Twin Flame

Chapter 7

In a turnof events that surprises absolutely nobody, my surprise engagement announcement at my baby sister and not-exactly-baby cousin’s birthday gala changes everything.

Although, to be fair, things were changing before we trouped over to the aircraft carrier. I just didn’t know how much.

Apollo doesn’t even pretend to want to be in his own apartment. He spends the rest of the weekend post-gala either napping on my couch or sleeping in my bed. He hovers outside the bathroom when I shower and grabs my hand the second I open the door. He explains in an exhausted slur that he’d had an episode in the office that had come out of nowhere. He’s not sure if the one that started on the drive home counts separately from the one that hadn’t ended yet when he got to the party. I write down the details in a note-taking app in a numbered list the same way I used to keep a record of the headaches Daisy had when we were in school so that if one of them rose to the level of an emergency, I’d be able to tell her parents—and mine—what had happened.

This thing with the episodes is similar, but scarier, because two of them in one day is unprecedented, never mind three. They’ve always come on slowly before, nagging and complaining and prodding. Neither of us wanted to find out what happened if we tried to resist.

Now we’re definitely not resisting, and Apollo keeps startling awake with a hunted look in his eyes. I keep reassuring him that I feel fine, and that he doesn’t have a fever, and the entire sequence of events could have been a fluke, though both of us know that if the schedule is going haywire, anything could happen.

I do internet research while Apollo sleeps with his head in my lap and a solid lineup of low-stakes romcoms play at low volume on the TV.

Two people age twenties get fevers when apart for more than a week

Weird fevers not contagious but coordinated between two people in their twenties

Man and woman in twenties can’t be apart for more than a week.

The same searches, with not mental illness added to the end.

The same searches, with not elderly added to the end.

The same searches, with supernatural added to the end.

It’s all useless. What’s happening to me and Apollo—what’s been happening for over half our lives—is an imaginary scenario that people like to put their favorite characters in. There isn’t medical research about it because it doesn’t exist in real life.

Except when it comes to us.

I give up on the searching after a fruitless attempt to describe the change in the situation. The trigger for the episodes was always the two of us being separated for too long, and they were matched. We experienced roughly the same symptoms in the same pattern of escalation over the same period of time.

We were apart the other day, but the interval was off, and Apollo’s symptoms were much stronger than mine. Scarily stronger than mine. Does that mean that the trigger was something else? Does it mean that the pattern has totally collapsed?

The internet is of no help at all.

“Do you want to stay home tomorrow?” I ask Apollo on Sunday night. We’re six episodes deep into an old espionage thriller show that first aired when they only released one episode per week on cable.

“That’s not the pattern,” Apollo answers, barely disguised worry in his eyes. “If we start staying home all the time, we might fuck it up.”

“Oh, no,” I tease. “I forgot your fear of doing a vacation.”

“What you’re talking about isn’t a vacation. That’s sick leave. And it’s fraud if I’m not actually sick.”

“Now you’re doing a patriarchy. Look at you, Apollo. Does the boss not deserve rest as well? Must we all remain prisoners to the relentless capitalist grind?”

“It’s a capitalist grind for world peace.” Apollo glances down at himself, then raises his eyebrows at me. “Do I look bad?”

“You look tired.”

“That’s not the same as being sick.”

Apollo pretends to be okay on Monday morning. We walk to the Starbucks by my building—our building—my uncle Hades’s building, technically, though that’s more a matter of paperwork than anything else. In the line to pick up our drinks, we have a familiar, comforting bicker about the merits of iced coffee vs. hot. I think there is, like, no merit to hot coffee pretty much ever, and Apollo insists that iced coffee is just expensive milk.

Coffees in hand, we walk a block farther in the blustery spring breeze and stop off in a by-appointment-only showroom with no sign over the door, just Uncle Hades’s etched mountain logo on the grass. An ageless, soft-spoken man inside has several options for me to choose from. It’s no choice at all. The carved-silver band with a round moonstone that looks like frozen blue starlight beckons like it was made just for me. It doesn’t even need to be sized.

Right. Apollo had said. Easy.

And it was easy, and it does feel right. Which is exactly why I can’t look at it once it’s on.

