Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I said—”

“Stop me.”

Percy hesitated.

Apollo seized Percy’s hand.

And then—no warning, no softness—he bit into his finger. A sharp, deliberate incision, intimate as a kiss and crueler by far. Percy hissed, breath shuddering.

Blood welled at once—ruby-bright, trembling at the surface. A few droplets slipped free, trailing down and spattering Apollo’s chest.

Before it could weep past his wrist, Apollo’s tongue followed, warm and slow.

Percy watched him, eyes wide with disbelief and something he would not name. “What are you doing?”

But he didn’t pull away.

Apollo looked up at him.

“There’s no point in trying to keep you whole,” he said, “when you want to be hurt.”

The words struck like a chisel.

He kissed the wounded finger again, softer this time. Percy felt the blush rise—not in his cheeks, but across his chest, blooming like spilled wine.

“Your first blood,” Apollo murmured, the fever not yet gone from his gaze. “You wanted me to draw it. So I did.”

“If you draw my first blood, I’ll wear your wreath.”

Percy looked down. His words echoed back at him. A perfect crescent mark bloomed where Apollo’s teeth had broken skin. It looked like a sickle, like a moon about to cut the sky open.

“You already won. You didn’t need to do this,” he said.

Apollo tilted his head, as if confused by something simple. “I wanted to please you.”

Percy laughed once, dry and quick as flint. “You think this pleases me?”

Apollo’s gaze dropped—slow, deliberate. His eyes lingered.

“I know it does.”

And yet his fingers glowed faintly with that familiar golden pulse, the healer’s instinct waiting at the threshold.

Percy pulled back.

“I’ll allow it to stay,” he murmured, more to himself than to the god under him.

Apollo blinked. “Why?”

Percy flexed his hand, watching the mark stretch, watching it belong to him now.

“Because I asked for it,” he said, gaze heavy with meaning, “and you gave it.”

Apollo's lips parted, then closed again, the weight of understanding settling behind his lashes.

“That’s the difference, isn’t it?” Percy added. “Between pain that is stolen and pain that is offered.”

Apollo exhaled. “It seems,” he murmured, “we’ve both bled a new lesson from each other today.”

Then— “I am sorry, Percy.” The confession spilled raw. “I am sorry for robbing you of choice, time and again,”

Percy tilted his head, a slow, dangerous grace.

“Yet you make no promise against repeating the theft.”

“Because I am no hypocrite,” Apollo replied. “I trusted myself once,” he said. “But that faith died the moment I met you.”

And Percy should have shuddered. Should have turned from him.

But Apollo admitting he would do it again was like saying the sun would rise in the east—terrible, certain, divine.

And maybe—just maybe—Apollo saw something shift in Percy’s gaze then, a softening, a surrender.

Or perhaps he acted because Percy still sat astride him, close enough to feel the tremble in his breath, the ache behind his stillness.

They were too close for lies.

Apollo’s head lifted, drawn upward as if by some ancient gravity.

And Percy bent to meet him.

Lips parted, breath shared.

And then—

A cry.

Small, sharp.

A child’s cry.

They both stilled. Percy’s breath caught on his tongue.

“Did you hear that?” he murmured, turning his head, eyes narrowing toward the darkened edge of trees.

Apollo was already rising, golden lashes shadowing sharp eyes. “Yes.”

Still warm with their breath, the grass sighed beneath them as they stood.

They both moved toward the sound, parting the grass until they saw him—a satyr boy, no older than four, with downy horns and trembling legs. His little hooves were caked in mud, his wide eyes wild with fear.

“Hey,” Percy said softly, kneeling so he wouldn’t seem so big. “It’s okay.”

The little satyr peeked at him through trembling fingers, his wide, wet eyes glinting with fear. Then, as if realizing how imposing the two figures before him were—one a mortal with sea-storm eyes, the other a god haloed in sunlight—he gave a sharp bleat and dove back into the bushes. Only his fuzzy bottom and quivering tail stuck out, shaking like a leaf.

Percy bit back a grin. Poor guy.

“It’s okay, little one,” Percy repeated gently. His gaze wandered until he spotted a ripe plum lying in the grass nearby. “Ah, perfect,” he murmured. He plucked it up, rubbed it clean on his chiton, and cracked it open with his fingers, carefully prying out the pit.

“Here,” Percy said, holding up the glistening half. “A little treat.”

The boy’s tail flicked. Slowly, the satyr turned his head, his nose twitching at the sweet scent. But his gaze darted past Percy, to where Apollo stood—a striking silhouette of gold and white, unmoving, almost too radiant to look at. The boy hesitated.

“See?” Percy said, to prove the fruit wasn’t a trick. He took a bite of the other half, juice dripping down his fingers. “Mmm. Your turn.”

The satyr inched forward, snatched the offering, and stuffed it into his mouth in two quick bites. Percy chuckled softly. “Good, right?”

When the boy’s breathing eased, Percy asked in a low voice, “What happened?”

“W-wolves,” the satyr stammered, hiccuping between words. “They chased me out. Out of the grove. They wanted to eat me.”

“Not wolves,” Apollo murmured. “Huntresses, perhaps.” He crouched before the child. “You’re safe now.”

The boy sniffled, clinging to Percy’s arm when he reached out.

“Still scared?” Apollo asked gently.

The boy nodded, tears streaking his dirt-stained cheeks.

Without a word, Apollo lowered himself to the grass—not merely sat, but reclined, as only a god could.

Then he began to hum.

A low, lilting melody—one Percy hadn’t heard before. The boy’s little body loosened, breath evening out.

Percy watched Apollo as he sang, the way sunlight caught on his lashes, the way his voice carried a promise of safety that felt utterly real.

Apollo looked up at Percy, catching his gaze as the satyr boy slept, breath warm and shallow between them. The child’s tiny horns pressed against Percy’s arm, his tail limp like a wilted reed. Apollo didn’t speak, but there was something in the molten gold of his eyes—a flame of anger that hadn’t yet found its voice.

Percy adjusted the boy in his arms, following the god’s lead. They moved deeper into the grove, guided by a thread of divine awareness until, at last, Apollo stopped.

Beneath a peach tree, they found them: a pair of satyrs sprawled in the grass, sticky with the nectar of overripe fruit. The ground was littered with peach stones and the faint perfume of fermentation. They were snoring, slack-jawed and flushed, drunk on sweetness.

Perhaps it was the sight, or the scent—but a door cracked open behind his eyelids.

It began with a smell.

Sour wine, acrid as rot. Stale smoke clinging to cheap wool. The kind of stink that never quite left the walls, only learned to hide.

Then—a shadow, hulking and familiar.

A man, red-faced and swaying, towering with the brittle arrogance of the drunk. His voice slurred into cruelty.

“A pup won’t order me what to do in my house.”

“Your house?” Percy’s own voice, younger, sharper, trembling. “My mother’s the one who pays for everything. You just drink it dry.”

Then—

The sting. A backhand crack across the cheek, sharp enough to ring.

A woman’s voice, shrill with fury, then fear.

His mother?

He blinked. The past receded, pulled away like tide from a wound. But it left its cold fingerprints down his spine. His jaw clenched, teeth grinding against the echo.

Beside him, Apollo hadn’t spoken. But Percy saw it—the tightness in his jaw, the flicker of gold behind his eyes, the muscle pulsing near his temple like a fault line holding steady by sheer will.

And then—

CLAP.

Apollo’s hands came together like a thunderclap, a sound that split the grove and startled the birds into the sky. The trees recoiled. Even Percy flinched.

But the satyr boy in his arms slept on, soft and oblivious.

The satyr pair jolted awake with a violent start, ears flicking, eyes rolling wide in confusion. One of them scrambled upright, bits of crushed grass sticking to his fur. “L-lord Apollo!” he stammered.

“Silence,” Apollo said.

“You sleep,” he continued, taking a slow step forward, “while wolves prowl. You drown in fermenting fruit while your child wanders, alone, toward teeth and shadow.”

The satyrs whimpered, shrinking down into the grass as though they could make themselves vanish. One covered his face, shoulders shaking. The other tried to speak but only managed a terrified squeak.

“Even Dionysus would call this negligence,” Apollo spat. The name of the other god was spoken like a curse.“If you want to rot here in your gluttony, do it where no child’s blood can seep into the ground.”

He stepped closer, and the light around him sharpened. His beauty was terrible in that moment, every line of him cut with divine scorn.

“Look at him.” Apollo gestured toward Percy, who held the sleeping boy close. “Does he not deserve better than you?”

The satyrs trembled, their hooves sinking into the soft earth, their wine-soured breath sharp in the night.

“Yes, my lord,” one stammered. “We are very sorry, this will never happen again.”

Apollo’s eyes, molten and unblinking, held theirs as if weighing their souls—and finding them wanting. He had seen their kind too many times: careless in their pleasures.

“What are your names?”

“Thyraia,” the first whispered.

“Napaeus,” the other choked out.

Apollo took a breath. “I curse you,” he said.

Percy blinked, his hold tightening instinctively on the boy.

“You will never again feel the warmth of drunkenness,” Apollo continued, his tone merciless yet eerily calm. “Not from fermented fruit, nor honeyed wine, nor any drop of nectar. You will remain sober until this child no longer needs your care.”

As he spoke, the sky seemed to darken, as though his decree had pulled a shadow across the grove. The satyrs shivered violently.

With lowered heads and trembling hands, they approached Percy, their eyes glistening, sober now in every sense of the word. They reached for their boy, their fingers gentle.

Apollo said nothing more. He didn’t need to.

Percy stood there, uncertain, until Apollo’s hand found his arm.

“Was I too harsh?” Apollo asked. He was watching Percy’s face carefully.

Percy looked at him. A god, asking him whether the punishment was just—it was unexpected. It was… human.

“No,” Percy said, truthfully. His voice was rougher than he meant it to be. “You did the right thing.”

Apollo nodded once. “I don’t like curses,” he murmured, his voice hushed as they made their way toward the temple. “But sometimes... they’re not punishment. They’re correction.”

Correction.

“What about Cassandra?” Percy asked.

Apollo halted. 

The name hung between them like a scent.

“Was cursing her a correction too?”

Apollo exhaled slowly.

“No,” he said.

“You loved her.”

“I did.”

“And yet you cursed her,” Percy said. “Because she wouldn’t love you back.” He stepped closer. “Because she made you feel small.”

A bitter smile twisted Apollo’s mouth, something almost self-mocking.

“And you don’t?” Apollo asked. “You think this—” he gestured, vaguely, at the curve of Percy’s mouth, the green glint in his eyes, the crescent wound on his hand— “this hasn’t undone me in ways no prophecy ever dared to threaten?”

A silence opened between them, thick and mineral as blood.

“I didn’t curse her because she rejected me,” Apollo said. “I cursed her because I hoped she’d come back to me, even after.” He closed his eyes. “Because I couldn’t stand her walking away from what I thought was love.”

And the same I did with you.

He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.

Percy stepped closer, slowly.

Then—his hands lifted, cool palms cradling Apollo’s face.

And Apollo saw—

Pity.

It bloomed in Percy’s gaze like dusk bleeding into daylight.

Apollo recoiled, slightly—his pride snarling against it. But Percy’s thumbs swept along his cheekbones, as if trying to soothe a child who had cried too long.

