Brielle and the other girl screamed. Hera nearly tripped, trying to back away. Gavin went in to punch Aidan again. Zeus grabbed Gavin and yanked him back, yelling that he wouldn't start a fight in his house. Persephone and I ran, but she pulled me back before I could interfere, her arms wrapping securely around my chest.
“Eros!” I shouted.
“You fucking bastard!” Gavin was pulling, yanking, spiraling. Power billowed out from his body as he fought Zeus’s grip.
“—the fuck, you clobbering idiot,” Aidan said, grabbing his bleeding nose. “What the shit was that—“
“It was you, wasn’t it?!” Gavin nearly screamed. “You fucking took her, you cowardly little shit.”
Aidan did a double-take upon seeing me, and the wildness in his eyes turned to mirth.
“Oh, my gods,” the other girl said, her voice as shocked as everyone else’s. “Is that…”
Silence fell upon the room.
Gavin stopped struggling. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. He tore his arms out of Zeus’s grasp as Ares ran up to his other side.
“What’s going on?” Ares asked.
“Ask him,” Gavin sneered, eyes never leaving Aidan. “Ask him how hekidnapped my wife. Ask him how he kept her hidden all these years. Ask him how he woke her up just to give her new memories and abuse her—how he tried tomurderher after she found the strength to run away.”
“Fucking Styx,” someone muttered.
“Oh, my gods….”
“Apollo,” Zeus said expectantly, sinking his head in his hand.
Aidan was…Apollo?!
“Tell me you didn’t,” Zeus continued.
Aidan—Apollohadn’t stopped staring at me. There was a crooked sneer on his lips, his dark eyes downcast, chin dipped. I knew that look. I had seen it too many times—that smug glint, terrifying and arousing all at once. I had once worshipped that look, had tried to pull it out of him in every way I could.
He dabbed at the blood coming from his nose, the sound of his boot on the floor breaking the silence when he stepped forward. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said to me. “I wondered where you’d run off to.”
“Don’t you fucking talk to her,” Gavin snapped, and Ares grabbed his arm.
Apollo’s eyes moved to Gavin, and his smirk somehow widened. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” Apollo asked in a deep, rolling rasp. “To watch something you love disappear.”
I wanted to take Gavin’s hand, to tell him I was there with him. I could see him shaking as he tried to hold back from beating Apollo to a pulp.
Brielle—no,Artemiswas standing with her hand over her mouth. I squinted at her, feeling her betrayal in my knotted stomach.
We had been friends, or so I had thought.
“Did you know?” I asked her.
Her jaw tightened, regret filling her glistening eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You knew?” Persephone asked disbelievingly.
“I didn’t know until he started dating her,” Artemis argued. “I didn’t know what he had done. I didn’t know he had hurt her!”
“Why?” Hera demanded. “Why would you do this?” she asked Apollo.
“I wanted to damage something he loved,” Apollo said, his voice remaining calm. “So deep that she’d never be able to love anyone again. So deep that she would reject him just as he made Daphne reject me.”
“It looks like you failed,” I snapped, barely holding myself back.