My feelings about the ring itself are less complicated than my feelings about the surprise by-the-way-we’re-engaged at the party. I’ve had the weekend to panic, convince myself the world is ending, convince myself Apollo is just going through a hard time, and then re-panic.

Even if this thing with the Senator turns out to be nothing, and Apollo was freaked out for an unrelated reason, announcing a surprise engagement will smooth over any extra time Apollo and I need to spend together in the next…

However long.

A tiny voice inside of me insists, over and over, that if we had to spend forever together, that wouldn’t be so bad. A tiny part of me, which I have every intention of ignoring, wouldn’t mind being forced by circumstance to never leave Apollo’s side again.

I’m not supposed to be okay with that. I’m not supposed to think any part of this is right. But wouldn’t it be easier to go along with it? What’s the point in fighting fate?

Or, I guess, fighting Apollo’s suspicions about a Senator?

Apollo’s driver takes us from the storefront to a Park Avenue apartment building on the Upper East Side, where Daisy will be photographed for Vogue in a unit that has been restored to its 1920s heyday glory.

Apollo gets out onto the sidewalk with me, still holding my hand. He turns it over in his, his eyes on the ring and the tip of his thumb gently skimming the band as if he thinks it might disappear if he puts too much weight on it.

I should probably be looking at the ring, too, despite—no, since the ring feels…real. Not like a piece of a performance, like Daisy’s did. It feels like mine. From Apollo.

It feels like all these years of staying meticulously platonic with each other were the mask, and we’ve finally taken it off.

But, as per usual, I only have eyes for him. The height difference between us means I can look up at him. He’s not relaxed—who would be, if you had three intense, inexplicable fevers in one day and then revealed a secret fake engagement at a gala event?—but he is unguarded, and that’s one of my favorite looks on him.

“You could play hooky if you’re worried,” I suggest.

“I’m the boss.”

“Yeah. That’s why you can play hooky. When you’re the boss, you can do whatever you want.”

Apollo exhales, and I can feel in his touch how much he wants to follow me into this photo shoot and, presumably, hold my hand the entire time.

“Maybe other bosses.” He finally lifts his eyes from my ring and smiles at me. When I was younger, I had no idea how transparent his worry could be. He might’ve been better at hiding it then. Or I hadn’t noticed it yet. “Not this one.”

“Well.” I turn my hand and squeeze his. “You can always call me. With your cell phone. Mine will ring, and I’ll pick it up and, like, get in a car. Or whatever’s necessary.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I know.”

“Do you also know that you’re basically legally required to call me if something goes wrong?”

He quirks an eyebrow. “There’s a legal component?”

“It is if we’re engaged.”

Apollo spent most of the weekend sleeping. He spent most of Calliope and Orion’s party trying to keep his pinky wrapped around mine. I know he thinks we have to appear to be engaged in public for safety reasons—both his and mine—but we don’t have to pretend in private.

We can do what we’ve always done. Cuddle platonically.

He changes his grip again and holds my hand in front of my face.

“We’re engaged,” he says firmly, and then he leans in and kisses me.

It’s the first non-stolen-time kiss we’ve ever shared, and it’s on the sidewalk on Park Avenue with his driver all of six feet away.

I think, half-deliriously, my heart going like a bird in full flight, third time’s the charm.

Apollo does not kiss me like we’re parting ways to head to the office. He kisses me like he’s miserable to be leaving me and even more miserable that he didn’t spend every second up to now kissing me. His hand comes up to brace my chin, and then it’s way beyond a peck. It’s a kiss.

A real, real kiss. The breath whooshes out of me. Apollo laughs, nips my bottom lip, and pulls away, my hand still in his. As a finishing touch, he raises my hand one more time and brushes his lips over my knuckles, ring glowing palely next to them.

Then he gives me a gentle push toward the entrance of the building.

I look back at him and wave, my face hot.

Oh.

My.

Freaking.

God.

He’s going to stand there on the sidewalk until I’m inside.

“You can call me, too,” he says as I reach the door.

“Oh, yeah? Will you get in a car the second your phone rings and rush across the city to my side?” I say back, like it’s a joke.

“No guarantees on the car.” Apollo shrugs. “I might just run.”

I don’t thinkit’s for the best that Apollo decided to go to the office after all, but it’s probably less awkward for him.

