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It’s a fairly short search. The kitchen window reveals Apollo outside by the pool, looking down into the water with his hands in his pockets and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows.
He seems deep in thought.
He seems, actually, like a still place in the middle of a whirl of motion. A pillar, or a statue. A monument that’s so well-built that it still seems new, even after centuries. New, but with a world-weary perspective. Most times, the way he describes his childhood to a new acquaintance is like a fairy tale. There were the Dark Times, which he glosses over in favor of the more exciting escape and the new life on the other side of the garden wall. But that’s the trick of fairy tales, isn’t it? They make grand gestures at the forest and the flowers and the well and keep your head turned away from the shadows you aren’t supposed to see.
Apollo looks like he’s seen too many shadows.
Watching him like this brings on a sensation that’s both familiar and strange. It’s like…feeling the world turning under my feet. Or suddenly becoming aware of the rush of blood in my veins. There’s a pull, and it’s not the same as the pull I feel to Apollo.
He lifts his head and meets my eyes. Apollo must’ve felt me watching.
It’s like he can see inside my head, too, because he lifts an imaginary bow in his hands, draws back the imaginary string, and fires an imaginary arrow at me.
I pretend to follow its trajectory down below the window, following it with my head as it imaginarily bounces off the wall and clatters to the pool deck.
Then I raise my own imaginary bow and fire an imaginary arrow back at him.
His hand shoots up. Apollo catches the imaginary arrow out of the air before it can touch him. His eyes stay on mine the whole time.
10
APOLLO
The piece of forest Artemis and I own is north of Manhattan and is separated from the farmhouse property where my dad, his brothers, and their sister grew up by a narrow ravine that was probably carved over time by the river running through it. We discovered early on—the first time we came here, or maybe the second—that the ravine is a hard boundary. Not because we’ve ever been prohibited from visiting the farmhouse or the land that surrounds it, but because it’s wrong over there. It’s impossibly still and silent for a tract of land that’s mostly field and forest and a small lake, and there’s this feeling in the air.
“It’s like when someone screams,” Artemis said that night in a shaken whisper. “And then they stop.”
It was exactly like that. There is no sound, but the space it left behind is still there.
I climb out of my SUV in one of the two gravel parking areas on the edge of the property and close the door quietly behind me. Just as quietly, I retrieve my bow and quiver and sling them into their various places. I twist from side to side, testing the give of my clothes—dark, sturdy but with plenty of nylon/Spandex stretch, reinforced in strategic places—and find that every piece of the pants and shirt and close-fitted jacket are where they should be.
It’s well past sunset. A dark, cloudless sky hangs over the trees. We’re far enough from the city that the light pollution doesn’t obscure the stars.
Artemis is nowhere to be seen.
But she’s here. I know she is. I just don’t know where.
Part of me relaxes, because this is part of our game.
And part of me sharpens under the adrenaline of a mutual hunt.
I remember how she tasted in that aircraft carrier alcove and how her nails bit into my skin and the way she sounded—fierce and adamant and mine.
I should not think of the other things I want to do to her.
It doesn’t matter that my ring is on her finger. I shouldn’t want to mark her with my teeth.
I’d never forgive myself for that.
I would probably never forgive myself.
And would Artemis, when she realized what she’d done? When she realized who she was with?
Now’s not the time for thinking, so I adjust my grip on my bow and enter the woods.
Last year’s leaves crinkle gently on the forest floor as I move. Half of them are soggy, disintegrating into the soil. New plants are already beginning to surface. When summer comes, this patch of forest will be thick with green and loud with the cacophony of wildlife. Hunting will be harder in some ways and easier in others. Droning insects tend to make my mind wander, but when everything is humming and buzzing and chittering, it’s far more noticeable when they stop because someone—Artemis—has crept by.
For now, the forest is peaceful. A cold, fresh breeze rustles the branches. I stay light on the underbrush and listen for silences where they shouldn’t be. Those are subtler gaps in the spring and the fall, when the woods are still waking for the year or settling down to sleep.
