Apollo’s gaze moved from me to Gavin, and he appeared as though he might laugh. “Gods, I wish you could remember how fucking pathetic you looked after I took her that day,” Apollo mocked. “You should have known not to bring her to Delphi. You should have known that I would seek revenge after what you did.”
“Daphne would never have touched you anyway,” Gavin sneered.
Apollo scoffed. “Yeah, but you made sure of that, didn’t you?” He glanced at me. “Lucky your little bride was there to compensate for all those lost moments.” He winked my way, and bile lurched into my throat.
Gavin flinched, but Ares was there to keep him steady.
“She made the most perfect little screams in those early days,” Apollo continued, his voice such a sinister taunt that my skin began to crawl. “And she would have continued had I not grown so tired of her whining.Eros, Eros, Eros. She begged for you, sobbing every night, praying you would find her, and then during the day, she’d spit and scream and refuse to eat. So, I went to the Underworld, where your stupid little friend handed over the same box of sleep she’d once given to Psyche for Aphrodite.”
Persephone froze behind me. “I didn’t… I didn’t know….”
A maniacal noise sounded from Apollo when he saw her crestfallen face. “All of you. Sostupid. So easily manipulated—“
The earth rumbled beneath our feet.
“Careful, boy,” came Hades’s drawl behind us.
Everyone looked his way, finding Hades leaning casually against one of the columns. Power seeped from the look in his eyes, the quake of the earth a mere warning of what he might do if Apollo insulted his wife again.
And yet, despite his threat, Apollo kept going.
“—none of you had any idea what was happening thanks to Aphrodite’s memory botch.”
He moved directly in front of Gavin, hands stuffed in his pockets. “And do you know what your little wife did when I finally woke her?”
Gavin had stopped breathing.
“She fucked me,” Apollo said bluntly. “She sucked my cock, and she worshiped me because I was the only real thing she knew. Everything else was fiction, and she was so desperate to fill the void you left behind that she turned into a foolish feeble mortal, ready for me at any moment to bend and break as I wanted her to. And fucking Styx, did she wilt.”
“Chloe…”
My name hissed from Gavin’s lips in an expectant tone, like he was asking permission.
“I heard you had to beg to get her back this time,” he continued, smirking at Gavin. “I heard you sank to your pathetic knees and pleaded for her to love you again. Let me guess what held her back… Fear that you reminded her of me.”
“Chloe.”
Gavin repeated my name again, and my heart thumped wildly in my ears.
“I made sure when you found her again that she wouldn’t be the same person you’d loved before. She’d be broken. Beaten down. A scared little whore that feared anything real. Because I knew you would fall head over fucking heels in love with her as you’d done last time. And I wanted you to know how it felt for the love of your life to run. To flee. To bolt away so fearful of you that they turned into something you didn’t recognize—”
“Chloe.”
At that moment, I was signing Apollo’s death warrant—if such a thing even existed. But with everything that had just been revealed— his stealing me, wiping me from existence, taking me away from my husband, and trying to crush and break and maim my soul to the point that I was unrecognizable and weak…
Tears fell down my cheeks, and Gavin looked at me over his shoulder.
My chin made a minuscule dip.
“—I wanted you to know what it felt like to love someone so much that you drove them away. And I hoped it killed her.”
A glow suddenly erupted around Gavin’s figure, and not even Ares could hold the god back from vengeance.
Gavin lunged at Apollo. Apollo tried to unleash himself, to rise off the ground and out of Gavin’s grasp before he could grab him, but wrath ensued and consumed the room.
Gavin clawed and struck Apollo with his strength, fighting against the beams of sun that Apollo shot down.
Apollo was quick.
