Chapter 18
Sebastian
I’d slept better in the short hours since I’d woken up covered in sweat and nauseating memories than I had in years.
It felt like there was something in the room with me, weighing me down and giving me permission to fully settle into sleep, but when I’d woken up to a dim, but early, sunrise, I was alone. I got up and looked out the window in time to see Persy sneaking off to the studio.
That was my move, going in there in the early hours of the morning. I let her have it this time, though curiosity burned at the back of my throat. It wouldn’t be wrong of me to go into my side of the studio and try to figure out what she was doing behind that wall, but something stopped me.
The desire to be respectful and considerate or whatever.
Besides, there was another, more pressing matter. I’d woken up with an itch in my chest, a unique tightness that only had one explanation. Maybe it was the fact that I’d brought up Delphi last night. Maybe it was Persy’s offer to go get my bow, painstakingly carved from a cypress tree on the eve of my eighteenth birthday, but I had a feeling that I needed to go to Delphi.
I tried to ignore it for most of the morning, silently telling her to fuck right off, but it wouldn’t work. The tightness got so bad it felt like the individual tendons attaching my muscles to my chest were ripping apart.
The only thing that distracted me for a moment was Persy’s arrival back at the house. She looked tired, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t still beautiful enough to make my stomach clench painfully. All it did was make her eyes shine a brighter gray and her cheeks flush a cool pink.
I was supposed to be on a journey of self discovery. That’s what Persy wanted. That’s what the gods expected. It was—what I was told, at least—what the world needed.
The only thing I’d discovered was that Persy had a dimple.
I didn’t even know if that was the right word for it. All I knew was that whenever she spoke, specifically when she was speaking through a smile or trying to push through a laugh, a little indent would appear right under the apple of her left cheek.
It was nothing more than a small shadow, but it may as well have been the darkest, deepest pits of Tartarus for all that it haunted me.
It had become an obsession of sorts, trying to make sure that dimple came out as much as possible. If it was there, it meant she was smiling.
It meant she was happy.
It meant I’d made her that way.
I was speaking before my mind could kick in and remind me to calm the fuck down around her. “I need to go to Delphi. Would you like to come with me?”
“Yes,” she said, that dimple popping out in full force. “That sounds wonderful, actually.”
Wait, no, no that wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to feel relieved about that answer. Maybe it was because she already knew. She’d seen the moment I’d snapped and taken on this ridiculous fucking conspiracy with her own eyes, saving me from having to tell her.
I’d only made it through half of it with Calpurnia before I had the urge to break something.
But Persy already knew.Even though I’d had a fucking heart attack when I realized she was in that room with me, it was … nice, or something, having her there.
“Wait, that’s perfect!” Persy said, clapping her hands together decidedly. “I’d wanted to figure out something for prophecy, but I didn’t know how it worked with Delphi.”
Apollos were notoriously secretive about it. I didn’t even think Adrian knew, in all his kingly wisdom. “Sounds delightful,” I said, my words falling out without an inch of bite.
Persy’s smile grew, and not for the first time, I’d felt like I’d done something right. “I’m still having trouble figuring out what to do for truth,” she said.
“You expect honesty from me,” I said, even though was so, so much I wasn’t being honest with her about. It wasn’t a lie, so much as an omission. It was better to keep her far, far away from the state of my thoughts about her. Especially now that we were crossing into the final months with me at her mercy. “That’s truth enough.” I took a step closer to her, finding twisted comfort in the way she stiffened, not in fear, but in awareness. “Unless you want to be honest and tell me what’s behind that studio door.”
Persy’s fingers flexed at her side, like that had something to do with it. Okay, so it involved using her hands. “It’s supposed to be about you telling the truth. Not me.”
“Are you saying you’re lying to me?”
Persy’s chin dipped down ever so slightly, the subtlest show of yes before she said, “No.” Oh, that little muse was hiding something from me, wasn’t she?
That did nothing but blow a gust of wind onto the flames of my curiosity. It would have to hold off for now. I had an Oracle to see.
