Chapter 20
Something feels really weird.
In my chest.
Like my heart is getting punched over and over and over again. But it’s a good kind of punch, because I can also feel my blood moving through my body. Which is not a sensation I would recommend that everyone experience. It’s disorienting. You’re not supposed to feel your own blood.
“Apollo,” says Artemis.
I’ve been somewhere else, but I haven’t left the bed. It takes me years to look at her, though I’m already facing her direction. She’s climbed up onto my bed and is just sitting in what can only be described as a horrifying mess. I’m covered in blood. It looks like I was vomiting up my own organs.
Despite the bloodbath, Artemis is perfect. Still beautiful, even with blood in her hair and on her face and on her hands. She’s holding both my hands in hers.
The room is quiet, but there are?—
People. Breathing. At least three. Someone has a hand on my shoulder. Maybe two people. But I have the distinct sense that if I turn my head to look at them, I won’t have any energy to keep living.
“Is that mine?” I ask Artemis.
“Not all of it,” she answers. “But it doesn’t bother me. Listen.”
I’m hot again.
Hotter.
Less hot.
Ice?
My tongue feels weird in my mouth. Artemis squeezes my hand tight in both of hers.
“Apollo,” she says. “Apollo.”
“Yeah?” I finally manage.
She holds up our hands. There’s her moonstone ring. I remember when she was a blood moon on the aircraft carrier. “We’re engaged. You know what that means, right?”
“Married.”
“Right. Being engaged means we’re going to get married.” Artemis’s voice shakes, but she doesn’t let any tears fall. They’re swimming in her eyes. I love her honey-gold eyes. They’re so bright and sunny. She made a good moon, though. She was beautiful when she was the moon. When she was a bride.
“Apollo,” she says, her voice very quiet. “Stop dying and pay attention.”
I blink as hard as I can. “Okay.”
“There’s something I have to tell you, and then you’re going to tell me something.” Artemis takes a deep breath. “I have to tell you that I’m a stone-cold killer.”
“You…are?”
“Yes. I’ve been hunting since I was thirteen. I have killed a significant amount of deer and other game. In a responsible way, obviously. Not always, like, totally legally, but responsibly. I never killed anything just because. And I killed things people could eat. I’m not a trophy hunter. That’s disgusting.” She wrinkles her nose, but then her face smooths out again. “But the rest of it doesn’t bother me. I’m not afraid of blood. I know how to make a clean kill.”
“…how?”
“I did internet research. And then Hades taught me.”
Someone inhales, sounding shocked.
“Later,” says Hades.
Artemis clears her throat. “Actually, the first time I went hunting, I missed, and I got the wrong spot on the deer. And he killed it before it had a chance to suffer. With a knife. He threw a knife in the dark and took it down.”
“Cool,” breathes one of Poseidon’s twins. Pollux, I think. There’s the muffled sound of someone—maybe two people—being dragged out of the room.
Artemis doesn’t look away from me.
“And when I say stone-cold, I mean it,” she continues. “It did not bother me at all to kill those men today. Um, yesterday. I didn’t mind. I would kill for you literally any day of the week. Any time. I wouldn’t kill someone innocent, but I’m not going to have nightmares over this. I am going to sleep fine if you survive.”
I give her what I hope is an encouraging nod. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not afraid of me? I’m a very scary thing in the dark.”
“No. I think you’re really hot. Like, beautiful.”
“Good.” Artemis smiles, and isn’t that the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen? “Apollo.”
“Yeah?”
She looks me dead in the eye. “Tell me what was happening in those photos.”
I’ve never told anyone what was in those pictures. I’ve never wanted to. I didn’t know there were pictures until they were in my hands and it was too late to unsee them. I never wanted to tell Artemis because she shouldn’t know those things. She shouldn’t know that about me. She’d never look at me the same.
But then—look at her. She’s killed people before. She’s killed people for me. And she’s okay. She’s okay with it. The blood isn’t any trouble.
I can’t tell her, though, because the first thing that happens is that I throw up more blood.
Whoever’s got my shoulder—Hades, I think—doesn’t let go, and Artemis doesn’t run away. It’s disgusting, and she can’t want to be doing this, but she wipes my face clean anyway. She takes the crime-scene gown off and gets me a new one. And then she takes my hands in hers.
“Tell me,” she says, and squeezes.
I tell her.
Everything.
About Colonel Paul, who told me to do all those favors and what I was supposed to get for them. I tell her what I was supposed to be buying and what I never got. I tell her about my mother.
My mother.
That my mother was afraid until she wasn’t. Until one night, she stepped in to stop one of those favors, which she had never done before because she was afraid she would be killed and she’d leave Ares and me alone.
We would be alone.
And then she did step in.
And then she did get killed.
And I lost her.
But we weren’t alone for long.
We were alone with our mother for an hour with her heart stopped and her eyes closed, and when the social services lady came to take us away, we ran.
We ran to the shelter.
We ended up with Zeus.
And we weren’t alone at all, which is what she’d been so afraid of. And it’s what I’d been so afraid of. So afraid that I did every favor that anyone ever asked of me. And I’ll keep doing favors in the form of my think tank for as long as I can, because I don’t know what to do to make up for all those other worthless favors.
“You don’t have to do that.” Artemis strokes my face. Her hand feels cool, but I’m not on fire. The hand at my shoulder isn’t holding on so tight.
I feel very, very tired, but I’m not on fire.
“I don’t think I’m dying anymore,” I tell her, though I can barely keep my eyes open.
Artemis leans closer. “You don’t have to make up for any of that,” she says firmly. “It wasn’t your fault. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
It’s the first time anyone’s been able to say that to me, because I didn’t want to hear it from Ares, and I didn’t want to tell anyone else.
“You can quit your think tank,” Artemis says. “You’re the boss. You can do whatever you want.”
“Okay.” I try to get closer to her, which is not within my means right now. She climbs onto my bed.
“I’m going to be doing it with you,” she says. “I don’t really care if you want to break up.”
“I don’t,” I say. What a terrible thing to say. “I want to get married.”
“I want to get married too,” Artemis says. “Just as soon as you feel better.”
She leans in and kisses me.
I’m pretty sure I’m cured.