“Poor Apollo,” Percy whispered.

“I don’t want your pity,” Apollo said, voice low and splintering.

“I don’t care,” Percy replied. “I’ll give it. Because I have it.”

Apollo turned his face into the touch—just slightly—as if to bite it, or kiss it, or both.

"Sometimes you're so gentle with me. But I know,” he murmured, bitter as wormwood. “I know you’d vanish the moment I stopped guarding the door.”

Percy’s fingers twitched, but didn’t retreat.

“Would I sleep beside you, night after night, if I meant to vanish?” Percy asked. “Would I let you teach me the aulos, let your hands guide mine when I draw the string of my bow? Would I…”

“Would I let you kiss me?” Percy asked.

Silence.

“Yet you flay yourself for it,” Apollo said, “as if loving me defiled some sacred part of you.”

“It did,” Percy replied.

His hands fell from Apollo’s face.

You wrote yourself into me in fire, his gaze seemed to say, and now you wonder why I flinch at the warmth.

Percy passed him like a breeze—unbothered, or pretending to be—heading toward the temple.

Apollo watched him go, and his voice followed.

“If pain is the only language you still trust from me,” he breathed, “then let me be fluent in it.”

Percy turned.

Apollo stood before him, a blade in his hands—simple, golden, absurd in its beauty.

Percy’s eyes flicked to it, uncertain. Asking.

Apollo approached, slow as dusk. He laid the blade in Percy’s palm.

“Hurt me,” he whispered. “Wound me with what you won’t say. Past pain, present fury—give it form. Let me know you again, even if it’s by your hand.”

Percy blinked at him, stunned. “You’ve gone mad.”

Apollo’s eyes gleamed. “Then love has done its work.”

He closed Percy’s fingers around the dagger.

“That can't be your brightest idea,” Percy said.

Apollo shrugged, his beauty undisturbed even by madness.

“It might be the best yet,” he said, and with a simple motion, he disrobed. The linen slipped down his frame like water over marble, pooling at his feet.

Percy swallowed.

Apollo’s smile was quiet. “Don’t be afraid,” he murmured, like a lullaby meant for the both of them. “I’ll talk you through it… unless, of course, you cut out my tongue first.”

His smile was a cruel fracture. “I deserve it.”

“Yes,” Percy replied, calm and unflinching. “You do.”

“But do you think,” he continued, “that watching you choke on your own ichor would make me feel better?”

There was a pause.

“I believed that once,” Percy said. “When everything in me was raw and screaming. I believed revenge might feel like mercy.”

His voice lowered.

“I don’t believe that anymore.”

Apollo’s smile twitched—something ghostlike.

“Liar.” he murmured.

Then, without warning, he reached inside Percy’s mind—a cruel gift—and thrust before him a vision: Percy, broken and bruised, lips split and trembling, cheeks stained with tears, eyes glassy and hollow beneath the flush of despair. He lay beneath Apollo’s weight—helpless, hopeless—lost in a night without end.

But it was not the image alone that destroyed him. It was the second layer: Percy felt Apollo’s emotions as they once were. Pleasure. Satisfaction. Indifference so vast it howled.

The vision vanished. Percy staggered back—eyes wide, breath torn from him like a drowning gasp.

“You—”

A single breath passed between them.

Then Percy moved.

The dagger flashed. Gold sang as it broke skin.

Apollo gasped as Percy drove it in, slicing across his chest.

Then again.

And again.

He pushed Apollo down, pressing the blade deeper, harder. Straight through Apollo’s side, felt the resistance of divine muscle, the shudder of ribs parting like reluctant gates.

The world narrowed to one unbearable thing—the pulse of ichor spilling.

And for a moment—just a moment—he felt it.

Not vengeance. Not relief.

Something darker. Something close to righteousness.

Apollo sagged, breath a ragged drag through ichor-thick air. But it wasn’t the god Percy saw now.

It was himself.

His own face in the flicker of dying light, his own pain contorted into something monstrous.

And yet Percy continued. He carved not into a man, but into memory—into the feeling that had held him hostage.

Not punishment. Purge.

He cut until the image dissolved, until all that remained was gold—gold and silence, the sacred reek of ichor clinging to his skin. He wanted to murder not Apollo, but helplessness.

Anger.

The unbearable ache of surviving.

And when it was done and the dagger fell from his hand, Percy wept.

Silent, wild sobs that cracked him open. He trembled—not from guilt alone, but from the mirror Apollo had become.

He breathed once, then lowered himself beside him, into the heat and horror of it.

There was no revulsion in him now, only a stunned reverence.

He looked upon what he had done.

The god’s chest lay open: ribs cracked like altar gates, lungs pulsing faintly with light, slick with golden blood.

It should have been obscene.

It was beautiful.

Percy crawled closer, drawn by a need to belong in the aftermath.

He laid his head upon Apollo’s torn-open chest, nestled himself inside the warmth of divine viscera, his cheek brushing the edge of a rib.

And with a slow, breathless precision, his hand slid inside—past the ribs, through the slick cathedral of Apollo’s lungs, until his fingers closed around the heart itself.

It was hot. Bright. Pulsing. Alive.

And Apollo moaned—soft, surprised.

“Does it hurt?” Percy asked, gaze fixed somewhere beyond.

“Tickles,” Apollo murmured. His eyes fluttered shut, lashes damp with pain. “You are very… thorough.”

He lifted a hand and placed it upon Percy’s head. Slowly, he drew him closer—closer, until the ache was no longer metaphor but marrow-deep.

“That was me restrained,” Percy whispered, his cheek damp with the bitter sheen of ichor.

Apollo huffed—half a snort, half a whimper. The laugh caught in his ribs and broke there. Sweat bloomed on his brow, crystalline and cold.

“Do you feel better?” Apollo rasped.

“Yes.”

Percy’s breath was shallow now, as if the act had drained something vital from him.

“We should do it more often then,” Apollo said, lips curling into a quiet, unhinged smile as Percy’s fingers squeezed—just slightly—around the god’s pulsing heart.

And when he finally—slowly—withdrew his hand, Apollo nearly reached for him again.

Percy sat up, eyes fixed on the blood-soaked hand.

Apollo stared at the hole in his chest.

“You are forbidden to enter my mind,” Percy said, jaw tight. “I don’t want to see that ever again.”

“I did it to—” Apollo began, but Percy cut him off.

“To get what you wanted,” he spat. “Selfish bastard.” His eyes flickered back to the wound. “I got carried away.”

Apollo’s eyelids closed slowly, surrendering to the ache.

“And it still doesn’t feel like enough, does it?” he whispered. "Gods don't hurt like mortals do."

Percy did not answer.

They sat there like that for a while—divine and human, bloodied and breathless, a tangle of bruised intimacy and poor coping mechanisms.

Then Percy spoke again, softer this time: “Next time, we could just… talk.”

Apollo cracked an eye open. “Where’s the poetry in that?”

Percy tilted his head. “We could scream it. Maybe throw in some interpretive stabbing.”

Apollo grinned, golden and ghastly. “Now that’s foreplay.”

The silence that followed, was punctuated only by the faint, wet sound of divine organs slowly knitting.

Percy’s eyes drifted to Apollo’s body. There was something unfair about how beauty clung to him, even when torn open.

And from that thought, something else bloomed—dark, delicate, and delicious.

An idea.

“Can you do something for me?” Percy asked, too casually.

“Anything,” Apollo said without hesitation, watching him from the ground.

Percy’s smile came slow.

“Don’t stitch yourself just yet. I think I like the sight.”

He stood. And began to untie his chiton.

Apollo’s throat bobbed.

He watched.

“Percy…?”

“Silence,” Percy said. “Don’t touch me.”

And Apollo dared not.

The demigod climbed over Apollo’s thighs.

His skin, slick with sweat and godsblood, caught the light like a statue half-formed. He settled there, straddling the god’s hips.

He gripped Apollo’s wrists and pinned them down against the temple floor.

Apollo watched, breathless, open, as the boy he had once broken remade himself on top of him.

Percy’s belt lay discarded, and the folds of his chiton fell aside like smoke parting before the sun. The torchlight gilded his bare skin—thighs like marble flushed with heat, stomach tense with breath he didn’t yet trust himself to exhale.

Then he moved, rocking against Apollo’s thigh, grounding himself in sensation, in choice. He moaned—softly, more surprise than pleasure at first.

His gaze remained locked on Apollo’s—defiant, haunted, alive.

Apollo watched, eyes wide, lips parted. He did not move. He merely offered himself.

Percy’s fingers slid up Apollo’s arms, not gentle but exacting, tracing the fault lines of power that once held him captive.

Percy moved again, hips rolling like a tide reclaiming a ruined shore. He leaned closer, breathing in Apollo’s pain like a fine perfume. “Does it still tickle?”

Apollo’s eyes fluttered shut. “No.”

Percy rode Apollo’s thighs faster, the friction of his member against Apollo’s blood-slicked thighs driving him wild.

The gold of Apollo’s blood smeared on his skin, mixing with his own sweat, creating a new kind of alchemy.

“I’m going to...,” Percy said, his voice a low, animal growl.

Apollo’s breath hitched, his own member twitching at the words, begging for a touch it wouldn’t receive.

Apollo’s eyes never left Percy’s face—his opened mouth, the soft flutter of closed lashes, the pulse in his neck that grew more erratic with every passing second.

And then—blessed oblivion—orgasm crashed over Percy like a wave. He threw his head back and moaned, body arching as he chased the peak. Hot and thick, he painted Apollo’s tights with his seed.

The god’s eyes went wide, pupils dilated, as he watched the mortal ride himself to completion above him.

Percy then stilled, his breaths slowing as the last tremors of pleasure receded.

In the rapture of his own reclamation, Percy did not notice the quiet treachery of restoration—the way Apollo’s wound had begun to mend itself, gold-threaded sinew knitting over divine marrow, the crime of divinity refusing to leave scars.

And then—suddenly, terribly alive—Apollo rose.

He took Percy by the waist. The motion was smooth, a waltz choreographed by ache.

Percy did not flinch.

"There's something wrong with me, with us," he breathed.

Apollo’s hands rose, one at Percy’s hip, the other gentle against the back of his neck, thumb resting just below the sea-slick curl near his temple.

Apollo nodded, a bead of sweat sliding from his hairline to his cheek.

He leaned in, hesitant only in memory, not in desire.

Percy closed the distance. Teeth first, then tongue—insistent, bruising, as though trying to taste something irretrievable from the marrow of the god.

Apollo yielded, breathless, body thrumming like a struck lyre. But before he could speak—before reverence could slip into plea—Percy broke away.

He pushed Apollo down with deliberate cruelty, and the god fell to the earth like something dethroned.

For a moment, there was only breath and silence and the halo of dust rising around him.

Then Percy rose.

He looked down once—expression unreadable, stripped of softness—and turned.

He did not run. He left.

Apollo stayed on the ground, confusion darkening his golden eyes, hunger gnawing deeper than before, unsatisfied and raw.

Apollo rose in a flash, muscles coiled to chase, to reclaim—yet something still held him, a sudden clarity amidst the chaos.

He brought one trembling hand to his face.

It was a test.

Apollo tipped his head back, eyes closed. He let the ache settle into his bones, that old familiar companion.

Want had become ritual. Regret—religion.

