming attacker.
The shell of the heart beating in my chest cracked.
“I appreciate your apology,” she said after a moment, her voice slightly harder than I was used to hearing.
“I’m sorry.” It felt imperative to say it again. Persy twitched, like she was trying to hide some sort of reaction. If she was restraining flinching from me, I was going to start snapping paintbrushes.
Persy nodded slowly, breathing deeply. I could almost see the wheels turning in her beautiful head. When she reached up to smooth a hand over her hair, in something that seemed to be a nervous habit, I felt closer to death than I had in a while.
My chest felt like it was going to collapse in on itself.
There were two competing forces warring in my chest. On one side, I wanted to say whatever it took to wipe that look off her face, even if it violated every promise I’d ever made to myself.
On the other, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was telling her. Not until I could have that conversation the right way.
That tension just made me all the more frustrated. “Love,” the word fell from my lips like a sigh. Persy’s shoulder blades snapped together, her back going straighter. “That was wrong of me.”
Persy’s eyebrows drew together slightly in interest.
I felt myself smile, the corners tinged with self-deprecation. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”
Persy scoffed, a little scrape of a sound in the back of her throat, that seemed to surprise her. Her hand flew up, like she was about to cover her mouth before she stopped it halfway.
It surprised me too, but I kept it off my face. It was probably against everything she believed in to react to someone’s apology with sarcasm.
“No, you shouldn’t,” she said, her voice sounding like she’d intentionally made it softer. Even now, she was choosing kindness.
“What are the chances you can just forget I said that?”
Persy raised her eyebrows at me, her lips pulling into a quick, close-lipped smile in a forced show of amusement. She didn’t even give me a response.
Damnit.
I wasn’t used to this … desire to make sure someone else was okay. Normally, I just plowed through the world and assumed those who wanted to follow me would and those who I trampled over would lick their wounds and get over it.
Persy was making me care.
I expected rage to follow, fury that I’d been manipulated by someone again. Though kindness was a much sweeter reward than the shit I’d gotten in the past.
Something kindled in my chest all right, but it was more of a sickening twist than a burst of anger.
And now she was standing. Standing and walking away from me. “I think it’s time I turn in for the night,” she said, her eyes on me but unfocused, like she was only doing it to be polite but wasn’t actually seeing me.
Well, I hated that.
“You’re not done with your food.” It seemed like a perfectly reasonable response to me. Yes, she’d eaten most of her food, but she couldn’t just leave.
“I’m full,” she returned, her voice completely lacking emotion. It was obvious she wasn’t entirely present, more in her head than in this room with me.
I’d made her that way. I’d done that.
Fuck.
She closed the book we’d been reading, setting it down in the center of her kitchen island. My mouth opened and closed twice, searching for some excuse to get her to stay.
Persy fiddled with the ends of her hair, which only served to make me think launching myself off of a cliff was an appropriate post-dinner activity.
She was slipping away, not that I ever had the right to hold her in the first place. She was retreating back into herself and her mind, clearly wrestling with something internally.
Probably deciding whether or not to kick me out and throw me to the wolves.
I’d walk out myself before she ever got to it, I felt that much like an asshole. I didn’t deserve to reap her kindness anymore.
“Good night, Sebastian,” she said, her voice still distant and cold.
“Good night,” I managed, my voice hoarse. Something flashed in Persy’s eyes at that, a small beam of light punching through one of the clouds.
I had no idea what that meant, which was new for me. People were easy to read, easy to understand.
There was no figuring it out, trying to pry whatever emotion that was out of her because she was walking away from me. Persy left, giving me nothing but another small smile over her shoulder before she retreated into her bedroom on quick legs.
If I’d made her scared of me … more than she already should have been …
That thought made guilt like nothing I’d ever known slither through my chest. There was no ignoring it, no writing it off as a sickness or something else.
I fucked up. I did something wrong, and I felt remorse.
I would never apologize for trying to keep Persy away from me, but the way I went about it needed to change. I could be … kind to her, respectful at the very least, while still maintaining my distance.
I could help her achieve her goals. Hell, it should have been my goal too.
To return as Apollo. Be the god of the only things that had ever given me peace.
Help people, when I’d only ever manipulated them in the past.