Not because Apollo is a stranger to photo shoots. It’s impossible to grow up in my family, even with a late start like Apollo, Ares, and Hercules had, and avoid photo shoots.

The two of us pose together on a velvet green chaise lounge, my arm draped artfully over Daisy’s shoulder and our heads tilted together at one angle, then another, then a third.

We’ve done this a million times. Daisy is her parents’ daughter, and I’m my parents’ daughter, and we were born close enough in age to be sisters. When we were kids, there were rumors that we were twins. Then Daisy and her parents moved into the city so we could go to school, and everyone finally accepted that we weren’t twins, but we were also city residents with ultra-wealthy parents who look interesting and beautiful in photos together.

I should have seen the photo shoot coming after the gala, but I didn’t. I strode into the Roaring Twenties apartment thinking I would sit back, relax, and hang out with Daisy during breaks.

Instead, I was immediately whisked into hair, makeup, and clothing while at least four people circled me, talking at top speed about how our parents have to be so excited, and how the possibilities for a double wedding must have us thrilled to pieces, and how the cover photo is going to be even more enthralling with both me and Daisy on it together.

And Daisy, my best friend and on occasion my worst enemy, stood there and agreed with all of them, throwing out ideas for a double wedding and saying that maybe we should have a double honeymoon and generally being a straight-faced menace, a trait that everyone assumes comes directly from her father and is in fact from both her parents.

Now, of course, she’s leaning against me on the chaise lounge, as professional as can be, following our photographer’s instructions. We are being photographed by a man named August, who has been taking photos of the family since Daisy and I were little. I don’t want to make too many definitive statements about how things work in our family because the general consensus is that nobody really knows and so we just change the subject, but you can tell that August and his twin brother Julien—a journalist who translates for August, who only uses sign language in public—have been in our orbit. Neither of them look their age.

“If you could look at each other for this next one?” Julien says, for August.

Daisy and I look at each other. It’s only from these long years of practice that I don’t get the giggles. But then Daisy smiles, big and excited, like we planned the secret engagement so she could get me on to the cover of Vogue with her, and I smile back and fake laugh. The fake laugh turns into a real laugh, and then Daisy’s laughing, and for a few precious seconds I know it looks exactly how it’s supposed to for a magazine cover—joyous, but also elegant. The height of fashion. That sort of thing.

And then, naturally, Daisy snorts, and we do get the giggles.

August lets his camera rest against his hip, secure on its strap, and signs something to Julien.

“Five minutes,” Julien says. “Ten, if you need it.”

“Oh, thank God.” Daisy puts both her hands over her eyes and looks down into her lap. “I was just about to start thinking that this window is hellishly bright. August was way ahead of me.”

“Let’s go away from the window, then.”

“But I’m in this outfit.”

“The outfit will survive.”

Daisy’s gown is studded with various photo-shoot hardware in the back because she got her height from her mom, who is petite like Daisy, and not from her dad, who’s well over six feet tall, like my dad. We help each other off the chaise lounge and over to the snack table, where an assistant is waiting to drape us in cloth napkins and hand us opened bottles of water.

When she bustles off to see if August and Julien need anything, Daisy leans against the table and closes her eyes. Her engagement ring from Hercules twinkles darkly on her finger. I put my own left hand behind my back.

“So,” she says, keeping her eyes shut. “Are we going to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?”

Daisy laughs at my fake-innocent tone. “I can’t say I didn’t suspect.”

“You did not suspect. No one suspected.”

“I kind of suspected, Artemis. You guys spend a lot of time together. Like, all your time. You even live in the city still.”

“You live in the city. Our family lives here. Living in this city is not a smoking gun.”

Daisy cracks one eye open and peers at me. “Was there a smoking gun I don’t know about?”

I stare deeply into her singular open eye. “There was no smoking gun.”

“A smoking bow, then?”

“I’ve never had a bow that smokes.”

I have had many, many different kinds of arrows, though.

Daisy closes her eye again.

“I’m not saying you have to tell me anything,” she says, after a minute. “I’m just saying that we can talk about it. If you want.”

My throat gets tight. I swallow a few times, my chest aching with an emotion that takes a few beats to become clear, even if it’s still complicated. Daisy didn’t tell me about her killer nightmares for a long time. It wasn’t until Hercules brought her home that I had a better idea of what was happening to her, and that was…

It was hard. Because I wanted to be there for her, the way we’ve been there for each other all our lives.