Percy stood beneath a peach tree, its branches heavy with overripe fruit, sweet rot perfuming the air like breath from a dying mouth.

A sudden desperation clawed at him—irrational, immediate. He wanted to be drunk. Blindingly. Obliviously. Preferably before he saw Apollo again.

Why?

Because he had crossed a threshold he never believed he'd approach, much less crave. He had surrendered. Not in battle, but to the storm inside himself—violent, shameful, alive. He had given in to something carnal and unspoken.

And it felt… Gods. It felt good. And it felt horrible.

He had taken the dagger Apollo gave him. Let it press against his skin. Let it split him— And he had enjoyed it. More than he should have. More than he could ever confess without flinching.

And Apollo—

Apollo saw him—rocking on his thighs like a beast in heat, desire written across his body with no poetry, only instinct.

Percy’s cheeks burned. He closed his eyes and slapped himself, fingers striking flesh like an exorcism. It did nothing. Shame clung to him like saltwater.

There had been something—something obscene and sacred—in the sight of ichor and semen mingling in the grass…

“What the hell am I even thinking?” he muttered, sick with himself.

He looked down at the fermenting fruit scattered across the roots—flesh bruised, oozing, overripe with decay.

How many would it take to get truly, blissfully hammered?

And then—

“My l-lord.”

Percy nearly leapt, the sharp intrusion tearing through the haze of his despair. He turned to find the satyrs Apollo had cursed.

Had they come to claim vengeance?

He stiffened, an armor of defiance hardening his shoulders.

“I am no lord,” he said.

“What then shall we call you?”

“Einalian,” he replied. “What do you want?” The sharp edge of fatigue bit through his tone.

One satyr stepped forward, bearing two bottles of wine, dark and swirling like captured storms.

“A gift,” he said, voice low and reverent. “From us—mead forged by the finest satyran vintners, consecrated to Dionysus himself. Accept it, and find contentment.”

The offering was laid gently at Percy’s feet.

“You give me this because it no longer intoxicates you?” Percy asked.

“Never!” The other satyr’s ears twitched with offended pride.

“We brought you needless sorrow. We ask forgiveness—no more wrath, neither from your husband nor from yourself,” came the solemn plea.

“Accepted,” he muttered, raising the bottles.

He needed oblivion and soon gifts were laid at his feet.

Is this how kings feel?

Apollo lay upon the cold temple floor, the cracked ceiling weeping slow droplets of water that traced fragile paths before gathering at the corner of his mouth, only to vanish into vapor.

He understood with a bitter clarity that Percy needed distance now—the space to unravel the tangled threads of whatever this fragile thing between them was. If relationship still had a place in their fractured lexicon.

His eyes closed, and his thoughts wandered—always to Percy, always to the weight of that name—until sudden laughter, bright and sharp, pierced the temple’s stillness. Then, a rush of air, something fleeting, passing among the trees.

His eyes snapped open. Hand pressing against his chest, Apollo rose and left the temple without pause, the ichor still staining his skin.

Drawn by the excited murmurs, he moved through the wood until at last he came upon a wreath of nymphs—some sitting, some reclining, some standing—clustered around what was unmistakably Percy.

Apollo tried not to groan.

The nymphs barely noticed him until the very last—when the heat of his presence curled their silken garments and the wind, once playful, ceased its dance; then, with the gentle panic of wild things, they parted.

He looked down. Percy lay on the grass, clutching a half-drunk bottle of dark Dionysian wine, potent and dangerous.

The nymphs watched from safe distance, some shyly peeking from behind trees and pools of water, their eyes shimmering with quiet hope.

Apollo knelt, fingers encircling Percy’s chin, squeezing the pallid flesh of his cheeks, watching the dark brows knit in a drunken torment.

“He’s alive!” one nymph cried, arms rising in joyous relief. Others nodded with shy smiles.

Careful and slow, Apollo gathered Percy into his arms—knees and back—and carried him toward the temple.

Percy’s hand sprang as Apollo walked, tangling in his golden hair, tugging at the locks like a child mad, it was woken.

“If you could see yourself.” Apollo murmured.

And Percy’s eye snapped open.

“Hey… Sunshine.” Percy’s words slurred but grinned like he’d just solved the world’s biggest mystery. “You’re, like, the best worst… uh, god ever. Seriously, your music’s a total mess, but, y’know, I kinda love it?" A half-choked laugh bubbled out. “Don’t tell Chiron. But you’re alright.”

Apollo froze mid-step, blinking at the strange words and the sloppy tone. What language is this? Nothing in Olympus or the mortal world had ever sounded like this.

And what was with that attitude?

“Are you... alright?” Apollo asked cautiously.

“Yeah, yeah,” Percy hiccupped, eyes glassy but fixed on Apollo. “Why’re you carrying me? Is the party already over? Please, please don’t tell my mom I got drunk. Seriously, don’t do that.” He babbled on, words tumbling faster than Apollo could catch them.

Apollo narrowed his eyes, but it clicked quickly. This wasn’t just any Percy. This was Percy from a future tangled up with memories—memories stirred by whatever poison was in that wine.

Apollo shifted Percy’s weight slightly, steadying him.

He understood the shape of the words, but their rhythm was...still foreign. He would need Percy to keep speaking—needed more of the poetry behind the chaos.

“So… we know each other?” Apollo asked, voice softer now, almost curious.

Percy’s grin wavered, suddenly genuine beneath the drunken haze.

“Yeah,” he muttered, “I think we do. Maybe not how you’d expect.”

He shifted in Apollo’s arms. “You’re not just the annoying sun god who crashes my life all the time. You’re... more. Complicated. Like me, in a way.”

He hiccuped and jabbed a finger at Apollo, who raised an eyebrow but stayed silent, letting him ramble.

“Y’know, it’s weird—like, really weird—that here you are, all shiny and perfect, and I’m just… this mess. But hey, I kinda like it. Life’s messy. You ever try just being a god who doesn’t have to be perfect? Bet you don’t, huh?”

He sighed, head resting briefly against Apollo’s chest as if grounding himself.

“You know, I always thought gods were supposed to be, like, untouchable and serious and stuff, but you? You’re more like... like that weird uncle who shows up late to the party with a karaoke machine.”

Percy’s head lolled to the side. “You ever think about retiring that lyre? Maybe try a ukulele? Or even a kazoo?”

Apollo couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle.

Apollo looked at him—at the way Percy clung to the moment, suspended between timelines, between selves. Whatever that wine had been, it had stripped away the walls Percy always kept—leaving him open, absurd, and achingly sincere.

“Do you trust me?” Apollo asked suddenly.

Percy blinked. “You’re carrying me and not dropping me into a ravine, so... yeah? That’s pretty trustworthy.”

“Then try to stay awake. I need to know what you remember.” He said, drawing them deeper into the path that led toward the Sun Temple—its golden bones gleaming faintly in the dusk.

“Hey, party’s that way,” Percy slurred, lazily pointing to nowhere in particular.

“You’ve had enough excitement for one day,” Apollo said quietly.

They passed under a canopy of trees, the moonlight catching in Percy’s dark hair.

“What do you think of me, Apollo?” Percy asked suddenly. “Do you even like me? Or do you just think I’m annoying?”

He tilted his head up, eyes glassy but focused. “Be serious.”

Apollo stopped walking. The words hit harder than expected. He turned his gaze downward, studying the boy in his arms.

The impossible Perseus.

With a face carved from some sun-drenched dream, eyes the color of liquid turquoise, so alive they seemed to pull the tides themselves. Stubborn, defiant, reckless. Kind in ways that shamed gods. So trustful. So hopeful. So human it hurt.

I love you.

He couldn’t say it. Not while Percy was half-conscious and drunk on stolen wine and memories he shouldn’t have.

So instead, Apollo said the only truth he could offer.

“You make me feel,” he whispered, “like I could be something more than what I was made to be.”

Percy blinked slowly, eyes meeting Apollo’s.

“That’s not an answer,” he murmured.

Apollo held his gaze. For once, he didn’t smile. His voice was quiet, deliberate.

“And what do you think of me?” he asked. “Be serious.”

Percy stared at him, lips parting like he was about to toss another joke, but then something shifted in his expression—like fog clearing just long enough to see the road underneath.

“You?” he said, voice cracking just slightly. “A pain in the ass.”

Apollo raised an eyebrow.

Percy blinked hard, his mouth twitching at the corner.

“Just kidding,” he muttered. “More than alright, Apollo.”

The way he said it—soft, sincere—cut through the night like an arrow loosed without warning. No theatrics. No defenses.

More than alright.

Apollo let the silence hang between them for a moment, golden and fragile. Then he gently adjusted Percy’s weight again, wrapping one arm tighter around him—not because he had to, but because he wanted to. To hold this moment, to hold him, a little longer.

“You say that now,” Apollo murmured, “but wait until I bring out the kazoo.”

Percy gave a low laugh, muffled against his shoulder.

“Gods help us all,” he said.

Percy awoke into a darkness so complete it felt liquid—viscous.

It pressed against his eyelids and coiled in his lungs until, through the dense haze, he saw the outline of light.

Not light—Apollo.

Apollo lay on his side, back to him, naked and still. The curve of his spine glowed faintly in the dim light.

Percy’s breath caught in his throat. A heartbeat, and then another. He reached for himself first, a habitual defense: still clothed in his chiton. Intact. No strange bruises, no mysterious soreness. The ache he felt was only in his head, his skull still echoing with the bitter wine of the hours before. But his body... it was untouched. Unclaimed.

He was alright. He told himself that again. Alright.

Still, the silence between them pulsed like a living thing.

He did not want to wake the god. But the silence between them rang too loud.

So, with the clumsy irreverence of mortals, he raised his foot, poised like a question behind the god’s shoulder.

But before he could make contact, Apollo moved.

A hand reached behind with serpent speed and caught Percy’s ankle.

“Are you trying to wake me up... with your foot?” Apollo rasped.

Percy jerked his foot back, startled by the sudden grip.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Thought I’d start with the subtle approach.”

“Subtle?” Apollo turned toward Percy, stretching like a cat sunning itself on a marble pedestal. “Waking a god with a foot is about as subtle as a lightning bolt at midnight.”

He propped himself on one hand, the curve of his biceps tracing the flawless sculpture of his chest.

Percy slowly shifted his gaze away. “Why are you… unclothed?”

“You had your hand in my chest just yesterday,” Apollo murmured, voice low and edged with wry amusement. “You saw my ribs bare—so tell me, why would I hide behind mere cloth now?”

He leaned forward, his golden head tilting.

“Your face is redder than pomegranate,” he murmured. “Have you been thinking sinful thoughts?”

“Sod off.”

“What are you, some coarse-handed mercenary?” Apollo asked. “Such crude tongues ill befit the consort of the sun god. My love deserves poetry, not profanity.”

Percy cracked a short, sharp laugh, but the pulse pounding behind his temples quickly reminded him of reality’s cruel grip.

Without a word, Apollo rose and returned with a goblet of water.

“Drink,” he commanded softly.

Percy obeyed, the water sliding down like a balm against the fire in his head.

“You could make this headache vanish, you know,” Percy offered.

“No,” Apollo murmured, sweeping a stray lock of damp hair from Percy’s furrowed brow with a tender, possessive hand. “I would rather you learn from your mistakes. You did not merely accept wine from satyrs you barely knew—you drank alone, in a forest alive with nymphs, and drank enough to steal your consciousness and scatter your memory.”