After a moment for Persy to get changed, during which I tried really, really hard to not have any inappropriate thoughts about, I was gathering a portal to Delphi.
The second I stepped through into the sunlit, crisp air, there was a disturbing feeling of peace building in my chest, though I had some of the worst memories of my life take place here. Delphi was warded so that no one but an Apollo could step directly into the Oracle’s quarters.
The temple she called home was huge, with a roof over three stories high and long, sturdy columns that held up an ornately decorated roof. There were no doors, not officially, with warm wind constantly flowing in and out of the temple.
Humans had long made the lengthy trek trying to find this secluded, hidden part of the world. Not unlike the power that kept Prometheus hidden from the rest of the world, Delphi was a mystical place that only a few humans desperate to hear a prophecy had made it to.
Clearly, Persy had never been—I would have known otherwise—because she was staring up at the tall ceilings and gold decorations with stars of wonder in her eyes. She looked gorgeous here, in the soft sunlight, her hair practically glowing.
Do not show her the house. Don’t do that.
I batted away that thought when I heard a whistle echo through the hallways.
Fucking hell, she was impatient. And of course, we had to go to her. She wouldn’t emerge from her sunlit little corner of the temple unless physically removed, and I had no intention of getting on her bad side.
She’d cursed me enough.
“This way, love,” I said to Persy, carefully bringing her out of her observant daze. She blinked at me, clearing her vision. For a moment, my hand buzzed with the need to move. To take her hand and help lead the way.
I kept my hand next to my side.
Persy followed me through the winding back halls of the temple, keeping me company with her light conversation. Maybe I even responded a few times. Maybe I enjoyed it.
It did keep me distracted enough to shove away the memories of pain and nausea as we pushed through the doors to the Oracle’s rooms.
It seemed like an easy feat, but those doors wouldn’t budge an inch unless it was me pushing them.
She was protected beyond measure. Not even Fate could touch her long, immortal life.
The Fates didn’t command Apollos. Sure, they may have some influence in our lifelines and, in some instances, had chosen a spouse for an ancestor or two.
But Fate didn’t rule us.
We were children of prophecy. There was only one voice I would listen to regarding anything in my life.
Pythia. The high priestess and Oracle of Delphi.
She was the only being in existence who could ever tell an Apollo what to do. It was a blessing of the highest honor if she called an Apollo to her feet even once.
I’d been called three times.
It was that shit that drove my parents insane, believing that I was destined to take over as king of the gods because of that blessing. If they were right, I’d have been told so. Not even the most creative of minds could have spun the prophecies Pythia gave me into a free pass to overthrow the king of the gods.
The first one had been about my skill as a painter. When I was ten, I’d dropped to my knees in front of her and tried not to flinch away as her withered hand descended on my forehead and invaded my thoughts. She’d shown me a gallery that seemed to go on forever in an expansive hallway.
On one side of the wooden walls hung destroyed paintings, either mutilated by fire or moths or slashed through with knives. I vaguely recognized a few of them to be hack jobs by my father or his mother—the two most recent Apollos.
On the other was bright, masterful, engaging paintings that made me feel like I was looking at a reflection of my own soul. Looking back on the memory, I could tell you where each of those paintings ended up. Most scattered around museums and buildings in the Mediterranean.
A few in houses, treasured more than the home itself.
The next was when I was twenty-one. By then, I’d lost my sister and been inches away from caving under the weight of my parents’ greed. When Pythia looked me in the eye and dove into my thoughts, I was somewhere in a dark space, my wrists tied with rope and my arms pulled wide.
As I kneeled, trying to fight the weight of two opposing forces pulling at me, making me feel like my chest was splintering open, I could barely make out the image of a bright, fiery sun on one side and a black hole on the other—the complete absence of light.
I tried to push that one away, until two nights ago when I’d dreamed of it. It had ended with the rope to the black hole shaving away until the threads remaining snapped and I flew into the sun.
And the last had been when I was twenty-three. My parents had all but fainted when I’d been summoned for the second time in as many years.
