Chapter 16

I move to step around him, but his long legs shuffle him sideways to block my way again.

“You’re crying,” he says in a soft tone, his hand hovering over my arm.

“I’m not.” I swipe a hand across my eyes, gathering the tears springing there. I’m not crying. That would be stupid. I haven’t cried over a boy in years, and I’m not going to start now. Even if the boy is a god with multiple kids and multiple mortal partners and I’m just one in the list of too many and he may or may not just be trying to use me as some incredibly fucked up divine breeding program.

Apollo tilts his head, his curls falling across his face the same way Hermes’s do. Just longer. Prettier. Glowier. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Ha.

No.

I do not want to talk about it. Hermes asked me the same thing a whole lifetime ago, when he flopped onto my couch and tore apart the movie I was watching. I hate that question.

When I don’t answer, his fingers ghost over my bare shoulder and the touch sets my skin alight with pins and needles. “Can I show you something?”

I let my gaze drift to his eyes. They shine too brightly, as if he plucked a bit of the sun out of the sky. Hermes’s eyes never glowed like that, and he never looked at me the way Apollo is right now. Like I could tell him anything and he’d just smile and nod.

Something in me wants to trust him. Maybe it’s just to prove that I can still exist without Hermes. Maybe it’s the way Apollo’s fingers don’t linger too long. Maybe it’s the way his eyes beg me to say yes.

“Okay,” I mutter after a moment too long, and a little smile stretches across his lips.

He moves to the side, and gestures for me to walk beside him. “This way,” he says in a voice that’s too quiet. Too soft.

I fall into step beside him as we cross the echoing room, past the fountain and toward a corner under an angled staircase. I should feel uncomfortable, maybe unsafe. I don’t. I feel like I could let everything spill out of me and Apollo would hold onto it forever.

Maybe I’m just desperate. For something. For anyone. After everything I just pulled out of Hermes, it feels like I’m bleeding out.

A warm hand on my back pulls my feet to a stop. I half expect to turn and see Hermes standing beside me.

Apollo steps around me to grip the handle of a skinny white door, tucked under the stairs. “My brother and I used to come here all the time.” His eyes flick down to my hand, then back to my eyes. “Now it’s just me.”

He pushes the door open, and the first thing that hits me is lavender. The scent is almost overwhelming. Closing my eyes, I force myself to remain upright.

The headache melts away from my pounding eyes like I just downed an entire bottle of Tylenol.

“Sorry,” Apollo murmurs as he steps inside the room. “It helps me relax. I didn’t think about how strong it probably smells to you.”

I nod, even though my throat’s too tight to speak. The scent swirls around me like smoke, sinking into my skin. Apollo steps inside without looking back, and I follow, because I don’t know what else to do.

I don’t know what I expected, but not this.

The room is painted like Van Gogh himself made a home here. Swirls of gold and ivory and periwinkle decorate the walls, and everywhere I look it…moves.

The walls shift in every direction, pushing outward with my gaze.

Instruments of every kind line the walls, some hanging, some leaning, some resting in stands. Everything from guitars and flutes to violins and even a didgeridoo.

The air feels clean. I can’t explain it. Like stepping into a casino and getting a whiff of that pure oxygen. Everything should be too weird. Too much. But it isn’t.

A deep green sofa in the center of the room is calling my name, beckoning me forward. My hand trails a dusty brown acoustic guitar as I make my way toward the couch.

I collapse onto the middle cushion, my eyes falling shut as I sink into the backrest. Holy shit, I’m way too relaxed.

I don’t really care, either.

“It’s wonderful in here, isn’t it?”

Apollo’s voice sounds like a lullaby hummed through a starlit night. I almost forget to answer, until I hear him pluck an instrument off the wall.

My eyes fly open to see him holding one of those U-shaped instruments. A lyre, if I’m being logical.

“I feel like I could sleep for an entire lifetime.” It’s not a lie. I don’t know when I got so poetic, but it’s not a lie.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

A little chuckle rumbles out of him, and honestly, I could just let the sound lull me to sleep. If Hermes is sarcasm and slightly ominous, Apollo is some kind of ethereal softness.

“That’s the incense,” he explains, motioning toward a corner. “I come here when everything starts to feel like too much.

He plucks a string, and the sound reverberates around the room, bouncing off the walls and flitting around in my ears. Another, and the room starts swaying with him.

Or maybe it’s me. It’s probably me.

His fingers find any easy melody, and the music surrounds me like a childhood blanket I never had. The tune is sweeping, but sharp. The lyre twangs, then softens, then the sound warbles through the air as the pace quickens, then slows again.

I watch his fingers work against the strings. There’s a certain delicacy in the way he holds the instrument, like he respects it more than he does himself.

“There was a time,” he starts, his voice carrying seamlessly over the refrain, “when I was banished to live as a mortal.”

His eyes flick up to meet mine, and I don’t know what my face is doing but it draws a smile from him. A pretty smile. One I could get used to seeing more often.

“I spent my days as a shepherd,” he continues, his gaze drifting back down to his working fingers. “For nine years, it was nothing but me and the silence of Earth.”