“How much did I scatter?” Percy asked, a knot tightening in his stomach.

“It was you who tore the clothes from me,” Apollo replied.

“Liar!” Percy shot back, pushing himself up on trembling knees.

Apollo only looked at him with quiet amusement, the corner of his mouth tilting in a smile too sly to trust.

Flushed and defeated by his own dizziness, Percy sank back onto the soft furs, retreating into the cool hush of linen.

“I’m tired of you already,” he murmured, voice trailing off, “and it’s not even morning yet.”

His eyelids slipped shut, lashes casting faint shadows over flushed cheeks, and in a breath, he was gone.

Apollo watched him in silence. Slowly, he reached for the linen and pulled it higher, tucking it with careful hands.

And until the pale fingers of morning reached through the trees, Apollo did not move.

He only watched.

“More than alright.”

Percy’s drunken words echoed through the stillness. They looped in his mind, threading doubt through the silence.

Was the Percy of that future closer to him than the boy now lying beneath linen?

Was that Apollo—some brighter, wiser version of himself—gentler? Less cruel? Less careless with the hearts entrusted to him?

Strange, he thought. He, the sun god, jealous not of a rival... but of himself.

Of the man he had not yet become.

At last, Apollo reached out, the godly stillness of his hand brushing against Percy’s fevered brow.

He coaxed the pain away, dissolving the dull throb behind Percy’s eyelids, easing the weight pressing at his temples.

Apollo’s hand lingered a moment longer than necessary, then fell back to his side.

Percy woke to a world drenched in colors too bright, too saturated—like a dream sharpened by sunlight. His head was clear, muscles loose and unburdened, and he let out a slow, satisfying yawn before sliding from the bed.

“Nothing happened yesterday,” he muttered, as if saying it aloud could bend time backward. But the wine hadn’t erased memories; if anything, it had etched them deeper. He remembered only fragments—those hazy breaths between drunken sleep and the fragile edges of another slumber.

Stripping off his chiton, he moved toward the cool pool nestled within the temple’s marble embrace. The water promised relief, a balm to his lingering haze.

Apollo entered quietly, holding something in his hand. The god’s eyes flickered with surprise at seeing Percy awake so early—a flicker so subtle that Percy’s keen gaze caught it without effort.

“What do you have there?” Percy asked, leaning sideways on the smooth rocks, curiosity threading his voice.

A pregnant pause stretched between them. Then Apollo stepped forward, the weight of his presence filling the space.

“Something you have yet to claim.”

“If that’s another bottle of wine,” Percy said, his voice thick with reluctant humor, “take that away from me.”

Apollo chuckled. “It’s not,” he replied.

He crouched by the edge of the water, the god’s posture regal and deliberate—like a king kneeling before an altar.

Percy’s body straightened at the sight.

From behind his back, he drew a wreath—the same wreath Percy had refused before.

Now, he held it again—woven from olive and myrtle, dusk-dark and damp with meaning.

His gaze met Percy’s, fierce yet tender, as though the wreath was more than a crown.

“We chased each other through the grove,” Apollo said, his voice quiet.

“As you wished.”

“We fought. I drew your first blood—”

He touched his lip, almost laughing.

“As you wished.”

A smile tugged at his mouth, crooked, a little mad.

“I even let you rearrange my entrails.”

He reached forward.

“Now—will you grant me this honour?”

A breath.

“Will you wear it?”

Percy froze. The world, for a moment, forgot to turn.

His gaze fell to his hand—the crescent mark left by Apollo’s teeth, already faded into a scar. A promise etched in flesh.

Why should he not?

Apollo had earned the right—fair and square. Through pain. Through patience. Through something not quite war, and not quite love.

And so—slowly, like a flower daring to bloom beneath the moonlight—Percy bent his head.

It was not surrender, but trust—fragile and terrifying. A gesture that made Apollo’s hands tremble as he placed the crown atop that dark head.

The leaves shimmered faintly in the dusk—no divine blaze, no golden trickery, only the deep, fragrant green of myrtle, tender and persistent. A lover’s plant. A mourner’s wreath.

“It suits you,” Apollo murmured, unable to help himself.

Percy gave him a look—half warning, half wonder—and brushed the crown as if feeling for hidden thorns.

“It’s too soft,” he said, eyes flickering down. “It won’t survive me.”

“It was made to survive everything,” he said. “Even you, my storm.”

Percy’s fingers lingered at the edge of the wreath, as though tempted to take it off before Apollo could.

But he didn’t. He let it stay, a crown of softness tangled in his unruly hair,

It weighed nothing.

And yet, it pressed.

Percy settled by the water’s edge. His hands moved deftly, weaving a fishing net—a skill passed down from his father, a rhythm as old as the sea itself. There was no need to fish here, but the steady repetition quieted the whirl of his thoughts.

His eyes flicked toward Apollo, who stood beneath the gentle cascade of a waterfall, naked and unguarded. The golden strands of his hair caught the sunlight, glistening like threads of liquid fire.

Percy’s mind wandered, wondering if he could weave a net from those radiant locks. He’d heard tales of oceanids who spun nets from their own hair. But would Apollo’s hair hold? Or would the fish sizzle and fry beneath the touch of the sun god’s fiery strands?

The thought was so absurd, that the corner of Percy’s mouth twitched into a reluctant smile.

Apollo, half-submerged in the pool, glanced over his shoulder. 

“What’s amusing you?” he asked lazily.

“I was just thinking,” Percy said, tone dry, "your temple’s got the ambience of a marble tomb. Only thing missing is a choir of keening widows.”

Apollo arched a golden brow. “You wound me.”

Percy shrugged, still not looking up. “It’s either insult you or admit I was imagining frying fish on your head. Pick your poison, oh radiant one.”

Then, a warm hand settled on Percy’s knee. He glanced down to see Apollo’s smile—broad, unguarded, almost boyish.

“You’re bored,” Apollo said softly.

“Maybe,” Percy admitted, a slow smile tugging at his lips despite himself. “But I’m less bored now.”

“I have a few ideas to keep you occupied,” Apollo said, voice low and honeyed, “though they require me as much as you."

Percy arched a brow. “And none of these—by the gods—require me to be drenched in your blood?” 

“No bloodshed, at least none that stains."

Apollo raised himself slowly on the sun-warmed rocks, settling just between Percy’s legs. The cool water clung to his skin and dripped, tracing slow rivulets down Percy’s thighs.

“Can we continue where we left off last time?” Apollo asked, eyes unabashedly tracing the curve of Percy’s mouth.

Percy’s hand drifted upward, fingers trembling as they traced the gilded strands of Apollo’s hair—sunlight caught in liquid gold. His eyes sought Apollo’s own, swirling orbs of molten gold, burning bright.

Their bond was a labyrinth—twisting corridors with unopened doors and fractured thresholds. The wreath upon Percy’s brow, the scar etched upon Apollo’s chest—ghostly echoes of a strange entanglement.

Percy felt the wild pulse of possibility stirring within him. With Apollo, he was both captive and liberator, imprisoned and free—an eternal paradox. And in that delicate balance, Percy realized the choice belonged to him alone: which cage he would embrace, which freedom he would dare to claim.

He nodded slowly.

In a breath, Apollo’s hand found the nape of his neck, pulling him close before their lips met in a kiss.

Their bond ignited with a fierce and sudden blaze, setting their breaths aflame and drawing fragile tremors beneath their heavy lids.

Apollo kissed him like the sun devouring Icarus mid-fall—greedy, reverent, doomed. Percy responded like a drowning man, clinging to flame, too tired to care if it burned.

Their shadows stretched long in the amber light. The forest sighed around them.

The heat of Apollo. Percy felt it flood him, felt it curl along his spine.

Their lips parted only to return with fiercer longing, mouths open, tongues tasting.

Apollo pressed his brow to Percy’s, lashes trembling. “Tell me to stop,” he said. “And I will.”

Percy’s hand slid down Apollo’s throat, feeling the wild rhythm of his pulse. “You don’t want me to stop you.”

A tremble ran through Apollo’s frame, his throat shifting as he swallowed the ache building in his mouth.

“I want what you’ll give freely.”

The grass bowed beneath them.

Percy straddled Apollo’s naked thighs, his knees pressing into the earth like roots digging into sin.

The god’s hands wandered lower, greedy and reverent all at once—fingers curling in the folds of Percy’s chiton, knuckles pale with the ache to tear.

Percy, with a swift and painful awareness, felt Apollo’s growing desire stir between his legs. His own body, too, betrayed him—heat coursing into his loins, as Apollo's tongue, wild and unashamed, traced the contours of his mouth, filling the air with sounds of breathless thirst.

Then, Apollo’s hand slipped lower and with a quiet, feral urgency, he drew their members together, pressing them close in a fevered clasp, a frenzy that Percy, lost in the haze of the moment, yielded to with an unspoken consent. Apollo’s fingers began their rhythmic dance, each stroke pulling a soft groan from Percy’s throat as the kiss refused to cease.

Percy’s hand found its place upon Apollo’s chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat.

Apollo’s kiss softened then, growing languid as the heat between them settled into a slow rhythm.

His hand, slick with precome moved in slow, teasing circles, each touch deliberate, meant to draw Percy further into the haze of pleasure.

But it was not enough.

Percy longed for more, yet the weight of his own restraint held him captive. He could not bring himself to move his hips by himself. A flush crept up his throat, hot with both longing and shame. He swallowed, breath mingling with Apollo’s own, his voice barely more than a whisper.

“Apollo…”

Apollo hummed, the sound warm with amusement. It was clear he, too, was nearing his limit—the tension in his body betrayed him—but he would not surrender to it so easily.

“Tell me,” he murmured.

Percy’s pride warred with his need, but the latter won.

“Your hand,” he muttered, pulling away just enough to rest his forehead against Apollo’s shoulder. He felt the god’s warmth seep into his skin, grounding him even as his pulse raced. “Move it.”

For a heartbeat, there was nothing.

Then, with a wickedness that only a god of light could wield, Apollo stilled entirely, letting go.

Percy groaned in frustration, his fingers clenching against Apollo’s skin.

“Not like that,” he protested, reaching blindly for Apollo’s wrist, his own hand guiding the god’s back to where he wanted him most. He curled Apollo’s fingers around them both, hissing as the pleasure returned. His breath came fast now, his body trembling as he moved Apollo’s hand himself, forcing the rhythm he so desperately craved.

And Apollo, for all his playfulness, did not resist. Instead, his grip tightened, and he let Percy lead—just for a little while.

“Make me come,” Percy whispered, his voice barely more than a breath, trembling with want. “Now.”

And Apollo obeyed.

A rare thing, perhaps, for a god so used to command, but in this moment, he yielded without hesitation. His hand moved, no longer teasing, no longer holding back. A sharp gasp tore from Percy’s lips as pleasure overwhelmed him, his body tensing before unraveling. His hips jerked, seeking more even as release claimed him, and in the same instant, Apollo followed—a low, shuddering groan escaping him as warmth spilled between them, their bodies trembling with the force of it.

For a moment, all was still.

Percy sighed, half-drunk on exhaustion, on warmth, on the unbearable closeness of it all. He knew he should move but Apollo’s arms were strong around him and he found himself unwilling to leave it.

