Chapter Twenty-Two
“What the—”
After two steps back onto the engawa, Apollo scudded to a full stop.
In his hands: a bowl full of the best but stinkiest crow food.
Consuming his sights: a woman full of quiet but prolific tears.
And nowhere to be found: the damn bird to eat the mix of seeds, snails, and mouse guts he’d just stirred together. Nor any remotely useful words for his little monster.
Damn it.
Even when she’d been the human kebob on a crashed chandelier, he was surer of what to say and do. When she was trapped at a speed dating table with a handsy goblin? No problem at all. Neither was hiding her from a yakuza oyabun and his boy-toys in the middle of a Haneda arrivals terminal.
But this . . .
The mysterious slump of her shoulders, the desperation in her stare across the pond and plants . . .
This was a foe he didn’t know about, nor could gather a hint of reference for. Especially with Kaw nowhere to be seen.
“The hell?” he muttered at last. “Irowen? Are you all r—” But yes, he was going to be that kind of blockhead right now, unsure he could handle her answer if he finished the question.
For fuck’s sake.
He knew his way around questions. Yep, even the hard ones. They got stickier with humans; that much was an ironclad truth; but he hadn’t built several dozen businesses in their realm without learning how to tackle the tough stuff.
Why was this human so different?
Why was her sadness beyond a case of tough stuff?
What words did he use with her now?
“What happened to His Highness Kleos? Kaw? You suddenly shy about taking a shit off the perch, asshole?”
And suuure, that lame sarcasm was a better conversation choice . . . why?
Another query without an answer, unless the fresh gusts in the trees qualified as an answer. But even the pelt of pine needles on his face and neck weren’t as painful as the next sound on the air. Irowen’s soft but plaintive sniffs cut into his soul like ragged razors.
“He’s not here.” And so did her serrated sigh. “He . . . already left.”
Yeah, so much for feeling weird about the poop humor at the expense of his squad captain. He also shelved the food bowl on a nearby gardener’s cart without another concern. Good thing, since Irowen’s revelation added the same exponential to his reaction about her emotions.
Emotions.
Zeus’s derelict dick hairs, why did he flinch at the word like a terrible tarot card turn?
He knew about feelings; every leader in the temporal and Olympian realms had to.
Just like those fickle cards, they were full of complications and variations.
But somehow, in this woman’s case, he’d forgotten that.
He thought he already knew her: the human who’d been dealt the deadly tower a thousand times yet survived.
His onna-musha monstress, strong to the point of astounding, making him wonder—hope?
—if she was some kind of demigod and merely didn’t know it yet . . .
But more than most, he’d learned a few hard things about hopes.
About adjusting them when fate dealt those shitty tarot decks.
About realizing hope was sometimes a fancy word for illusion.
Yet also, that reality was a more beautiful word than he ever imagined.
Especially when he could plunk down his ass next to that reality and enfold its teary mess into his comforting arms. When he could bury a hand in its curls and hum his strength into its new sobs.
And when she got those out, he could use his other hand to thumb back the wetness along her cheeks, while diving his scrutiny into her shimmering gaze.
“Talk to me, Monster.” He modulated the syllables a few calm decibels above the new wind gusts. “Is he gone gone, or just skipped out to the conbini gone?”
“He left.” She underlined it with a firm nod, seeming to relish the chance for the action. “I . . . uh . . . Well, we talked. And I’m not totally sure what I said, but it fired him up with a new lead. I mean, the bird Kiss-Kiss-Bang-Banged it right out of here . . . ”
“Okay, you didn’t need to make me more obsessed with you, woman, but that’s a nice touch,” he broke in, relieved when the comment nudged a misty laugh out of her.
“What? The getting rid of Kaw part or the reference to one of the best Christmas movies of all time?”
He cracked a huge grin. “Well, now I may just have to demand you marry me.”
“Sure.” She chuffed and scooted away, sweeping her gaze back over the garden. “Because that’s practical.”
“Because any Christmas movie is?”
Her lips twisted, but this time as if she suppressed a new smile instead of a sobbing reprise. “We should probably change the subject.”
