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My gown is a custom Charlotte Hill that looks like?—
Well, like the moon was polished to a pearly luster and painted onto my body. All of us together are going to look like pieces of the sky floated down to the deck of the aircraft carrier where the party is being held. Thank Uncle Poseidon for that one. No son of his was going to have his sixteenth birthday charity bash held somewhere that wasn’t floating on water.
From the treated windows of our dressing room slash spa, we’ve been able to watch a swarm of decorators transform the deck of the ship into what will be a twinkling celestial dream come nightfall.
“The sunrise was made for Calliope,” I point out. My sister’s gown is a pinkish-dawn custom Dior. “It’s her color, don’t you think?”
“No one else should be allowed to wear that color.” Daisy spins, giving me a three-sixty view of her gown. Still perfect. “Is Apollo here yet?”
“No. He had a last-minute meeting.”
Daisy narrows her eyes. “A think-tank emergency? That seems unlikely.”
“It’s world peace, Daze. It’s probably always an emergency.”
I get my phone out of my purse. No new texts from Apollo. Daisy and I take a series of selfies in the mirror, then bend our heads over the phone to do some mild editing. We bicker lightly about whose socials the photos should go on, then decide we’ll post on Daisy’s so that my account can be dedicated to Calliope and Orion’s cake.
Apollo should be here already. I try not to dwell on it, but it’s weird that he let himself get trapped at work. Especially when something weird happened earlier.
Flash fevers by themselves aren’t, unfortunately, out of the ordinary for me. I’m not sick. Not with a virus or a cold or mystery infection. My body just…behaves that way, specifically in relation to my adoptive brother Apollo. If we’re apart too long, it feels like a sickness, but it’s not something I can cough up or Motrin my way out of. It starts as a nagging feeling that I’m too hot, that the air conditioning has broken, that I’m out of sorts.
And if I’m foolish enough not to respond, then it escalates.
This has happened in a predictable pattern since I was six years old and Apollo and Ares became part of our family.
At least, it was predictable.
When that feverish, out-of-sorts feeling started happening off schedule a month ago, I thought it was just the impending birthday party and the amount of events I had on my company’s calendar and the increase in events leading up to Daisy and Hercules’s June wedding. No one thing on its own was enough to stress me out. In addition to my parents’ looks, I’ve also inherited my dad’s skill at event management and some of his influential abilities. Not nearly as powerful, but enough that my career in planning and hosting a variety of events makes sense to my parents.
They have no idea about the parts of my life that seem more mystical and unavoidable. They have no idea about the bond between me and Apollo—the one that sets a hard deadline on how long we can be apart.
At first, it was two weeks. By the time I turned twenty, it was one week. For the last two years, it’s been five or six days, and neither of us has wanted to test that boundary.
So when the mild fevers started showing up after three days, or four, or sometimes two, I thought it had to be unrelated. There haven’t been many, and they only lasted for a minute or two. I could’ve easily been overheated.
And then I had one a few hours ago, when we were all throwing our purses on various surfaces and exclaiming over the very Hades-over-the-top-ness of the space. It wasn’t a bad one—I didn’t even feel the need to sit down—but it was noticeable enough that I expected the text from Apollo to say I’m on my way.
“Posted,” Daisy says. “Get ready to be swamped with compliments.”
“Being swamped with compliments is my favorite pastime!”
She’s still laughing when it happens again. The heat centers in my chest and shoots up to my face.
Daisy notices immediately, despite the heat being a dim flicker—annoyingly hot, but not enough of a fever to cause any real trouble. My cousin’s eyebrows are almost to her hairline.
“What?” I fan myself absently, keeping my smile firmly in place. “Did I screw up my makeup?”
“Did you feel that, too?” she asks.
My stomach flip-flops. “Feel what?”
“The—” She shakes her head. “Never mind. You turned pink. Come on.”
By the time Daisy presses a sparkling water from the fully loaded fridge into my hand, the heat is subsiding. My heart rate isn’t. Twice in one day is unheard of. And Apollo and I were together two days ago at Daisy’s house for a movie night. Ares was there, too, and Hercules, and it hasn’t been long enough yet.
But I don’t panic. I’m not going to panic on my sister’s day. And Orion’s day. And everyone’s day to celebrate them.
I turn my attention back to Calliope, feeling Daisy’s eyes on me.