I was angry, and had zero faith in the world. I could only imagine that Pythia had something heinous in store for me.
I was right.
She almost knocked me on my back when she shoved her hands into my chest, forcing me into a vision that haunted me every day since.
At first, I’d thought it was a vision of the sun, forcing me to look directly into a collection of shimmering, gold strands that were so bright I was tempted to close my eyes from the sheer force of it. It wasn’t until minutes later, when my eyes adjusted, that I’d realized it wasn’t the sun at all.
It was someone’s hair.
Brushing over my face like I was burying my head in their neck while sunlight streamed through the silky strands, turning them into liquid gold. I couldn’t see them, not with my vision distracted, but there were hands pressing into my back.
Feminine, long fingers that burned like an iron poker into my skin.
The second Pythia let me out of that vision, I keeled over and threw up all over the floor.
Others might have viewed that as an ounce of hope, a vision of the future love they might have.
I knew better.
I knew that vision had been a curse.
It had stayed with me since. That girl in the vision was sunlight incarnate.
“Goodness, I think that girl fell right out of the sun,” Penelope said passively, looking at how Persy was running, chasing the sunlight coming through the room.
At twelve, I didn’t care all that much about Adrian’s little sister. Certainly not enough to notice a comparison like that, but I guess it fit.
That memory had slapped me across the face years later when Persy had walked into a Council meeting to observe. I hadn’t seen her in years, especially not in the last two since she’d taken over Prometheus.
She’d changed. Grown into a woman who was so bright and warm that Penelope’s words had slammed into the front of my mind as Persy smiled at the table and tucked a strand of her sunlight blonde hair behind her ear.
I should have known then that she would be my downfall. That she was the woman in that vision.
But I had been angry and far too focused on acting like I was a drunken fool to take advantage of others when their guard was lowered to properly appreciate her.
That didn’t stop my mind from creating a crazy, irrational promise that she would never enter the crossfire of my plan.
Who was I kidding? It wasn’t irrational at all.
In my mind, Penelope’s affection for Persy had given me reason enough to leave her out of this. Little did I know, that would leave her with free reign over my life.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a bone in my body that wanted to complain about that.
I should have known who she was from the moment I saw Persy’s hair catch the sunlight. Pythia had warned me about her, I just hadn’t listened.
Pythia was slow to acknowledge our arrival, turning around in her chair like she had all the time in the world. I expected her to start sassing me about bringing someone in with me, but her eyes didn’t even fall to me for a moment.
She looked at Persy, staring directly at her as she said, “Hello, child. It’s lovely to see you again.”
Fuck.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Persy said with a sweet smile on her lips, clearly paying no mind to the fact that Pythia was staring her down like she was something to eat. All of Pythia’s features looked rather reptilian. The yellow-green eyes, the pointed canines, the glossy black of her hair.
Not to mention the thorough lashing her tongue was capable of.
“Oh, well, I guess you have not met me,” Pythia said, speaking to Persy in a soft tone I had never once heard from her. “But I know you, darling. I’ve seen you in my mind. In visions.”
Persy looked to me, eyebrows drawn in confusion. I would not be addressing that. I turned to Pythia, walking directly up to her. She raised an eyebrow at my boldness, but I didn’t care.
“You wanted to see me?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.
Pythia looked me up and down slowly. “You came quicker than normal.”
“Just wanted to get this over with.” Prophecies took a physical toll, and I wasn’t all that pleased with the idea that Persy might see me writing in pain or casting up my breakfast on the limestone floor.
“What makes you think I have a prophecy for you?” Pythia asked, just to be difficult.
“I’m an expert at this point, don’t you think?” I preemptively kneeled, knowing she’d force me down eventually. “You can stop acting like I’m not your favorite.”
Pythia leaned close, dropping her voice to a whisper. “You’re different,” she said, pressing her pointer finger into my forehead, her nail digging into my skin. “More … sunlight. Your power feels fresh.”
“You have her to thank for that one,” I said, matching her quiet tone so the her in question couldn’t hear us. “But you already knew that.”
