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Artemis’ Hunters would be perfectly fine without her for a day or two. Or seven.
They were all incredibly capable girls, and she trusted them to take care of themselves and each other. Thalia would keep them in line, at least. She could take some time to herself.
Really, it wasn’t that she didn’t trust them without her. It was that she didn’t trust herself without them. But if one more of her girls, even Thalia, gave her that look, full of pity and sympathy and sorrow- like she wasn’t the ridiculously powerful goddess she was, but rather a grieving little girl who’d lost a brother and simply refused to believe it- she was going to lose it. She’d long since resolved herself not to be the goddess of the stories, the one she’d been in centuries past, who turned her fury on her Hunters for any and every little misstep.
She didn’t trust herself without them, but she didn’t trust herself with them, either, so as much as she wanted to be down there with them it was better for everyone if she was up here.
Here being up on Olympus, where there was no one she could hurt. No one she cared about, anyways.
She’d meant to go to her own palace. She really had. But the second she’d stepped foot into the city, her feet had carried her to her brother’s instead, slipping her past the gates and through the gardens.
Her footsteps were silent on the staircase as she made her way up to his apartments. He, and his divine children, lived on the top floor, above his personal library. That place was almost as bad as the Labyrinth, it was such a nightmare to navigate.
She heard it when she finally got up to the living area. Soft, sad music was coming from an open door further down the hallway, covered in black and white posters for bands she didn’t know. Artemis glanced inside, a small smile gracing her lips at the sight. Almost everything in Ialemus’s room was some shade of black, the only bright spot being the colorful blanket Phoebe had made him when he was a godling. Ialemus himself was dead asleep on his bed, with his brother Hymen practically on top of him and his sister Cephisso curled up in his arms. Phoebe’s blanket was draped over the three of them.
Artemis stood in the doorway for a few moments, taking what comfort she could from seeing her niece and nephews safe and sound. She made a note to herself to look for the others when the sun came up. The other two triplets were most likely in their own rooms down the hall, but Asclepius was far from Olympus, and she wasn’t sure where Aristaeus was staying these days.
She stayed for another second before moving on. She didn’t want to wake them.
Apollo’s room was at the end of the hall. The door swung open silently, the room behind it so still it felt more like the museum on the lower floors than the place her twin lived.
Everything was in shades of gold, accented with dark woods and deep blues. There were tall windows with stained glass designs around the edges, letting in the moonlight. One corner held a massive harp and a low stool, while another had an elaborate writing desk, papers still spread over the surface. There was a reading space next to the balcony doors, with ridiculously comfortable couches and perfectly organized bookshelves. On a raised dais, separated from the rest of the room with layers of curtains in gauzy silk and strings of beads, was his bed, still neatly made.
Artemis stepped up to the bed and curled up on top of the covers.
It had been a few days since her brother had summoned her from Temple Hill. Since she’d finally, finally gotten to speak with him, to save him from some of the horrors he’d been facing, to feel his hand in hers.
She shuddered at the memory of arriving in New Rome and racing to the bookshop, seeing that bdelyròs, glàmon, corpse of a long dead king standing there while her brother lay almost dead and completely delirious on the floor. Of nearly losing him right there, barely reaching him in time to pull him out of Thanatos’ grasp.
The look in his wide blue eyes would stay with her for the rest of her days.
He’d looked like he was seeing the sky for the first time in months, like she had cleared all of the storm clouds and let him finally feel the sunlight on his skin. Like seeing her was more important than anything else, more than being healed of his wound or Tarquin being defeated. Those brilliant blue eyes had lit up when he saw her, with astonishment and awe and something almost sad that she had been too afraid to name.
All of that had made her heart heart, but it hadn’t necessarily surprised her. What had surprised her was when he spoke.
I love you, he’d said. One of the first things he’d said to her. I love you. I missed you.
She hadn’t known what she was supposed to do with that. She loved him, more than anyone else in the world. She had missed him so much she’d made herself sick. But she couldn’t possibly tell him that.
They didn’t tell each other those sorts of things. They bantered and bickered and shoved each other around. They loved each other, of course they did, but they didn’t say it. They showed it through their actions, because even though everyone knew how much they meant to each other, they were still Olympians and admitting that they actually cared about one another was simply not something Olympians did.
But one of the first things Apollo had said to her when he saw her was that he loved her. That he had missed her.
He had been delirious, she’d told herself. He had been afraid and grieving and in pain. He hadn’t been in his right mind. He had nearly died. He had died, for a moment, in her arms.
He must have had a reason for telling her. In his right mind or not, Apollo never did anything without a reason. Maybe he had thought he would never be able to tell her again.
That thought scared her more than anything. That he might have thought it was the last time he would ever get to talk to her. That he might have been right.
He had said that he loved her. She hadn’t said it back. Why hadn’t she said it back?
What if she never saw him again? What if she never got the chance to speak to him again? That could have been the very last conversation she’d ever had with her brother, and she hadn’t even had the guts to tell him she loved him. What if she never got the chance to tell him again?
Oh gods. Did he even know? Did he know that she loved him? He had to know. He had to. She didn’t know how she could ever live with herself if Apollo died thinking she didn’t love him. She didn’t think she could live with herself.
She didn’t know if she could live at all if Apollo died.
She’d never, not even for a moment, lived in a world without him. The two of them had been together since they were in the womb. Even in the time between their births, she’d known he was right behind her. She’d been waiting for him. She’d never known a life without him.
She didn’t think she would know how to live a life without him.
Artemis had never even thought about it before. About a world without him. It was as unfathomable as a sky without stars.
She remembered the feel of his hand in hers, warm and alive and painfully human.
Artemis spent much more time with mortals than most gods did, but her hunters all had her blessings, and many of them were demigods or at least legacies, with some divine blood. They were much stronger than the average mortals.
Apollo, in this body, was as average a mortal as they came.
Surely Father wouldn’t let him die. He couldn’t. He would step in if he truly needed to. He had to.
He’d let her help him when he summoned her. Surely that meant something. It had to.
They had had their differences, but she knew Father loved Apollo. He did. He wouldn’t let him die.
Apollo had to know that. The way he was risking himself over and over again for everyone else around him, the way he was throwing his breakable mortal body between them and the threats they faced at every opportunity, the way he was pushing himself to his human limits and then past them, he had to know that Father wouldn’t let him die. He had to know.
He wouldn’t be so reckless if he really thought he could die. He wouldn’t be.
He had died in her arms.
Her brother was going to be alright. He was going to come back to her. She would see him again, speak to him again, feel his hands in hers and not be afraid to break his fragile wrists.
She would repeat it to herself as many times as it took to sink in.
Artemis was not losing her brother. Apollo was coming back to her.