“Fair enough,” he conceded, already enjoying her fresh surprise at his easy surrender. “I’ve got a new question for you anyway.”
“Ah, yes. I should have known.”
“It’s an easy one,” he defended, already prepared for her continued skepticism by lightly wrapping her hands with his. “Just tell me why I’ve got to rid my squad captain of several hundred feathers when he gets back here.”
She blink-blinked in obvious confusion. “Huh?”
“Damn bird made you cry.” He said it simply but the effect on his gut was different. Primal hackles rose in his senses, as if his words had gone more like he watched you die then ate your flesh. “Asshole corvid has to know it’s going to cost him.”
“What?” This time, she twisted their fingers tighter. “Oh my God, Apollo. Kaw didn’t do a thing except listen to me. So don’t you dare—”
“Screw that,” he bit back. “So who did make you cry?”
“Me, okay?”
Her voice pitched up; she twitched her whole torso as if considering a full-body lurch to her feet. But at that moment, the mountain spirits delivered him a solid with a flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder. Random raindrops spattered the garden, fat enough to keep her in place.
“I made me cry, Apollo,” she muttered after a few seconds. “And that’s the truth of it.”
“Okay.” He forced himself to gaze across the grounds too, homing on spots where the weighted sprinkles dotted the dirt and darkened the rocks. “Why?”
“Because I had to admit a bigger truth.” Her voice wobbled so much over the last few syllables, he cocked his focus back to her profile. “Here I was, over these past few weeks, going after Byrd and blaming it all on Nao Ito. But when I just spoke with Kaw, I realized something else entirely.”
He crunched his brows over his newly intense gawk. “Something like what?”
“Like the fact that this has probably been the most selfish mission of my life.”
That took care of the stress about staring too hard. His double-take was quick and authentic. “What’re you—”
She cut him off, already prepared with a give-me-a second hand at his chest. He fell into respectful silence as she sucked down a long breath.
“So . . . Yes, I formed a whole posse around tracking Byrd. And yes, I death-dived on a chandelier because of it, then hell-dived with you. And yes, I made all of it my entire identity for damn near a month. But maybe that was because”—more ponderous breaths sawed in and out of her—“if I lose Genny now, I’m not sure what I’d be anymore.
I mean, nobody will work with me anymore, right?
That’s a foregone, right out of his damn gate now.
I’m also fairly certain there’s no LinkedIn chat room for indie bounty hunters.
And if I can’t even take care of Genny, then who else needs me?
I mean, who have I become? Do you know? Because I’m not sure if I do . . .”
Forget the wobbling words by this point, though he’d have gladly donated a week of perfect sunsets to get them back instead of her agonized sobs. Fuck, he’d thrown in the sunrises too. Possibly his right testicle. Anything for the chance to reach into her spirit and tell her—
What?
What exactly do you want to tell her, malaka? And if it’s worth manipulating Helios and cutting off your nutsack, why isn’t it worth the courage of just saying it?
His mind blanked—because it could fling no argument, decent or otherwise.
But his heart? His soul? Their fights gathered legions by the second. Protests that had nothing to do with failure to find sincere words or execute sweet motions. Those were the easy parts. The outer layers.
The hard stuff was admitting where they came from. His own soul, captivated by this human he should have tortured for information and then left to bleed out in Beverly Hills. The mortal he’d been moved to save . . . for the reasons so exquisitely exposed. So cruelly clear.
He’d fallen for Irowen Steed. Deep and hard.
This stubborn, stunning, messy, mesmerizing, daring, dazzling . . .
Human.
Probably the sole mortal in this realm who’d never reciprocate his feelings.
She’d already been prepared to die for hers: for the principles that defined her, the sister who depended on her, the determination that drove her.
Hell, she probably needed a job with better healthcare and more pockets in her mission gear than she did an Olympian fossil offering nothing but postcard sunsets and Bacchanal parties. And right now, she needed neither.
Because right now, she needs your words. Your own fragile confessions.
Could he be man enough—mortal enough—to offer them?