Page 80 of Radiant Sin

“Cassandra.” He catches my chin for the briefest moment. “Thank you. If you hadn’t intervened…”

A wet prickle at the corner of my eye betrays me. I can’t make my bottom lip stop quivering.You could have died.I can barely think it, let alone say it. I can’t comprehend a world without Apollo in it. “Check him,” I finally manage.

He hesitates now when he didn’t before. “Are you okay?”

“No. Not even a little bit.” The tire iron slips against my sweaty palms, forcing me to readjust my grip. “We have to know, Apollo. We have to end this.”

He finally nods. I watch him closely as he walks to Hephaestus. Apollo is covered in blood and is holding his ribs in a way that scares me. Surely he’d know if they were broken?Yes, but would he tell you the truth if they were?The answer to that is a resounding no. I can’t trust him to take care of himself if he thinks I’m in danger. “Apollo—”

“Fuck,” he mutters. “He’s dead.”

My stomach tries to revolt, but I fight through the nausea that hits me in waves. We were too late and now a man is dead. “I’m sorry. If I hadn’t—”

“It’s not your fault.” He pushes to his feet, swaying a little, and turns to face me. One of his eyes is swollen almost completely shut. “I have to call Zeus.”

I nod, too quickly. I can’t look at the man—the body—on the floor. “I’ll just…”

“Cassandra, I need you to stay in the garage where I can see you.” He walks to me and guides me to face away from the scene. “Don’t look, love. But don’t go anywhere. It’s not safe.”

Considering one of the culprits is groaning faintly a few feet away, I’m not certain it’s safehereeither, but at least I’m neither alone nor defenseless. I tighten my grip on the tire iron and give a shaky nod. “Okay.”

“I won’t be long. I saw a phone near the entrance. I’ll stay within sight.” He moves in that direction, leaving me with the body and the murderer. To stand guard? Or because he’s between me and the entrance? Impossible to say, but it’s easier to focus on that than the scene behind me. I still can’t quite process that it happened at all. This…

I listen quietly as Apollo makes his calls. First to Zeus, explaining the situation. It goes about as well as can be expected. After he gives a quick report, there are a lot of low murmurs and apologies. It infuriates me. Apollo was sent here on a fact-finding mission. There’s no way he could have known what would happen.No oneknew what would happen.

Except Hermes.

I can’t think about that too closely right now. I always knew what Hermes was capable of, but knowing in theory and seeing it play out are two very different things. She tried to protect me in her own way, but I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.

They’ll have one chance to keep this under wraps, and even then I don’t know if it’s possible. This isn’t like my parents. They were the only two who planned the assassination, the only two who acted on it.Theydidn’t have one of the Thirteen in their corner.

The Thirteen are still going to try to cover it up. It means more blood. More death. Maybe a fire this time instead of a car crash.

A broken laugh escapes my lips. I guess I have my answer on what Apollo would have done if he’d held the title when my parents attempted to assassinate Athena. Theseus got farther than my parents did, but he hasn’t been successful. He hasn’t completed the ritual required to trigger the clause.

Even as I think it, a faint groan has me turning despite myself. I don’t think Theseus is going to be in any shape to do damage in the near future, but if he’s already stirring, I’m not about to take anything for granted. “Stay down.”

He’s nowhere near as bloodied as Apollo. I stare at him, nauseous and my head swimming with adrenaline. He cracks open one dark eye and meets my gaze. I tense. “Don’t say a word.”

He rasps out a painful-sounding breath. “I claim Hephaestus’s title by right of might and the laws written upon Olympus’s founding.”

“No,” I whisper. I know what comes next. My parents rehearsed it often enough before their failed assassination attempt. “No,” I repeat, louder this time.

He ignores me. “Cassandra…” Another harsh breath. “You stand as my witness.”

The tire iron falls from my nerveless fingers.

33

Apollo

The nightmare only gets worse as time goes on. Zeus sends Ares. In the thirty minutes it takes her to arrive—she must have been waiting close by because there’s no way to reach this location from the city center in such a short time—Minos and his family have already tried to bully their way into the garage. Holding that door while it takes everything I have to stay on my feet… Well, the less said about it, the better.

Three black SUVs of an identical make and model to the ones behind me in the garage careen up the driveway. They screech to a halt close enough to have the Minotaur taking several quick steps back to avoid making contact with the front bumper.

Ares steps out, her gorgeous face set in forbidding lines. She’s wearing a perfectly tailored pantsuit, which would be at home in a boardroom if not for the shoulder holster clearly visible as she lifts her arm to motion the occupants of the other two vehicles forward.

I recognize one of her partners, Patroclus. He’s one of the best strategists in the city, a tall white man with short dark hair and square frame glasses who prefers jeans and T-shirts to the suits the others under Ares’s command favor. He’d been injured badly in the competition to become Ares but appears to have made a full recovery in the intervening weeks. There were rumors that Helen had a fling with Patroclus and Achilles during the tournament, but they turned the rumor mill on its head when they came out publicly as being in a polyamorous relationship a few weeks after Helen became Ares.

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