Thirty
Sebastian/Apollo
The Sun God's Conscience
She was back. The prodigal daughter returned, or the cursed one, depending on who was telling the tale.
The curse was broken. She’d actually done it.
She had saved Hades—Apollo’s nemesis for an eon—an unfortunate side effect of lifting the curse, but it couldn’t be helped.
Now Apollo watched her flit through the gilded streets of Olympus, a flutter of pink in the ridiculous gown Demeter had stuffed her into. Still a gorgeous creature.
His role as Sebastian, a third-year student at Reaper Academy, had ended the second she revealed herself as Persephone. No more disguises or pretense. The fun was over, and he returned to being God of the Sun and Brightness.
For millennia, Persephone had held the attention of every being in the realm. She’d been their ongoing drama, their favorite sport—not because of her beauty but because of her role as Hades’s queen. Her terrible fate.
The entertainment had been in watching her die, again and again.
Few knew the true Persephone. The one who had grown fangs and claws, forged by lifetimes of suffering.
In every one of her lives, he had been there. An opposing force. Sometimes an enemy, sometimes a would-be lover—always watching from the sidelines.
Until he stopped.
He no longer joined the other players who relished Hades’s torment, who awaited the Underworld King’s final ruin.
In every lifetime, neither Hades nor Persephone had strayed. Their relationship wasn’t perfect, marked by constant fights and misunderstandings, just like every couple, yet they never betrayed each other.
Never wanted anyone else.
That kind of devotion was rare. Even among immortals. Especially among them.
By the time of her ninety-eighth rebirth, something in Apollo had shifted. He felt a thread of empathy for both of them. It sharpened when he saw her, newly arrived at Reaper Academy: frail, vulnerable, utterly lost in a courtyard of cutthroats who would do anything to level themselves up.
Her odds of surviving that life were worse than any before. The deck was stacked, impossibly, against her.
And that sliver of conscience, something none of the other gods possessed, became his undoing. He had switched sides.
Still, he’d tried to break them up. He couldn’t help the pull he felt toward her. Couldn’t resist trying, even knowing it was futile.
It was a bitter pill to admit defeat. She could have the sun, yet she chose the shadow.
He’d enrolled in her classes to get close to her. He’d intercepted assassination attempts—courtesy of Aphrodite, who held a personal vendetta against the couple. Love and lust were her domain, yet she’d never known a love like theirs. Hades had shared a single night with her an eon ago and had rejected her ever since. He chose Persephone, every time.
Aphrodite wanted to kill their love. To prove it wasn’t real. To destroy what she could never have.
Apollo had done what he could to help Persephone. He’d even tried to frame Hades for the murders, hoping to lead her away. If the bond shattered, she might live. Like everyone else, he never thought she could break the impossible curse. He believed this lifetime was her final, mortal end.
When Bloom was taken to the Fates’ cave, he’d gone to rescue her. He’d even arranged that contrived one-bed, one-horse scenario—someone had told him mortal girls liked that sort of thing.
It hadn’t worked. Nothing ever did.
He didn’t know what had happened inside the cave, but as he lurked in the water below, he’d heard screaming and felt the tremor of a massive fire through the stone.
Apollo leaned against a golden column at the edge of the grand hall, a glass of whiskey on ice in his hand. He’d grown accustomed to the rough bite of mortal drink, a far cry from the refined ambrosia the other gods still favored.
Thousands of years in the mortal world, crossing paths with each of Persephone’s mortal reincarnations, had changed him in ways he’d never admit.
