Page 64 of Apollo

“Ah, yes. I should have known.”

“It’s an easy one,” he defended, already prepared for her continued skepticism by lightly wrapping her hands with his. “Just tell me why I’ve got to rid my squad captain of several hundred feathers when he gets back here.”

She blink-blinked in obvious confusion. “Huh?”

“Damn bird made you cry.” He said it simply but the effect on his gut was different. Primal hackles rose in his senses, as if his words had gone more like he watched you die then ate your flesh. “Asshole corvid has to know it’s going to cost him.”

“What?” This time, she twisted their fingers tighter. “Oh my God, Apollo. Kaw didn’t do a thing except listen to me. So don’t you dare—”

“Screw that,” he bit back. “So who did make you cry?”

“Me, okay?”

Her voice pitched up; she twitched her whole torso as if considering a full-body lurch to her feet. But at that moment, the mountain spirits delivered him a solid with a flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder. Random raindrops spattered the garden, fat enough to keep her in place.

“I made me cry, Apollo,” she muttered after a few seconds. “And that’s the truth of it.”

“Okay.” He forced himself to gaze across the grounds too, homing on spots where the weighted sprinkles dotted the dirt and darkened the rocks. “Why?”

“Because I had to admit a bigger truth.” Her voice wobbled so much over the last few syllables, he cocked his focus back to her profile. “Here I was, over these past few weeks, going after Byrd and blaming it all on Nao Ito. But when I just spoke with Kaw, I realized something else entirely.”

He crunched his brows over his newly intense gawk. “Something like what?”

“Like the fact that this has probably been the most selfish mission of my life.”

That took care of the stress about staring too hard. His double-take was quick and authentic. “What’re you—”

She cut him off, already prepared with a give-me-a second hand at his chest. He fell into respectful silence as she sucked down a long breath.

“So . . . Yes, I formed a whole posse around tracking Byrd. And yes, I death-dived on a chandelier because of it, then hell-dived with you. And yes, I made all of it my entire identity for damn near a month. But maybe that was because”—more ponderous breaths sawed in and out of her—“if I lose Genny now, I’m not sure what I’d be anymore. I mean, nobody will work with me anymore, right? That’s a foregone, right out of his damn gate now. I’m also fairly certain there’s no LinkedIn chat room for indie bounty hunters. And if I can’t even take care of Genny, then who else needs me? I mean, who have I become? Do you know? Because I’m not sure if I do . . .”

Forget the wobbling words by this point, though he’d have gladly donated a week of perfect sunsets to get them back instead of her agonized sobs. Fuck, he’d thrown in the sunrises too. Possibly his right testicle. Anything for the chance to reach into her spirit and tell her—

What?

What exactly do you want to tell her, malaka? And if it’s worth manipulating Helios and cutting off your nutsack, why isn’t it worth the courage of just saying it?

His mind blanked—because it could fling no argument, decent or otherwise.

But his heart? His soul? Their fights gathered legions by the second. Protests that had nothing to do with failure to find sincere words or execute sweet motions. Those were the easy parts. The outer layers.

The hard stuff was admitting where they came from. His own soul, captivated by this human he should have tortured for information and then left to bleed out in Beverly Hills. The mortal he’d been moved to save . . . for the reasons so exquisitely exposed. So cruelly clear.

He’d fallen for Irowen Steed. Deep and hard.

This stubborn, stunning, messy, mesmerizing, daring, dazzling . . .

Human.

Probably the sole mortal in this realm who’d never reciprocate his feelings. She’d already been prepared to die for hers: for the principles that defined her, the sister who depended on her, the determination that drove her. Hell, she probably needed a job with better healthcare and more pockets in her mission gear than she did an Olympian fossil offering nothing but postcard sunsets and Bacchanal parties. And right now, she needed neither.

Because right now, she needs your words. Your own fragile confessions.

Could he be man enough—mortal enough—to offer them?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Irowen.”