Page 45 of Apollo

Apollo. Where are you? The string is right here! In her hand! Can’t you see—

Hercules. Oh my God. Herc? What’s happening?

Her answers would have to come from Herc. He ensured as much by leaning over and clamping a hand to his brother’s shoulder, pushing enough god-level force into the big guy to protect him from the string’s spell for a few minutes. It wasn’t much, but if Herc was still as good at tactical maneuvering as he remembered, it’d suffice.

After that, he couldn’t spare the situation any more stress. Nor could he succumb to the rage about why Lois could still form her silent pleas and Irowen couldn’t. The dispute was dumber than complaining about weekend traffic in LA. In this moment, he had better things to do. Higher goals to get to.

Getting to the one mortal who was worth his bother.

The woman who’d turned her life upside-down to be here right now. Life being a relative term . . .

Was that what she could call her existence anymore, after Ito ordered her to halt it all and track Reks Byrd instead? And she had, though not for a promise of big money or a sliver of power from the lyre string. She’d endured so much, persevering over three weeks—had nearly died by his arrow—for someone other than herself.

So hell yes, she could bother him. All she fucking wanted. More than he wanted or imagined he wanted from a human, ever again. All the frailties and the strengths, the dramas and the dreams, and the moments just like this one.

The times in which he decided that sometimes, for the reasons that really mattered, even a god of Olympus had to risk it all.

When he realized that in order save the woman he loved from the lunatic he abhorred, he’d have to make the sun shine from the inside of the Haneda Airport Arrivals Concourse.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Twelve hours ago, Wen was certain a glowing gold arrow in the middle of her chest would count as the most terrifying sight of her life. That and the kohl-lined glare of the dauntingly beautiful male who’d put it there.

What a difference a trip to hell made.

The hell into which she’d been brutally flung back. This time, without a chiseled seraph god to guide her out.

Her mind, barely clinging to sanity past the torment of her senses, grasped no other conclusion. That was the power of the string, then? To play a tune so stunning but strange it sucked the self-control from her neurons? To trap her limbs like a clown on a calliope, strapping her onto a burning carousel?

It wasn’t an exaggeration. Not now.

Someone detonated a bomb that felt like the sun had been hauled into the building.

She could only squeeze her eyes shut and weather the blazing brilliance with guttural prayers to any being who’d listen. Supplications she hadn’t uttered even when bleeding out on Natasha Korra’s foyer.

But back then, she hadn’t been so close to finding Genny. Also back then, she didn’t believe in things like gods actually heeding such pleas.

Back then, she had yet to meet the god of the sun himself.

The sun.

The god.

Holy shit. Apollo.

She couldn’t form any semblance of the words on her lips, but they burst in her heart along with the epiphany in her mind.

Nobody was trying to blow up the airport. The cacophony was him, calling down the power of his Phoebus from the sky itself. The fiery star gave him such a huge swath of influence over every realm, be it heaven, hell, or here.

But why did he utilize it now? Risking such a dazzling exposure of it? It couldn’t be in the name of rescuing the string. He didn’t need such a giant sliver of the sun to accomplish that.

Damn it, Glow Worm, you’re aware of that, aren’t you?

“I think I’m clear about that part, Little Monster.”

On their own, her eyelids flew open. Scorching light filled her vision, a thousand shades of yellow, gold, and white at once.

She winced, expecting pain and darkness to follow. That was how being struck blind always happened in Grandma’s Bible stories, and she had zero other points of reference for the experience. But the retribution took its time, manifesting so weirdly that her braced stance became a dorky stumble.