Page 76 of Apollo

“What?” Irowen’s break in her pause, channeling her bizarre Miranda Priestley, was more frightening than a sudden shout. She went on, with just as much creepy calm, “What do you know, Eugenia? About what contingencies? You think you two will just play cozy house here for a bit, and Nao Ito will move on like a jilted jerk in a rom? Or will you keep running, trying to stay one step ahead of a man who’s made his entire fucking life’s fortune on hunting people down and making them pay?”

“I know all of this,” Matsuda countered. “I have worked for the man since I was twelve.”

“And he’s told me every story too.” Genny jerked up her chin and leveled an unblinking gaze at her sister. “We’re ready, Wen. People have resigned from the gokudō before, and—”

“You’re not fucking ready.”

And now came the roar. The rage. More than anything, the sheer terror that took over Irowen’s being, from the curls in which she clawed a hand to the feet she pounded across the room, only stopping when she reached the edge of a marble-topped breakfast counter. As she gripped the stone slab, trembling so hard Apollo wondered if she’d tear the thing off its moorings, she spoke again.

“Contingencies are ugly, Genny. Violent. Painful. Situations where both of you will pray to every god you know, and that terrible man, to end your lives for a relief to the misery. But he won’t do it. He . . . won’t . . . ”

A shudder took over her form, shredding the rest of her words. But into what? Apollo was sure he would know it, feel it, if she’d let pure tears take over. But the woman—his woman—wasn’t okay. Not by a fair stretch.

His woman.

For half a second, all his default settings fought it again. Fumbled for the mental levers to shut it down and turn it off.

Not going to happen.

Not with a mortal, particularly this mortal, he’d not even known for a full turn of her messed-up planet. Who’d crashed into his world, bled in his lap, cussed at him and run from him and driven him beyond fucking insane—

Until she’d turned him into this.

Damn it.

A ruling entity of the Olympus Pantheon. The Phoebus of the sun. God on high in Delphi, Delos, Bassae, Didyma, and Cyrene. Deity of music, prophecy, poetry, healing . . . tumbling hard for a human woman.

This human woman.

His.

“Enough.”

He barked it more at his brain and body, which would’ve colluded for at least another hour to make sure he accepted their glaring certainty, yet the command worked on everyone else too. So as long as he had their blessedly full attentions . . .

“Let’s break this down.” He parked his hands on his waist, feeling like a freakish mashup of Legolas and Danny Tanner, but the dorky vibe felt pretty cool. “You two”—one sweep of an index finger served as qualifier toward Genny and Jun—“are in love for good, yes? One hand, one heart, even death won’t part us now?”

“I love that musical! Both versions!”

The young lovers’ tandem outcry was actually the moment they needed for proving their point. Even Irowen, who looked ready to run and ram her head in the toilet while the pair started singing the romantic number from West Side Story, had to be conceding the fact. It looked like her sister had found the perfect harmony for more than just her voice.

Apollo slash a hand sideways, cutting them short before the final crescendo. “Okay, okay. So, you two also clearly watched that one to the end, yes?” he queried. “You know shit didn’t eventually go down so well for Tony and Maria.”

“Your point, Glow Worm?” Irowen huffed and folded her arms. “Because if I’ve got to stand here through the weepy version of Somewhere—”

“OST points for big sister,” Genny chimed in. “See, Jun? She does understand.”

While watching the pair get newly canoodle-y seemed a great way to pass another ten minutes, Apollo ordered himself to embrace a figurative eye roll.

“Well, she also understands, perhaps with a better head than most, that you two are in for some challenging times ahead. But if you’re damn certain about wanting to stay together through all this—”

“We are.” Once more they declared it in flawless sync, as well as the beats of their shared laughs and the unanimity of their follow-up: “We do!.

“Then you’re going to need . . . this.”

He copied their confidence with every syllable of his own declaration, inwardly ordering himself to remember the surety for his next action. It proved a valuable asset as he stepped over with jittery haste, lest his nerve escape and his balls truly shrivel before he followed through with his decision.

Because even with the air as effervescent as champagne, pulling the lyre string from his jeans pocket was an exercise in unease that’d been nowhere near his Twister mat for the day. The year.