But I also know how she feels about sharing that kind of thing. Daisy doesn’t want people to think she’s fragile or somehow incapable of dealing with her life. At the same time, she is more vulnerable to certain things than the rest of us. Like light, which is pretty much everywhere in modern society, all the time.

I’ve never told anyone about the episodes. Mostly because I don’t want them to think I’m fragile or somehow incapable of dealing with my life. And, in my case, it also involves Apollo, who has his own right to privacy.

But right now, next to this table with a fruit tray, a vegetable tray, and a sausage-and-crackers tray, I want to cup my hands around my mouth and whisper the whole story into Daisy’s ear. I want her to look at me with the black eyes that unfortunately for her mean she understands what it’s like to not be in full control or body. I want her to hold my hand and tell me that whatever happens, it’ll turn out okay. I want her to tell me that even if we both know it’s not always true.

“There’s a thing that’s been happening.” I pitch my voice so that we won’t be overheard by anyone else in the apartment. Julien, August, and the shoot director are in an animated conversation and not paying attention to us at all. “For a while now.”

“The thing where you and Apollo can’t be apart or you start to die?”

I stare at the side of Daisy’s head. She does not open her eyes, like she knows I’m staring. Daisy keeps a perfectly straight face.

“Maybe.”

“Okay.”

We stand silently for a minute. My heart beats fast, then slows down.

“I probably shouldn’t have said that,” I admit, my voice going thin.

“It wouldn’t be…” Daisy clears her throat. “The weirdest thing that’s ever happened in our family. I had killer nightmares.”

“I think this could be weirder than killer nightmares, Daze.”

She shrugs, the fall of her gown moving with her. “You’ve seen Orion in the pool, haven’t you? A lot of weird stuff happens when we’re around.”

“Yes, but this came out of nowhere. There’s no explanation for it.”

“Do you actually start dying? Because I’ve joked about that before, and now I’m wondering if I should feel bad.”

“Don’t feel bad. It was funny.”

“You dying would not be funny.”

“It would be, because I would make a lot of jokes on my way out. Like you did when you thought you were going to die.”

“It was my duty to lighten the mood,” Daisy says crisply. “It’s not as if I could just sit there on the sofa and die. I had to be carried upstairs half the time so that Hercules and I could—” She drops her voice to a whisper. “Fuck.”

I laugh out loud, but it catches in my throat and tapers off.

“Sometimes, I feel…very bad. When it’s happening. And Apollo?—”

“Apollo feels worse.”

“How do you know that?”

Daisy opens her eyes and gives me an incredulous look. “Because I saw him at the gala. So did Hercules. He almost went to help. That’s how bad he looked. And you looked gorgeous and fine.”

“Well.” My hand is cold around my bottle of water. “It’s usually not like that. We’re usually fine if we…have regular contact.”

“Like fucking?”

“Like holding hands,” I say, too loud, drawing a glance from Julien and August. “Or sitting close together.”

My cousin clears her throat, stretches herself out of her graceful lean, and holds out her hand.

There’s no fighting this. We’ll be back in front of the camera soon, and there’s no doubt in my mind that August will take some photos of us admiring the ring.

I take my hand out from behind my back and put it in Daisy’s.

Her eyes widen at the sight of the moonstone. A smile flashes onto her face. She tilts my hand in one direction, then the other, watching how the moonstone twinkles. It really does look like a tiny piece of starlight was tugged out of the sky and set down in this ring just for me. The warmth I feel when I look at it is so strong that I almost want to look away and keep looking away. I don’t know whether it’s painful because I wish Apollo had gotten down on one knee and asked me to marry him or because, deep down, it doesn’t matter that he didn’t.

“I love this on you,” she says, glancing at me so I can see the sincerity in her eyes. “Do you love it?”

“I really do.” I swallow past another lump in my throat. That sounds like I’m admitting that I’m in love with Apollo, which is not going to happen. “It didn’t even have to be resized.”

“Lucky,” she murmurs, without much conviction. Privately, I agree. I don’t think luck had anything to do with it.

“You know…” Daisy gives my hand a light squeeze and lets go. “I’m not morally opposed to you and Apollo fucking if that’s what you both want to do.”