The muscles in his jaw feather as the melody accelerates again. His eyes glisten with a certain sadness I can’t place. Something like nostalgia. Or maybe regret.

“It was meant to be a punishment.” There’s an unmistakable lilt in his accent as he glances up at me again. His eyebrows draw upward as he presses his lips together. “But I’ve come to realize the punishment was knowing I could never have that life.”

His throat bobbles when he looks back at the lyre, straightening his posture.

My eyes blink heavily, and I don’t think I could stand up even if I wanted to. I don’t want to, but it’s unsettling to know I can’t.

“What were you punished for?” I ask. My voice blends with the tune in a way that makes me question whether or not I actually said anything at all.

But, when Apollo’s lips stretch thin, I know he heard me. He doesn’t want to answer.

He does anyway. “I destroyed something sacred to Zeus,” he says flatly, his words strained through a tight throat. His lip curls into something caught between a quiver and a snarl. “Because he destroyed someone sacred to me.”

I feel my own face begin to pucker. I can feel his sadness. I don’t know how or why, but it’s overwhelming. I can feel it in my belly, in the tears pricking behind my eyes, in the way my throat closes.

“What did he do?” I whisper as my eyes slip shut. I feel a tear roll down my cheek. I don’t know if it’s mine or not.

He doesn’t answer. Or, if he does, I can’t hear it. All of me is surrounded by all of…this. The music, the expanding walls, the lavender, the incense. I don’t know if there’s even anything left of me anymore or if I’m just part of the weeping melody.

I could stay here forever. Maybe I already have.

It would be so easy to just let go. To forget the world and become whatever the music is offering.

There’s a tingle at the back of my head, and Hermes’s voice swells around it, probing through my ears.

My brother has an unfortunate tendency to turn his admirers into trees.

My eyes fly open, and I push myself to stand up, my knees threatening to give out. I stumble back and catch myself on the arm of the couch, probably looking like some sort of sweaty cave goblin as I glare at Apollo.

His fingers stop whatever haunting melody he’d moved onto while I was drifting off to dream land, and he looks back at me like I’ve just sprouted an extra set of heads.

“You’re not trying to turn me into a tree, are you?”

The words feel as stupid coming out of my mouth as they sound. I wish I could go back about three seconds and delete the thought from my head.

Such an idiot.

Apollo’s eyes are wide and hyper focused on my face as his lips draw into a frown. “What?”

This is when my mom would tell me to go and wash my mouth out with soap. If only I could.

I open my mouth to respond, but how am I supposed to come back from something like that? My mouth snaps shut again as he continues to stare at me in silence.

“What did you say?” he asks, quieter this time.

I take a long breath as my stomach twists into the worst knot I’ve ever felt. “Uh.” I blink once. Twice. “Hermes mentioned you had…” A painful swallow interrupts my words. “An unfortunate tendency to… turn people… into trees.”

His mouth falls open slightly and he takes a step back, like my words hit him in the chest. “What?” he repeats, his voice thickening around me like a sappy morning dew.

My face pulls into a grimace. “I’m sorry,” I mutter in a tone that sounds as far from genuine as humanly possible. “I just felt so relaxed, and I freaked out.”

With eyes still as wide as dinner plates, he glances around the room. He looks like he’s still trying to piece together what I said. “Why would he tell you about Daphne?”

I hold my hands out in front of me, as if I can still feign innocence. “I don’t even know who Daphne is, all I know is Hermes told me to stay away from you because of the tree thing.”

His eyebrows draw together as he tilts his head to the side. “He told you to stay away from me?”

A cacophony of confused noises spill out of my mouth as I attempt to regain my sanity. “I assumed you knew that from the way you looked at him when he first brought me here.”

A little hint of a smirk pulls at his lips. I can’t tell if it’s because of what Hermes said or the way I can’t get words out without sounding like a complete and total fucking idiot.

“In the future,” he starts, turning to set the lyre back on the stand, “assume I know nothing.”

He turns back to me with a grin that looks far too similar to his brother’s, and it makes me want to vomit. Or run. Or both.

It’s not like I have anywhere to run to, so I just sit back down on the couch.

He claps his hands together, and I flinch a bit at the noise. Hermes would immediately backtrack, apologize for scaring me, then wrap me up in his little wing cocoon.

Apollo just smiles wider. “Well, I suppose our time in the music room has been spoiled.” He motions toward the door, which looks a thousand miles away from where I’m seated. “I can’t imagine why you were wandering the halls alone, but I can read you well enough to tell you don’t want to return to my brother.”

Jesus, there’s about a thousand less crude ways he could’ve worded that. But, he’s not wrong.

When I just continue to stare at him, he takes a step toward the door and gestures for me to stand up. “I’m sure it’s safe to assume you’ve met Dionysus, given the way you behaved at the festival last night.”

Hey! I open my mouth to throw out some quick retort, but he cuts me off with a finger wag.

“So,” he drags out in a jolted cadence that sounds foreign coming from his lips, “if you’re feeling particularly distraught, I can escort you to him. If there’s anyone who can help you forget your feelings, it’s him.”

I’m already moving toward the door. I don’t think I have any other choice. Forgetting my feelings would taste delicious right about now.