I screamed as beams struck Gavin’s skin. I started to run toward him, but Persephone held me back. Aphrodite held me back. Artemis began to launch forward to help, but Zeus hauled her away. Other gods and goddesses shouted and screamed as the fight ruined the room and swallowed our world.
“Eros!” Ares shouted.
But Gavin ignored him. They were matched, strike for strike. Gavin yelled and groaned through the pain of Apollo's blasts as he grabbed Apollo’s feet, and in one swoop, he wrenched the god down and threw him onto his back.
No wings erupted from Gavin’s back.
No arrows pulled from the sky.
There was only his strength. Only the weight of his rage. Only the wrath of a god thought to be nothing more than an impudent, lovesick boy.
He released himself and began to pummel the god once thought to be good and beautiful into something unrecognizable.
Every punch of Gavin’s fist made me scream. I could feel his fury. Persephone and Aphrodite held me tight each time I started to run for him again. Apollo’s face crunched, broke, and split. He scratched Gavin’s chest and legs. Shredded his clothing and emitted streams of light over and over that ripped Gavin’s flesh.
The pain only fueled Gavin. Finally, his punches became more precise. Gavin’s hand wrapped around Apollo’s throat, pulling his chest off the ground.
“From this day until your last, I make this vow—“
The incandescent glow grew brighter along Gavin’s skin. Thunder rumbled overhead. The room began to ring as if a bell had chimed in the far distance. The floor cracked. A fine mist hovered in the air as if waiting for instruction.
And that golden shimmer of grand wings appeared at his back.
“You willneverknow love,” he hissed.
Apollo spat blood in Gavin’s face, and Gavin slammed him into the ground again. Apollo’s head bounced on the stucco floor, and his body limped.
The sun went dark.
“You willneverknow affection.“
Power dripped from his words, the mist in the air thickening as it extended out of the room.
“You willneverfeel desire.“
Gavin punched Apollo again, and the god’s head jerked to either side with every rotating strike.
“Every person who ever loved you will look at you with disgust.”
Again.
“You will be ridiculed, despised, and completely alone—“
The mist spread thinner and moved to the clouds. Darkness swallowed the earth.
“—Bound to wander this world the rest of eternity in solitude and despair.”
Gavin paused, his chest heaving with those breaths, fists bruised and bloody. And he bent down to Apollo’s ear.
“And if you ever so much as think of Psyche again, I’ll find you. I’ll tie blocks to your feet and sink you to the bottom of the ocean, where you’ll live an eternity gasping for breath. And you’ll beg your petty father for themercyof mortality.”
With the last of his vow, lightning struck outside, sealing that promise with the power of Zeus himself.
I should have flinched like the rest of the room, should have been bothered by how the earth bent to his vow and how the sun had disappeared behind the mist filling every vacant space. But all I saw was my husband, sitting on his knees and staring at what he’d just done—forme.
“Eros…”
Zeus’s voice was soft, the only noise in the stilled room. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath as Gavin rose to his feet, his entire body covered in Apollo’s blood, in his own blood. And Apollo…
