“Are you even here?” I murmured, feeling foolish.
“About point one percent of me is. Wouldn’t have missed it for the worlds. These idiots in love are justso cute.”
“You totally watch soap operas, don’t you?” I made a face, disgusted. “Are you sure you’re my brother?”
“Not every pair of twins is identical. In fact, the two of us have always been stark opposites. Sun and moon, and all that.”
Closing my eyes, I could remember flashes. I’d rolled my eyes a lot as he teased. It made me deeply uncomfortable to have those memories that had not actually happened tome.
“You’re here for Artemis,” I scoffed. “And she’ll take over. Erase me. It’s not like Freya, who was ready to fade like the rest of her pantheon, right? You want your sister, and that will kill me.”
Apollo didn’t answer at first. “When my energy latched on to this flesh about thirty years ago, I felt a stirring, a change in the worlds. Prophecies have been vague, as though the Fates were waiting for a catalyst before threading the loom again. I observed behind his eyes, curious. And all of a sudden, Moros started writing again, clear as day. Do you know when?”
I shrugged.
“The night when a mortal woman pushed a full-blown goddess out of her womb, though she was pure as snow, completely untouched at the time.”
I turned to him.
“I took over this body then because I knew that within moments, hours, days perhaps, Father would sense the rebirth of an Olympian on Earth. I prevented it by sealing the little girl’s power.”
I completely turned around to face him, though I knew I probably looked foolish to anyone who wasn’t seeing him.
Apollo was no longer smiling, though his eyes remained sky blue, not the fiery hue they’d previously adopted when he had been serious.
Kleos had found those eyes scary, but nothing about this man alarmed me—other than the fact that part of me recognized him too well.
“I don’t know what you are, but my sister’s spirit didn’t attach itself to you when it recognized a fitting soul. You were born with it. It’s not logical. None of it should have happened. This is the Fates meddling.”
His gaze lifted up, past me, toward the darkening skies.
“And now the next piece on the board enters. Brace yourself, sister.”
The god vanished in a blink, leaving me to think whether any of that was real.
That was when little Rhea gasped. “Look!” she said, pointing at the sky.
I blinked, my eyes not understanding what was going on at first.
What I thought I saw in the distance wasn’t possible. It made no fucking sense. There was a man in the sky. Falling.
The first to move was Ronan, a dark cloud surrounding him as he started to fly up and up, reaching the dome, an energy shield in one hand, while doing his best to slow the descent of the body in free fall.
He was going to crash hard, nonetheless, and he would be very, very dead.
“Move!” I screamed at the stands behind me as I jumped to my feet.
We had to get out of the way or the dead man would also kill whomever he was going to crash onto on impact.
A shield of water covered the entire party just as the man fell through the blue dome, creating a second humongous hole in the Hall of Truce’s ancient ceiling.
The deafening sound as he crashed against Poseidon’s water made me wince. I wanted to shut my eyes, not eager to watch theutter destruction. There would be blood and guts, body parts, his body would be flatter than a pancake. But I was too shaken to look away, and to my utter confusion, the water gently lowering the body to the floor, wasn’t stained red, or black, or even gold with blood.
The man was completely unharmed.
No, notman.
There was only one sort of creature who could have survived this fall intact.