“Stay,” Apollo murmured, as if sensing the flicker of thought in Percy’s mind.

Percy huffed softly, pressing his forehead against Apollo’s collarbone. “I haven’t moved.”

Apollo chuckled, the sound a low vibration against Percy’s cheek. “You were thinking about it.”

Percy lifted his gaze slowly, deliberately, eyes tracing the divine geography before him: the golden sheen of sweat on Apollo’s skin, the subtle shift of breath across sculpted muscle, the clean line of his collarbone, the column of his throat—and finally, the face, impossibly beautiful, aglow in the aftermath of want.

He burned under the weight of it. His face flushed hot, breath caught in his chest.

Apollo smirked, dimples surfacing like secret weapons, and Percy felt something in himself threaten to unravel again.

“Are you alright?” Apollo’s voice broke the stillness.

“Yes.” Percy’s answer came soft, hesitant. “That was…”

“Quick,” Apollo chuckled, a low sound that stirred something raw inside Percy.

Without meaning to, Percy gripped Apollo’s shoulders tighter, his fingers digging in with a need he couldn’t name. Sensitivity, sharp and unbidden, prickled beneath his skin.

One careless strand of Apollo’s golden hair brushed against him—and the skin erupted in a thousand tiny fires.

This was no sacred bond forged by Hera’s will, nor a residue of that wreath upon his brow. No. This trembling, this ache—it came from elsewhere.

Apollo's hand slid beneath the folds of Percy’s chiton, fingertips grazing the curve of his spine. The fabric slipped lower. 

“Not here,” Percy murmured, voice low but firm.

Apollo stilled.

Then, sensing the change, he looked up—and saw them. A cluster of young nymphs peering from behind the gnarled trunk of a cypress tree, their cheeks pink with vicarious thrill, eyes wide and glinting with mischief.

When they realized they’d been seen, they scattered like startled birds, laughter like windchimes following in their wake.

A crooked smile pulled at Apollo’s mouth.

He exhaled, long and slow, then turned back to Percy— who was motionless, flushed to the ears, glowing like a dawn-ripe pomegranate.

“You’re blushing harder than I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Percy muttered something profane under his breath, which only made Apollo laugh again.

He stood then, fluid as flame, and reached for Percy’s hand. His fingers curled gently around the marked palm. “Come,” he said, not as a command but as an invocation. “Let’s go back to the temple.”

Percy hesitated—always he hesitated, because to follow Apollo meant slipping a little further into something he couldn’t name. But then Apollo looked at him with that soft, unbearable fondness, like Percy was the last poem in a dying tongue, and he stood.

Like he had never been hurt.

The air was rich with the scent of crushed thyme and old stone. Flowers turned as they passed—heliotrope, narcissus, blue iris—curving to follow the fading trail of divinity.

They came at last to the ruin of the sun temple, where ivy clung to fluted columns like green fire, and time had softened gold into moss. Vines parted without protest. The earth, remembering its god, welcomed him home.

Apollo led him through the shadowed threshold, feet muffled against the velvet hush of moss and soil.

They entered the bedchamber.

Apollo turned to him, more solemn now. “Will you let me touch you here?”

The moment shimmered—vulnerable.

Percy stood there, uncertain. Some part of him whispered to run—to flee into silence, into guilt, into the familiar ache of refusal. But his body remained, rooted to the moss, eyes locked on the god before him. There would be time for self-loathing. Later.

Now—he needed something else.

And Apollo stood before him, not demanding but offering.

"Yes." 

Apollo stepped forward, hands reaching, afraid he might desecrate what he longed to hold. He slid the chiton from Percy’s shoulders, slow and deliberate, revealing inch by inch the mortal body he had loved too fiercely, too carelessly before.

And this time, he did not rush.

This time, Apollo’s hands wandered as if they had never known Percy before.

He mapped the terrain of his back with aching precision, brushing reverent fingers down the valley of his spine, pausing to count the moles.

“Let me rewrite my touch,” he murmured. “Let me remember you anew.”

Percy’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “You’re already acting like you’re going to forget me.”

“I’m terrified that I will,” Apollo admitted, his fingers ghosting along Percy’s ribs. “So I’ll memorize you while I can. Every breath. Every shiver.”

A beat passed.

“Every sarcastic quip.”

Percy smirked. “Then you’d better prepare for a very long night.”

“Can I? Can I worship you, Percy?” Apollo asked, voice hoarse.

“I don’t want to be worshipped.”

“I know,” Apollo said, and his voice trembled with something bruised. “That’s what makes me want to kneel.”

A flicker of wicked amusement touched Percy’s mouth. “Then kneel,” he said.

And the smile hadn’t even vanished before Apollo obeyed, sinking before him.

His hands gripped Percy’s hips, grounding him, steadying himself against the weight of want. He pressed a kiss just above Percy’s navel, then another, lower—each touch deliberate, like candlelight blooming along flesh. Percy's hands slid into Apollo’s hair, curling tight, as if to anchor himself.

Apollo looked up—his gaze asking.

Percy met it, chin tilted, defiant in his vulnerability. He nodded once.

And Apollo broke.

His hands slid up Percy’s thighs, slow as moonrise, his thumbs drawing circles like ancient glyphs.

Percy’s breath hitched as he was taken in—first by hand, then by mouth.

Apollo’s tongue moved around his member with maddening care, tracing the edges of Percy’s desire, testing pressure and pause, until Percy was a taut string of breathless sound.

“Gods—” Percy choked out, unable to finish. His knees threatened to give, and yet he held on, not wanting to miss a second of this torment.

The sun-god looked up again, pupils wide and dark, drunk on the taste of him. “Let me carry you through this,” he whispered, and then took him deeper.

Percy cried out—no longer soft, no longer in control. His hands gripped harder, rocking forward before he could stop himself, chasing the warmth, the wet, the worship.

He felt his pleasure building, terrible and beautiful, hot as the sun behind his eyelids. And still Apollo drank him in like nectar.

“Don’t stop,” Percy begged, voice cracking. “Please—”

Apollo didn’t.

He groaned against him, intoxicated.

Percy shattered with a cry, his whole body locking tight, then shaking apart, anchored only by Apollo’s grip and his golden mouth. He pulsed against him, mouth falling open, air stuttering from his lungs as his vision dimmed at the edges.

Apollo held him steady, moaning softly as Percy spilled into him.

When Percy sagged, trembling, flushed and hollowed out, Apollo remained where he was for a moment, forehead resting gently against Percy’s thigh, arms wrapped around him.

Apollo looked up, lips slick, face flush with heat and divinity. Percy couldn’t look at him.

Apollo tugged him lower, and Percy came willingly—soft now, boneless, undone.

Apollo kissed his temple, his cheek, his shoulder, worship transmuted now into care. With trembling fingers, he brushed damp strands of hair from Percy’s forehead, lingering just to feel the fever-warm skin beneath.

Percy's eyes fluttered shut, exhaustion crashing through him like a quiet tide, but even in the dark behind his lids, he sought Apollo.

His hand slid down, slow and certain, finding Apollo’s member waiting, aching. Fingers wrapped around the thick length with a reverence so gentle it made the god shudder, breath catching on the edge of a moan.

He bent low, pressing his forehead to Percy’s shoulder, undone by the grace of being touched in return.

“You don’t have to,” Apollo whispered hoarsely.

“I want to,” Percy murmured, barely audible.

“Percy…” Apollo gasped, voice shaking, golden hips trembling in Percy’s grasp.

Percy said nothing, his hand tightened just enough to draw another moan from Apollo’s lips. His thumb traced the crown, smearing the first drops of semen, and Apollo's hips jerked helplessly forward.

Apollo’s hands splayed along Percy’s sides, not moving, just being there. The bed creaked with each shallow thrust. Apollo’s fingers dug into the sheets, into the edge of his own restraint.

He came in silence—biting down on the curve of Percy’s shoulder, as if to anchor himself in the living world, in this world. Percy held him through it, until Apollo shuddered and stilled, melted into him like wax offered to flame.

Percy lay still, breath slowing, the heat between them slowly giving way to silence.

The air had shifted. Outside, a cicada started its lonely hymn. Somewhere beyond the ruined temple walls, the sun climbed higher.

Apollo’s hand was on his back, fingers tracing idle circles over sweat-slick skin, but Percy no longer melted into it. His body was here, yes—but his mind had already begun its retreat.

He turned his face away, hiding it in the crook of his arm.

“Don’t,” Apollo murmured. “Don’t disappear from me.”

Percy didn’t answer.

Apollo buried his face in the curve of Percy’s neck, pressing kisses to skin still shivering with afterglow.

“Should we stop? Do you want to rest?”

Percy turned his head slightly, cheek still pressed to the crook of his arm, and looked at Apollo as though he’d spoken in riddles.

“Yes,” he said at last.

And Apollo, to his credit, did not protest. Instead, he nodded—just once—and rose with quiet grace.

He dipped a cloth in water steeped with rosemary, wrung it with tender fingers, and returned to him. The scent rose—sharp, herbal, clean—and Apollo wiped him reverently.

Just as he turned to leave, Percy’s hand closed softly around his wrist.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I thought—”

“Come here,” Percy said, and Apollo gathered him close, limbs folding like tired wings.

He took Percy’s hand and guided it around himself, drawing him close.

“My storm,” he whispered against he damp curls at his brow, lips barely brushing the skin.

Percy let his cheek rest, squished gently against Apollo’s firm chest.

His fingers curled lightly against Apollo’s back, and after a moment, his eyes fluttered shut.

And it was comfort.

Not joy. Not peace. But a pause.

Apollo did not sleep. Even if he could, he would not have dared—would not let the velvet dark behind his lids obscure the vision that lay before him.

Percy’s face in sleep—serene now, the turmoil soothed from his brow, each breath a hymn to fleeting peace. His dark lashes quivered ever so faintly beneath Apollo’s exhale, and his mouth, still flushed and tender, held the ghost of earlier surrender.

It had felt like bliss. Like madness laced in honey.

And yet, he had held himself back—not from lack of hunger, but from fear. Fear of breaking the delicate thread spun between them, strung too fine to bear the weight of divine rapture.

Should he enter Percy’s mind?

Should he sift through dreamstuff, trace the shape of what churned behind those shuttered eyes—grief, desire, memory? He could. He had the power to.

But he had no reason now. No right.

Not when the boy bore his sea-green eye, his vision, and walked with light no longer borrowed from Apollo but pulsing wholly his own.

And so Apollo stayed very still, a god cradling a mortal in the violet hush of evening, watching the boy who might one day forgive him.

Or not.

His fingers drifted through Percy’s hair, marveling again at the silk of it. He could lose centuries in the way it slipped through his touch.

And the smell—gods, the smell.

When Percy came undone—when pleasure took him by the throat and cracked him open—he smelled like fresh rain on stone. Like spring bursting through rot. Like something clean and wild and terribly mortal. It made Apollo ache in his teeth.

He closed his eyes—not to sleep, but to better remember the scent.

It was all he would carry with him when Percy was gone again.

Gone again.

His hand trembled where it hovered over Percy’s ribs—then curled into a fist.

Percy was his. Hera’s golden thread wound them together, tangled them in fate’s impossible weave. The stars had named him, the heavens had whispered mine.