“Daisy.”

“Sorry.” She glances all around, then leans an inch closer. “I’m not opposed to you making love if that’s what you both?—”

I make a gagging sound. “Please never say that again.”

“Sorry. I’m not opposed to him putting—unless it’s weirdly conical, in which case?—”

I gag again, more theatrically.

“Please tell me if you got engaged because of your weird curse.”

“It’s not a curse,” I say automatically.

“Didn’t you say it came out of nowhere? How long has this been going on?”

“Since we were little. Basically since Apollo and Ares came into the family.”

“Since the arrow, you mean?”

For a second, I don’t know which arrow Daisy’s talking about. I’ve shot hundreds of arrows over the course of my life. I spend more time than my family can possibly know notching, shooting, and retrieving arrows.

And then I realize that Daisy hasn’t seen me shoot most of those arrows. She’s seen me shoot toy arrows with a toy bow because we both used to have them growing up, so Daisy’s a decent shot.

“You mean…”

“The one at Christmas. When you first saw him,” she says. “Since then?”

“Yeah.”

A tiny frown. “But something’s going wrong. It has to be, if Apollo looked like that at the party.”

“I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t—” Our break is going to be up soon. This isn’t the ideal place to lay out all the details. I probably shouldn’t do it without talking to Apollo first. “He was upset about a meeting that happened at work with the same Senator who was talking to me at the party. And he wasn’t feeling well.”

Daisy’s eyes get enormous. “He wanted to protect you from the Senator?”

The hairs on my arms stand up. Daisy’s eyes follow the goosebumps.

“Uh oh,” she says. “He wanted to protect you from more than the Senator?”

“I think so. And I think he’s worried about…” I am not going to call this a curse. Where did Daisy even get that idea? “About the episodes.”

She purses her lips. “That’s kind of romantic.”

“It will be. Until we break up.”

Daisy scoffs. “Why would you break up when you’re totally in love with each other?”

I stare at her, and stare at her, and stare at her.

She stares back.

“What?” she says, after a long silence. “Was I supposed to pretend it wasn’t obvious?”

Daisy teasesme relentlessly through the rest of the photo shoot. Other people might not appreciate being teased about what they thought, rightfully, was a secret crush on her adoptive brother, but it eases the pressure in my chest. It reminds me that this isn’t the first time we’ve faced life-or-death stakes before. The fact that Daisy and Hercules made it out is a good omen.

It has to be a good omen.

August calls for two more breaks. He’s a talented photographer, but he’s especially good at photographing our family, which means he’s especially good at photographing Daisy and her dad. I don’t know how August can tell when Daisy wants to get away from the window, because she and her dad have always gone to great lengths to hide that kind of thing from other people.

During the last break, when Daisy’s in the bathroom with a team of assistants to keep her gown intact, I finally ask him what the tell is.

August’s eyebrows go up. He laughs in a soft, near-silent huff. He’s been with us for so long that I know this amusement is out of an almost familial affection. His hands come up in front of him, prepared to sign.

“It’s…” Julien says, while August signs. “It’s like this.”

August doesn’t close his eyes. He looks pointedly into mine, then ever so slightly to the left and ever so slightly down. It’s so subtle and so Daisy that my mouth drops open.

“I thought she was just thinking!”

August shakes his head, hands moving again.

“Her father does the same thing,” Julien translates. August’s hands are up at his face, rotating to indicate tilting his head. “Many people, when they’re thinking, or trying to remember, look up.” He flicks his eyes up and to the right. “When Daisy and her father are trying to remember, they look down. And when they want a break but don’t want to say so—” August demonstrates again, then drops his hands with a smile.

“You’re good at your job,” I tell him.

“He knows,” Julien says.

We all laugh.

I still have that warm, things-will-turn-out feeling when Daisy and I look into the lens for the last shot of the day.

“That’s it,” Julien says. “Daisy, Artemis, you were wonderful.”

“She knows,” I answer.

We all laugh again.

That’s when I hear the buzzing.

My phone, in my purse, on a side table at the side of the room. I go there with two assistants at my side, one of them holding a robe.

I get my phone out and answer without looking at the screen. “Hello?”

There’s a loud sniff on the other end of the line. Calliope, crying. “Artemis? Can you come home? Something happened.”