Page 90 of The Gods Forbid

He sighed deeply, his shoulders falling another inch. “Fine. Maybe I just grew numb.”

“How do you feel now?” I asked.

He looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes dropping for a second to where my hand seemingly glued itself to his shoulder. “Not numb,” he said, with a laugh in his voice. I didn’t mean to crack open a hole in his emotions, but he was the one who pulled me into his dream with him.

I needed to talk to him about this. He could bitch about it all he wanted, but I needed to say something. “Penelope…”

“It was never about your brother.” I pulled back in shock, my hands dropping from his shoulders. Maybe the comfort of night made this easier to talk about. Whatever the motivation, I would do whatever I could to make him comfortable.

“What was it about?” I asked. I could see Sebastian run his hands down his face, then back up through his hair.

“She wasn’t,” he stopped, his voice cracking. “She wasn’t under pressure from your brother. She used to always say that she knew Luce would be the one to win out. That Diana would trump Artemis at the end of the day. But I think it was just because she was … she was really tired. Toward the end, I think that was what won out—how exhausted she was. Your brother wasn’t involved in her death. I’ve thought about it a lot,” he said, his voice going dry. “And I think her grandmother was just confused. She was trying to rationalize what happened. I stopped trying to do that a long time ago.”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head, staring down at the floor. “My sister died. That’s the only thing I know for certain. She died by taking her own life, and it’s a better honor to her memory spending my energy preserving memories of her than trying to figure out what happened.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. Sometime while he was speaking, my hand had come back up to his shoulder. “I think she would appreciate that. She was always very kind to me.”

I wouldn’t go into the full extent of it, but Penelope had never made me feel odd or too much the way others had when I was younger. She was this moonstruck, glowing huntress who reflected everyone’s light with her own softness. I had a lot of memories of her walking around Olympus with me, speaking to me like I was her friend, rather than a kid people didn’t quite understand.

Sebastian laughed, the kind of short breath that hinted at something he knew, but I didn’t. It grated a little bit, but I had to respect the fact that I wasn’t entitled to everything he was.

I wanted to know everything about him, which was a terrifying realization, but that didn’t mean he owed me anything.

“I preserved her bow,” Sebastian said, the words leaving him like a heavy exhale.

My heart clenched painfully. To Apollo, Artemis, and Diana, their bow was the most precious thing to them, often carved from wood by their own hands when they reached adulthood. “Where is it?”

“Delphi.”

I’d never been to Delphi, but I’d heard it was beautiful. A stunning town nestled in the mountains yet just off the coast, the heart of Apollo’s power. “Where is yours?” I knew he had a crossbow, but I didn’t think that was his real bow.

“Delphi,” he repeated.

Suddenly, it became very important that he have it. I’d asked the young man who’d helped bring all of his stuff to Prometheus to take everything, which made me think his place in Rome wasn’t his real home. “We should go get it.”

Sebastian nodded, just a few slow movements that made me think that offer had been appreciated. He still looked so haunted, his form collapsed in on itself. I didn’t like seeing him like this. So … defeated.

“All those things your parents said, they aren’t true. You aren’t any of those things.” He was ambitious, but he wasn’t a power-hungry monster. I hated that his talent was twisted into something evil, something that was nothing more than a schtick to attract supporters.

Sebastian turned to me, pushing back on the bed so that he was resting against the headboard. He bent his knee, resting his elbow on the joint and rubbing his forehead with his hand. “They got me into it, but I kept it going for over five years. They’ve been dead that long.”

It was finally here, in the comfort of our home and in the middle of the night, that I finally had the courage to ask. “Why did you do it?”

Sebastian looked me dead in the eye, his multicolored gaze cutting right to my very core. “I had a chance to be the most powerful god on the planet. I saw a way—or so I thought—to do it with minimal causalities, so I did it. I did it because I could.”

“Was that what changed?” I scooted closer to him before I knew what I was doing. “The harm?”

Sebastian nodded. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice hoarse with honesty. “I designed those tattoos knowing full well that they would infect the host if they were caught. I watched as they were inked into people’s skin. I just,” he broke off as his throat worked in a thick swallow. “I just didn’t care towards the end.”

I was pushing the boundaries, but I had to take this opportunity to ask what I needed. “Rose?” I said, trusting him to know what I was referring to.

His face darkened, growing haunted. “Thirty-three.”

“What?”

“That’s how many people died from that attack on her,” he said, his jaw moving then resetting. “Thirty-three lives lost because of hate I spewed into their ears about her being a murderous bitch. It wasn’t until I was standing over their bodies in her temple, realizing how fast the poison in that tattoo worked, that my heart started to beat again.”