But Apollo… Apollo was not Percy’s.

Percy belonged to another time, another pain. Shaped by other hands, bound by loves that did not speak his name.

But his love didn’t have to know this. Not now. Not ever.

Apollo would forge him something better. A home carved from light and laurel, sea-warmed and honey-soft. A family, if Percy needed one.

He would surround Percy with gods who would kneel to him, with forests that would bow, with temples that would rise in his name.

Whatever it took to keep him from vanishing again.

But Percy did not want worship, nor gold, nor a world fashioned of oaths and opulence. He was a boy who had walked through hell and come out salt-bitten, stubborn, still tender. No monument could hold him. No temple would make him stay.

Even if Apollo wove chains from starlight and wound them round Percy’s wrists—he would slip them.

It was not his body that needed binding. It was his heart.

And Apollo, cruel fool that he was, had no map to that country.

What if time ends in Hyperborea, reason whispered like a wind through marble columns, and all that awaits you beyond is not reunion, but ruin?

What if you must give him up—and then return to Olympus with nothing but memory to show for your defiance?

What if your father is watching, and waits only for you to stumble?

Apollo’s jaw clenched. He lay beside Percy but felt as though he were already pleading before Zeus’s throne, a condemned son.

He had risked everything.

He would risk it again.

Because there was no power in Olympus—not lightning, not law—that could rival the way Percy breathed beside him, steady and unafraid, as if he belonged here.

As if they belonged.

Apollo didn’t notice when he began to move—only that suddenly, he was straddling Percy’s sleeping form, golden eyes wide, unblinking.

Percy stirred.

“Apollo?” His voice cracked, caught between sleep and the first tremors of fear. “What are you doing—?”

But Apollo didn’t answer.

His hands found Percy’s throat, slow and reverent at first—then tightening.

Vines bloomed like serpents from his fingers, green and thick, ancient with power. They slithered over Percy’s chest, possessive, wet with nectar. One pressed against his lips. Another slid past.

Percy choked.

They filled his lungs. His stomach. His silence.

And still, Apollo watched with holy hunger, eyes shining.

Percy woke with a start—choking, gasping—but it wasn’t Apollo’s hands around his throat.

It was his own, clenched tight around Apollo’s neck.

His eyes were wild. His breath came ragged. But Apollo—

Apollo simply held his wrists.

“Nightmare?” he asked, voice raspy from sleep. Unstrained.

As if Percy hadn’t just felt the bones bend beneath his grip.

Percy jerked back, clutching his hands to his chest as if scorched. His breath came fast, chest heaving. “I—I thought—”

“I know,” Apollo said gently. He sat up, the sheet falling from his chest like the shedding of something ceremonial. “You were afraid.”

“I tried to kill you.” Percy’s voice cracked. “I wanted to kill you.”

Apollo tilted his head. The marks on his throat were already fading. “Then I suppose I’ve been touched by your truth.”

Percy flinched. “Don’t make this poetic.” He ran a trembling hand over his face, wiping away the remnants of nightmare. Guilt, fear, or memory—he wasn’t sure what lingered more heavily.

“I’m sorry,” Percy whispered, but the words felt half-born.

“Tell me what you saw.” Apollo’s voice was sharper than he intended.

“No.” Percy’s breath hitched. “I need air.”

Apollo watched him go.

Percy stepped into the threshold of the evening, the vines parting before him like reverent supplicants. He didn’t spare them a glance.

Outside, the pale dusk stretched its fingers across the sky, soft and bruised with lavender. Birds still chirped above, ignorant and content. Somewhere, a stream whispered over stone, ancient and slow.

Hyperborea was beautiful. Unspeakably so. But it offered him no purpose—only bliss, hollow and eternal.

He could chase deer until his legs gave out, watch silver fish flash like prayers beneath the water, sleep in sun-drenched groves.

He could spend his days chasing frightened deer through the woods, naming the fish as they glittered in their silver stillness. He could bathe in waterfalls and fall asleep in fields of golden grain.

But what of it? What was the point of peace when everything that gave him meaning burned elsewhere?

Did he need a meaning?

Maybe he could linger in this golden exile, where the god would show him with heart and flesh how deeply he wished to atone for his sins. Maybe here, he could surrender to the reckless luxury of being spoiled, unworthy yet cradled.

He need not flee when the four weeks bled into eternity. Apollo’s love was a tempest and a refuge, fierce as it was gentle, offering sanctuary from the cruel decay of time. To be held like this—cherished beyond mortal reckoning—was a terror and a salvation entwined: no death, no shattered vows, no beasts rising from the shadows of man.

Perhaps here, Percy might finally find the meaning his restless soul sought.

Or at least, the illusion of it.

But what of the faces still scorched into his memory? The promises he hadn’t broken, but hadn’t kept? Could he really let them slip beneath the surface like drowned things, like someone ignorant—worse, like someone selfish?

The peace of Hyperborea was not a lie. But it was not his truth, either.

Percy felt the weight of Apollo’s presence settle against his skin.

And when he turned, just once, his eyes caught on something strange.

At first, he only saw what the world had always seen: broad shoulders draped in tawny light, golden skin kissed by centuries, muscles sculpted in divine geometry, hair cascading like molten sunlight to his elbows. The sharp line of his jaw, the impossible clarity of his eyes—those eyes. Swirling with gold, ancient and alive.

Then something shifted.

A flicker.

Percy blinked.

There—just beneath the skin—veins like ink, too dark, too deep. As if the ichor had turned black. As if something rotten pulsed inside that perfect shell.

What is that?

He blinked again. It was gone.

Had Apollo let something slip? Was that... unguarded?

A strange tightness pressed behind Percy’s ribs. It wasn’t fear. It was worse. It was expectation. As if this quiet could split open at any moment, disgorging some terrible revelation.

Did Zeus take something from him when he cast him down? Something vital?

Apollo’s eyes narrowed like he had heard the thought.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Percy hesitated. “I should be asking you that.”

He stepped closer, fingers reaching for Apollo’s forearm—drawn by a strange need to see again, to touch whatever it was he’d glimpsed.

But Apollo flinched. His arm jerked away, as if Percy’s touch might peel back the glamour.

“I think we need… a little space. A day or two.”

For a moment, Percy thought he’d misheard

Laughter, brittle and bright, rose in his throat, only to die before it reached his mouth.

“I think you need to tell me what’s going on,” he said, stepping forward. “Is this the eclipse?”

“No.” The answer was too quick.

“Is it Zeus?” Percy pressed.

“No.” Apollo's whisper was barely breath. “I have it under control.”

“It does not look like it,” Percy said, his tone edged now, flint against flint. “Are you cursed?”

Silence. A silence so thick it pressed against Percy’s ribs.

“You’ve already opened me up,” Apollo murmured, voice low and certain. “I have nothing left for you to hide.”

Percy met his gaze. “You think yourself clever,” he said quietly, “but there are things—things not so easy to see, nor touch.”

Apollo leaned forward—lips parted as if to offer a kiss, a lie, or both—but then pulled away, swallowed by his own light.

“Don’t run from me now!” Percy surged forward, rage and fear braided in his throat.

But Apollo had already gone, dissolved into brilliance—rays of light collapsing into absence.

No explanations.

“Apollo!”

How dare he?

Yes, Apollo had his wounds but why hadn’t he said anything?

Weren’t they—gods damn it—married?

Why did he always hide when it mattered?

A day or two, he’d said.

What does one do with silence, once it no longer soothes?

There was no Artemis to shatter it, no cool laughter with a razor’s edge to slice through the gloom. No Eryx to bicker with. No Eros flitting around to provoke him, to give shape to the boredom.

Only the wind gods remained.

They stirred Hyperborea like fingers through silk. The trees bent in greeting beneath Zephyrus’s breath, warm and honeyed. Eurus came rarer, and when he did, the leaves whispered with a different cadence, sharper, more wandering.

But neither descended. Neither spoke.

They just were—unbothered, free.

Percy took a skin jug filled with cold water. Slipped a knife into his belt, the aulos wound tight beside it. And he left too.

He walked through the glade of Artemis, where the air held the scent of crushed mint and molding bark. Past bowing laurels and the grove’s hush, up the mountain slope where a clear stream glittered beneath ferns like falling starlight.

If danger ever did come to Hyperborea—if such a thing could exist here—he would use the stream.

But danger felt like a concept exiled from this place.

He wished he had a horse—perhaps the one Ares had given him. Wild-eyed, half-shadow, stitched from battlefield smoke. But no hooves sounded on the trail. Only birdsong and the sigh of branches overhead.

There had to be mortals here. Somewhere. After all, one of Artemis’s own had fallen for a man. Surely, then, they were not alone in this silence.

He kept walking.

The sun had begun to tilt westward, staining the sky in bruised rose and bone-blue. The trees cast long shadows across his path, and the air shifted cooler, as if the land itself were drawing a slow, deliberate breath

Percy walked down the bank, his steps light on the moss-soft earth.

It was there—along that quiet edge of the river—that he saw them.

At first, he thought it only a pair of young centaurs resting, curled together beneath the shadow of an ancient elm. Their equine bodies folded awkwardly beneath them, human torsos slumped with weariness. But as he stepped closer, the scene sharpened into horror.

One lay sprawled on the earth, his flank smeared in red, head split open like a cracked pomegranate, blood pooling dark beneath tangled curls. The other knelt beside him, trembling, cradling the broken body in his arms.

“No, no, no—please,” the living one whispered, over and over, as though the words might stitch bone and flesh back together.

Percy froze, the breath caught in his chest. He ran to them—knees digging into the mud beside the fallen centaur.

“What happened?” Percy asked, his voice low with concern, hands already reaching.

The wound was bad—too bad. The skin split wide, but deeper still, the bone beneath looked cracked. The centaur was deathly pale, eyes flickering between pain and unconsciousness.

The one beside him—barely older—was trying not to cry. He wiped his face roughly. “We were just playing. Perimedes stumbled. You know how hooves are on wet grass—he slipped, h-hit a rock.”

Percy reached out, ready to heal, but the centaur threw himself between them, forelegs buckling in the mud.

“Don’t touch him!”

Percy drew back. “What’s your name?”

The boy sniffled. “Phex.”

“Phex,” Percy said calmly, “look at me.”

The centaur hesitated, then turned his tear-streaked face to meet Percy’s eyes.

“It’s going to be okay,” Percy said. “But I need to help. Will you let me?”

A heartbeat of silence.

Then Phex nodded and stepped aside, limbs shaking.

Percy knelt again and drew the stream’s water with a curl of his fingers, guiding it to the cracked skull with practiced tenderness, willing it to soothe, to knit, to mend—

But the wound resisted.

The water shimmered over bone and blood, but the break would not close. It was like trying to stitch air. Something deeper was broken. Something the water couldn’t reach.

Percy's jaw tensed.

And then—Perimedes’ chest rose, once more, and fell for the last time. His body went still, slack beneath Percy’s hands.

“No…” Percy whispered, but the silence answered.

“What did you do!” Phex cried, clutching at his wild hair, grief erupting like fire from his throat.

Percy sat back, breath shallow. There was nothing he could do. The wound had been too deep. Too final.

Perimedes' spirit slipped away like mist on the wind.