“Be careful with prophecy, Apollo. It is not always what you think it to be.” The spot where her finger was digging into my forehead started to buzz, her power preparing to launch itself into me.
“You would know,” I gritted out behind a clenched jaw.
Too snippy for Pythia’s liking apparently, because seconds later I was at her mercy, pain radiating down my limbs as she forced my fourth prophecy on me.
My mind bent and warped around the vision, finally grasping it and exposing an expansive, never ending city skyline in front of me. Everything was gray and drab, with people moving through the streets with their heads hung low and their movements slow.
I was standing on a hill, watching them move and shuffle about like their souls were drained of any joy. I turned to find Persy standing next to me, staring down at them with tears in her eyes.
“What happened?” I asked, reaching towards her with both hands, or at least I tried to. I didn’t move an inch. She didn’t answer me, just curled her arms around her midriff and stared down at the city.
Buildings were crumbling. Everything looked dilapidated and old, like no one had cared to keep any of it up. “What happened?” I asked again.
Persy turned to look at me then, her eyes widening in shock. “Oh, you’re here,” she said, without an ounce of emotion in her voice.
“Where else would I be?” There was far too much truth in that statement.
Persy shrugged passively, void of any of the light I was used to seeing in her. “Dead,” she said. “Took everything with you.”
My eyes snapped back towards the city, finding the gray skies meeting the horizon first. The sun had disappeared. Not in the sense that it was hidden behind clouds, but like it hadn’t ever been there in the first place.
There was no music filling the streets. There were no conversations. No art. No light.
No Apollo.
Persy didn’t need to explain it to me. I understood. This was what was going to happen if I died without heirs. Heirs I had yet to appoint. Persy hadn’t brought it up in over a month, but I knew she was aware of it.
“How did I die?” I asked, the vision pulling it out of my throat rather than my thoughts doing it.
Persy just shook her head, refusing to answer. She started mumbling under her breath, something I couldn’t quite hear. Based on the way her lips were moving, I thought she was saying no over and over again.
My eyes traveled back to the city, landing on someone limping down the street, leaving a trail of blood in their wake. I hoped they were heading for a hos—
No Apollo, no medicine. No hospitals.
Shit.
My chest started to stir in anxiety, and at that moment, Pythia released me from the vision. I felt sick, like I was about to throw up, but I held it in.
I sucked in a breath, but couldn’t get enough air.
“It won’t take that much to kill you,” Pythia said, dragging her hand down my face to settle over my heart. “Even you aren’t safe from your own creations.”
Vague, haunting, and ominous. Par for the course, where she was concerned. It felt like she was still spinning prophecies.
“I hear you,” I said, pushing the words out. I was stubborn, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew the risk of gallivanting about the world without heirs to save me, but I’d been locked away in Prometheus. But something about it didn’t feel right. It was Persy’s one goal with me, and yet it was the thing that seemed hardest to do. “I’ll do it.”
Pythia pushed her hand into my heart, knocking me back on my haunches. “I will not tolerate otherwise.”
I wasn’t going to tell her that if I died and took all of Apollo’s power with me, she’d probably follow me. “I know.”
With a nod, she backed away, giving me the room to stand. She looked behind me, clearly towards Persy, before returning her attention to me. “You know who she is?” she asked, her voice in a whisper.
I nodded, even though my neck felt stiff.
“It is good to see her again,” Pythia said, a wry smile on her face.
I grumbled noncommittally, wanting to get the fuck out of here as soon as possible. Just as I was turning to leave, not even bothering with a goodbye, Pythia said, “I hope you’re planning on stopping by your home. I’m tired of cleaning cobwebs off it.”
“Humor doesn’t suit you,” I shot back.
Pythia tilted her head at me. “I was not making a joke. That house grows weary in your absence.”
“You went there?” Pythia would never leave this temple unless she felt it was necessary.
She nodded, completely refusing to acknowledge the gravity of this situation.
Well, now I felt like even more of an asshole.
“I’ll go,” I said, letting that be my goodbye.