From his chest, white oleander bloomed—delicate and pale, opening in the spaces where blood had dried. Asphodel coiled around his limbs, rising from the place where earth met muscle. A breeze stirred, catching the blossoms. They drifted into the water.

Phex fell to his knees, tears spilling silently—until they didn’t.

Until silence cracked into rage.

He lunged, eyes wild, voice broken. “Bring him back!”

“I can’t.” Percy caught him mid-charge, held him firm. “He’s already gone.”

“You killed him!” Phex screamed, hooves tearing at the ground, nostrils flared. “You touched him and he died!”

Percy drew a breath—but then froze.

So did Phex. His wild eyes flicked past Percy, dread blooming across his face.

He pointed a shaking hand.

Percy turned.

The river had gone black.

So cold it steamed.

Percy’s eyes widened. A terrible pull gripped his chest.

“No—stop doing that!” Phex cried, stumbling backward on four legs, slipping on the wet earth.

“It’s not me,” Percy whispered. But even he wasn’t sure anymore.

From the heart of the blackened current, tendrils rose—slow, deliberate—curling around his ankles like silk spun from shadow.

Without thought, he reached for them—and they seized him.

The current dragged him forward, silent and relentless. He fell, swallowed by cold.

Darkness wrapped around him, not cruelly, but with purpose. Possessive.

He felt the slick bodies winding around his limbs—eels, pale and blind-eyed, emissaries of the Underworld.

“To see the son of Poseidon so easily robbed,” whispered one, near his ear, voice slithering like oil.

“Robbed?” Percy rasped, heart lurching.

Another eel curled close to his chest. “Sun god is the brightest thief. He does not steal what you can hold.”

“He steals what you never thought to guard.” Said the third, winding around Percy’s throat.

“He took your time,” breathed another from the crook of his knee. “So much of it. And we cannot wait any longer for you.”

“How much?” Percy choked, the cold digging into his marrow.

“Years,” they chorused, their voices tolling like bells. “Years, mortal. Gone.”

A final eel slithered close, pausing before his face, its eyes twin voids. “You regained your sight, but you are still blind. The satyr you tried to save? No fall cracks the skull so cleanly.”

A fire bloomed in Percy’s chest.

“He was killed.” He said. “By his friend…”

“He must carry what he took,” one eel crooned.

“He should be punished,” whispered another.

“Yes,” Percy whispered, voice low. “He should.”

“Then bring him to the water,” rasped the eel at his ear. “Carry his tainted soul to the underworld. Bring yourself with it. She waits for you.”

The waters parted. The tendrils fell away. Percy broke the surface, breath hitching, pale and trembling with rage.

His hand flew to his head—reflex, instinct.

The wreath was still there.

Across the bank, Phex ran—panicked, galloping through grass and thorns.

Percy gave chase.

His feet pounded the earth, heart a war drum. The river whispered behind him. The wind cried his name. And then—he caught him.

Phex screamed as Percy tackled him to the ground. He curled beneath him, hooves thrashing, tail lashing the grass.

“You killed him,” Percy said, his voice rough and low.

Phex trembled. “He said he was leaving. Joining his brothers. I—I didn’t want him to go.” His voice cracked like dry bark. “The rock—it was in my hand. And then he was—he was—”

“Centaurs are meant to protect life,” Percy growled. “Not destroy it.”

“I loved him!” Phex sobbed.

“Selfishly,” Percy spat. “You didn’t want him to leave you—so now you’re the one abandoned. Now you have nothing.”

Water surged—snaked up from the river, seized Phex’s body in its cold grip. He cried out, thrashing, hooves gouging the ground as the current coiled around his throat, choking him.

“Perseus!”

A voice rang out—clear, urgent, golden.

Percy staggered as if struck. Pain scorched his hands. The water froze mid-motion. Then fell.

Phex collapsed, coughing, soaked, sobbing into the grass.

“Why did you stop me?” Percy shouted, eyes blazing, breath ragged. “He killed his friend!”

Apollo stepped closer, every movement deliberate. Measured. A quiet contrast to Percy’s storm.

“I would have let you,” Apollo said, voice low, even. “If it were justice you sought. But it wasn’t.” His gaze pierced through Percy, past the rage, to something wounded beneath.

“You didn’t look like yourself,” he added softly. “You looked like someone who would regret it after.”

Percy stared at him. The words rang through him like iron.

And then—he remembered.

“Stop me… before my choices bring ruin. Promise me—you’ll hold me back.”

Percy drew back. His hand dropped. He looked down at the broken earth beneath him, the bruised grass.

Apollo's eyes softened.

Phex didn’t wait. He ran—galloping wildly into the trees, swallowed by shadow and shame.

Neither of them stopped him.

Apollo turned from the boy’s retreating form and knelt beside the river. He gazed into its depths—not just blue, but veined with silver and black.

“She was here,” he said quietly. “Styx.”

The name hung in the air like ash.

“She wanted you to do it.”

Percy said nothing for a long time. Then, with no strength left to lie: “Yes.”

Apollo’s eyes didn’t leave the water.

“She speaks only in oaths and absolutes,” he murmured. “What did she offer you?”

Percy hesitated. “She told me—”

Apollo turned toward him sharply.

“—nothing important,” Percy finished.

Apollo rose slowly.

“She never says anything that isn’t important.”

Percy looked up at him, something frayed and desperate in his eyes.

Then, he closed his eyelids slowly, as if surrendering to a weight no longer worth carrying, then opened them again—gazing across the endless green sweep of Hyperborea as though seeing it for the very first time.

He drew a slow breath, then turned away from Apollo and began to walk past him.

“Where are you going?” Apollo’s voice was soft, laced with a sudden, sharp uncertainty.

“Back to the temple,” Percy answered, voice even, almost detached.

Apollo blinked, stunned.

Percy’s gaze sparkled with something darkly amused. “I want to eat something delicious. I’m hungry.”

Apollo hesitated, then fell into step behind him, watching silently—trying desperately to decipher the labyrinth within his mind.

Percy ate starved, trying to fill the gnawing emptiness in his thoughts with the comfort food laid before him. It was a simple yet exquisite dish: lamb roasted slowly over fragrant herbs. Their gazes met briefly, electric and loaded, before Percy quickly looked away, swallowing hard.

Without a word, Apollo extended a bowl—figs lacquered in honey. Their hands brushed. Percy accepted the offering without meeting his gaze and ate, stuffing himself with sweetness until the edges of his stomach clenched.

Apollo watched him. Every bite Percy took seemed a fragile act of defiance against the weight pressing down on them both.

Then, with a flicker of something almost desperate, Percy lifted his eyes, locking with Apollo’s for a sharp heartbeat before tearing away again.

Apollo could bear it no longer. He rose abruptly, but as he turned, Percy reached out and caught his robe.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

Apollo looked down—not at Percy, but at the place where he was held.

“I had to check something,” Apollo said, too casually.

“Check what?” Percy asked.

Apollo did not answer.

“Why the secrets?” Percy pressed, but his voice had lost its sharpness

Apollo’s gaze flickered. “Tell me what’s wrong first,” he countered.

Something in Percy flinched.

Then, as if exhausted by the very act of feeling, he let go.

Apollo lingered a moment longer. Then he turned and left, taking the heat of the room with him.

The silence afterward was deafening.

“I wish to show you the war, but it seems it will end before you return from this time-forsaken place.”

Eros was right. Gods...

With a sudden, violent motion, Percy flung the figs aside. They struck the wall with a sickly sound, bursting open.

Apollo had lied to me. Deceived me.

Again.

But this time, there was no anger. Only a deeper wound. And though Percy longed to believe Apollo was different—that Eros had been wrong—that this was not betrayal—he could not. For deep within, before Styx’s words even reached him, the truth had already nested in his bones. Styx had not revealed anything new. She had only confirmed what Percy tried to bury for the sake of peace. His own fragile peace.

But now the veil was ash.

His hands clenched.

How many years?

How many sunrises had he missed? How many battles had been fought without him, how many lives lost, how many promises broken simply by his absence?

He had to know.

He shoved away from the table, the platter clattering as he stood.

“Percy knows,” Apollo murmured.

He stood at the edge of the glade where the cypresses leaned like mourning women. The light there grew tired, it sank behind the carcass of the once-holy temple. Vines strangled its columns; blue wisteria spilled down like drowned heavens. Even in ruin, it was beautiful—perhaps because it was ruin.

“He knows that I lied.” A frown ghosted across his golden face.

A voice answered him.

“He will leave you.”

It came from the shadows, languid and amused, like a cat’s yawn before the kill.

“He will.”

But the voice did not relent.

“And if he forgets,” it whispered, sweet as decay, “the reason he ever wanted to leave?”

Apollo turned then, sharply—eyes narrowed.

“What brews in your poisoned mind, witch?”

She stood before him, draped in twilight: Eris, crowned in cruel gold, her purple gown pooling at her feet like a bruise spilled across marble. She walked as if the world itself leaned to follow her.

“I come bearing gifts,” she purred unfolding her fingers.

There, resting upon her flesh like a secret, lay a lotus—luminous and pale.

“You know what it is, bright one.”

Her voice was velvet edged with rust.

“One bite, and he will forget your lies. Even the ache he carries for you will melt like sugar in wine. He will smile, and be content.”

She looked up at him with eyes full of ruin.

“Is that not mercy?”

And the sun god could only stare.

Because the flower was beautiful.

And it was mercy.

And it wasn’t.

“No.” His voice was hoarse, as though scraped from the bottom of his soul.

Eris tilted her head. Her golden circlet caught the sun, casting shards of light into Apollo’s eyes.

“You’d rather he remember everything?” she asked, arching a brow. “You’d rather he choke on the memory of your deceptions?”

Apollo’s hand drifted to his chest, where phantom pain still echoed. His fingers pressed over it.

“You would have me strip him of his will.”

Eris tilted her head, a smile dancing on her painted lips. “Not strip. Free.”

She stepped closer, palm still outstretched. “Free him from the pain of your lies.”

“I deserve to be remembered for it,” he whispered. “Even if it ruins me.”

Eris exhaled sharply through her nose, a sound not quite a scoff. She circled him slowly, the hem of her violet gown whispering over the grass.

“How noble. How very mortal of you.”

Apollo turned to her sharply, jaw tight. Eris smiled, but there was no warmth in it. She held the lotus out again.

“I offer a kindness. One petal pressed between the teeth—he will stop thinking about unnecessary things. Like…”

Like Hekate.

Like Paris.

Like Troy.

Like Annabeth.

Apollo’s hand rose—almost reflexively—then stopped, trembling mid-air.

He stared at the flower. And then past it. To Percy’s figure in the field, sun-dappled and half-shadowed.

Wind tugged at his dark hair. He did not see who stood beside Apollo, cloaked in perfume and poison. He did not know.

And gods, he looked so alive.

So alive.

“And what of love, Eris?” he asked quietly. “Is it love, if it needs forgetting to survive?”

The goddess of discord’s smile faltered.

“He kissed you once, and now you bleed philosophy.”

Her voice dripped honey over rusted nails.

“What happened to my perfect tormentor? My gilded puppeteer?”

She leaned in, her breath scented with spiced wine and graveyard myrrh.

“Have your strings grown too delicate for cruelty? Or do you merely crave a new theatre?”

“I crave him,” Apollo said, voice low, shaped more from breath than sound. “Willing. In my arms.”

Eris's fingers curled slowly, deliberately, around the pale lotus.

“Suit yourself,” she drawled, watching the bruised flower collapse. “I merely hoped you’d use our little alliance for something more… intoxicating.”

Apollo did not flinch.

“For more chaos?” he said. “No. All I want from you is to keep The Redeemer asleep.”

Eris yawned—a slow, feline stretch of mockery.

“Considering what the Trojans feed him,” she said lightly, almost lazily, “I wouldn’t count on slumber much longer.”

Apollo turned toward her. Just slightly.

“Eris.”

Her smile sharpened—wide and cold as a wound.

“Of course, bright one,” she whispered, lashes lowering.

“I am in your debt…” she purred.

A pause.

“Until the chain breaks.”

And with that, she vanished into the wind.

"Your captain abandoned you. How apt—for sons of Achaea, bred for war but suckled on cowardice."

Paris spoke with a languid drawl, pacing the dank stone floor of the dungeon, the torchlight dancing like devils upon the damp walls.

Hector stood nearby, silent and statuesque, his arms crossed over his chest, the weight of war etched deep into the lines of his face. He watched not the prisoner, but Paris.

"Cowards?" The man chained before him sneered, blood at the corner of his mouth. "You, who cower behind ramparts and marble gods, who let others bleed in your name—speak of honour?" He spat, a thread of red marring the dust. "Face us, like men."

Paris arched a brow, the gesture delicate, almost amused. The prisoner was no common soldier.

He was Patroclus—a youth sculpted like the old gods, skin bronzed by sun and steel, eyes like storm-tossed seas, too noble for his fetters, too proud for despair.

Achilles’ shadow and soul.

Paris turned from him, letting silence reign for a breath, then spoke, voice silked with contempt:

"Yet the shores of Ilium lie still now. Your black ships rot in our tides. Dogs gnaw the sinews of your so-called heroes."

He folded the map with slow, disdainful fingers.

"What shall I do with you, I wonder?" he murmured, almost to himself.

Thousands of Achaeans had perished—swallowed by spears, fire, and madness. And yet, they remained as inexhaustible as plague.

Then came the silence. After their last moonlit raid—Trojans stealing not only men, but captains—nothing. No counterattack. No fire in the night. The Greeks had vanished like mist.

A diversion? Or surrender? Had the lion limped back to his den to die?

Could Agamemnon be dead?

He, who clung to pride as a miser clings to coin, would not abandon his siege so lightly. Unless the gods themselves had broken him.

Patroclus gazed at the two shadows cast before him.

It had been eight years already.

Eight years since they first dragged their bronze-slicked rage to the shores of Troy, and still the war raged on like a fever no offering could break.

Paris looked like a man resurrected—though not cleanly, not wholly. His skin bore the signature of pain: scars that curled like ivy, others that puckered as if flame had kissed him in parts. They were not the marks of battle, but of something darker. Yet his face still held a youthful gleam, a boyish pride clinging like perfume that refused to fade.

Hector, in contrast, was the image of tempered iron. Not youthful, not ageless, but solid—undiminished. He wore the years like armor, and war, it seemed, wore him like a lover. His silences had grown longer, his gaze more leaden. But there was no doubt: he thrived in slaughter. Killing Achaeans had become, by all signs, a kind of art for him—ritualistic, precise.

And then there were the rumors. Whispers carried in terrified mouths, hushed behind battered shields.

That they had begun to sacrifice Greeks.

To Apollo.

To repay blood with blood, to stoke the fire of a god whose favor, once bright, had turned barbed with hunger. As though the sun itself demanded payment in screams.

Patroclus shuddered—not just from the chill that clung to the dungeon’s stones, but from the thought of it: the idea of his body not burning on a pyre, not being mourned by the sea, but offered in some cruel ceremony to a god who once sang of poetry and now danced in entrails.

And still, still, it was better than being struck down nameless on the field, rotting in the sun while dogs picked clean the stories from his bones.

Better… perhaps.

The last of the ships had been stripped, the black hulls gutted and silent. Now the Achaeans made their uneasy home on Tenedos—a temporary refuge masquerading as retreat.

Agamemnon had not smiled in days. He brooded in silence. He hated this retreat, this absence of glory. But even kings must bow to necessity. Their men were ragged, morale brittle as sunburnt wood. The siege had become a funeral procession. A new plan was needed—something clever, something cruel.

And Achilles—

Achilles would not leave his tent.

First came disbelief, like winter descending upon spring. That the Trojans would dare take Patroclus, not kill him, not even display his corpse in triumph—but take him. Then came fury.

The Myrmidon warlord, half-divine and wholly terrible, marched alone to the gates of Ilium—bare-chested, hair wild, sword in hand. He bellowed his demand like a tempest:

Return him.

But no herald answered. No spear was raised. Priam himself stood atop the battlements, gaze heavy. He knew who Patroclus was. Not merely a captain—but the beloved of the storm.

Achilles returned with curses thick as tar upon his lips. His eyes were hollow fires. Only when Odysseus swore—upon the blood of oaths older than Ithaca—that he would find a way to reclaim Patroclus, did Achilles consent to retreat.

And now: Tenedos.

The island was too beautiful for warriors. Roses and myrtle ran riot across the hillsides, strangling one another in a fragnant war. Wild horses roamed free, flanks gleaming like molten bronze in the sun, their idle grace taunting the worn soldiers with memories of youth.

The people of Tenedos were simple—fishers and traders, salt-handed and wind-worn. The Acheans did not burn their homes. They let them live beneath the shadow of their occupation, under one law:

No one leaves the island.

No ships. No doves. No whispers carried on the wind.

To do so would be to cry out to Troy—and end this fragile illusion of calm.

Even paradise, it seems, must be kept under siege.

Odysseus narrowed his eyes as he caught sight of the temple—a solitary building clinging to the rocks. The sea howled below, flinging brine against its uneven steps. Salt crusted the edges like old tears.

He ascended.

Each step was slick with foam, half-drowned by the ocean’s endless gnawing. The air reeked of rust and salt, of things drowned and never buried.

Inside, the gloom was thick as incense, and colder still. Shadows clung to the walls and the scent was one of contradiction—fish and frankincense, sanctity and rot.

He paused in the gloom, his hand brushing damp stone.

“What god is this?” he murmured.

The statue stood half-lit in the murky light—a boy, neither child nor man, carved with uncanny grace. One hand reached downward, palm open as if to lift a drowning soul. In the other, he clutched a twisted net.

“King of Ithaca lost all hope—he’s turning to unknown gods?” The voice came from behind.

The man who entered was Diomedes—King of Argos, breaker of spears, a lion sheathed in silence. He moved like a soldier haunted by the wars he won. Salt clung to his dark hair, and his grey eyes met Odysseus with a grave familiarity.

Diomedes was the spear to Odysseus’ knife—straightforward, bright, and brutal.

Odysseus did not turn immediately. His hand hovered just above the altar. And there he read:

“Einalian, guardian of the souls lost at sea.”

His brows lifted first in idle curiosity—then furrowed, darkening with something sharper. Recognition. Confusion. Alarm.

“We know him,” he said quietly.

This was Einalian—the sea-born boy who pulled Helen from her cage in Troy.

The boy who refused Agamemnon’s gold, his promises, his honey-laced threats.

The boy who dared to stand before Achilles and did not kneel.

Diomedes gave a dry laugh.

“Had I known we kept a god beneath our feet, I might’ve spoken sweeter when the winds turned against us.”

Odysseus said nothing.

His gaze lingered on the stone, then drifted—past the statue, past the sea-salted air—to a memory.

The first time he’d seen Einalian—the son of Poseidon, or so it was whispered—he was sitting beneath the watchtower, an apple in his hand, moonlight trailing across his shoulders like silver silk. He looked, then, like he belonged among Artemis’s huntresses—too still, too self-contained, as if he answered to no mortal rhythm.

And he remembered what Achilles had whispered then, low and certain:

“Don’t trust him. He’s different.”

Not dangerous. Not divine. Just different.

Their thoughts were broken when another shadow crept across the stone.

Menelaus stood at the temple's mouth, his eyes wide and unblinking.

He stepped forward slowly, every movement as though he feared the marble might wake.

“Why do you act surprised, my friends?” he asked, voice raw with the wear of sleepless nights.

“He bled red, did he not?” Odysseus asked.

“And cared for men,” Menelaus added, “as no god should.”

He reached out, fingers brushing the altar’s edge.

“He saved me more times than I can count.”

“If they raised a temple,” Diomedes muttered, eyes narrowing, “then the boy must be dead.”

“And yet we’ve heard no tale of his fall. No whispers, no lament.” Menelaus replied, gaze fixed on the altar as if it might speak. “A death that births stone and sanctity is never silent.”

“Either way,” Odysseus said, voice as dry as bone, “let’s keep this from Achilles. He’ll torch it for the heresy.”

"Agamemnon wanted to make it a storehouse. Grain. Supplies." Diomedes said.

“No.” Menelaus’s said. “This place remains. As it is. Let no soldier tread its ribs.”

“Still loyal to your ghost, then?” Diomedes asked, voice half-mocking, half-curious.

Menelaus didn’t flinch.

“Above all else,” Menelaus said slowly, “Einalian holds Apollo’s favour.”

“It would serve us to tread gently,” he went on. “We’ve seen what comes of provoking the sun god’s wrath. A plague for a priestess…” His mouth twisted in a smile without joy. “Imagine what vengeance would follow the desecration of his beloved’s shrine.”

Diomedes stood with arms crossed, his gaze sweeping upward.

He searched the statue’s face for cruelty, for mockery. But the marble boy only looked down with a serene, almost unbearable calm. He was beautiful, yes—but that terrifying kind of beauty that makes men forget what they are.

“I’m out of here. This place gives me the creeps,” Diomedes muttered, casting one last uneasy glance before turning on his heel and disappearing into the shadows.

Menelaus lingered a moment longer, the weight of the silence pressing on his shoulders. With a slow, heavy sigh, he too vanished—leaving Odysseus alone within the temple’s embrace.

The king of Ithaca poured more olive oil onto the temple fire, watching the flames crawl higher with a patient, flickering hunger. His thoughts began to gather like mist, yet despite himself, his eyes returned again and again to the statue.

It was as though the boy’s carved gaze pursued him, haunting the flickering shadows. He glanced down at his arm, where goosebumps rippled beneath his skin.

“Curious,” he muttered. He wondered what Athena would say of such sensations—prophetic or perilous.

His eyes drifted over to the left offerings.

Delicate roses lay strewn—everywhere upon the island, but these were an unnatural blue: spectral, impossible, and haunting amid the salt-dried fish and broken shells left in supplication.

He sifted through the tokens, searching for meaning in the silent language they spoke.

Amid them stood a small animal, no larger than a fist, carved from rough, dark wood—simple, unadorned.

Odysseus lifted it; a faint fragrance rose—a fruitwood, whispering of fertility and abundance.

Closer scrutiny revealed it to be a horse—

a fitting emblem for the son of Poseidon, the god who favored steeds above all.

Odysseus stared long, the edges of his mind sharpening, a subtle madness kindling in the shadows of his thoughts.

A horse. Carved of wood.

Not a beast to thunder across fields, but a vessel.

"What if we did not fight to take Troy," he whispered, "but offered ourselves instead?"