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I blink as hard as I can. “Okay.”
“There’s something I have to tell you, and then you’re going to tell me something.” Artemis takes a deep breath. “I have to tell you that I’m a stone-cold killer.”
“You…are?”
“Yes. I’ve been hunting since I was thirteen. I have killed a significant amount of deer and other game. In a responsible way, obviously. Not always, like, totally legally, but responsibly. I never killed anything just because. And I killed things people could eat. I’m not a trophy hunter. That’s disgusting.” She wrinkles her nose, but then her face smooths out again. “But the rest of it doesn’t bother me. I’m not afraid of blood. I know how to make a clean kill.”
“…how?”
“I did internet research. And then Hades taught me.”
Someone inhales, sounding shocked.
“Later,” says Hades.
Artemis clears her throat. “Actually, the first time I went hunting, I missed, and I got the wrong spot on the deer. And he killed it before it had a chance to suffer. With a knife. He threw a knife in the dark and took it down.”
“Cool,” breathes one of Poseidon’s twins. Pollux, I think. There’s the muffled sound of someone—maybe two people—being dragged out of the room.
Artemis doesn’t look away from me.
“And when I say stone-cold, I mean it,” she continues. “It did not bother me at all to kill those men today. Um, yesterday. I didn’t mind. I would kill for you literally any day of the week. Any time. I wouldn’t kill someone innocent, but I’m not going to have nightmares over this. I am going to sleep fine if you survive.”
I give her what I hope is an encouraging nod. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not afraid of me? I’m a very scary thing in the dark.”
“No. I think you’re really hot. Like, beautiful.”
“Good.” Artemis smiles, and isn’t that the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen? “Apollo.”
“Yeah?”
She looks me dead in the eye. “Tell me what was happening in those photos.”
I’ve never told anyone what was in those pictures. I’ve never wanted to. I didn’t know there were pictures until they were in my hands and it was too late to unsee them. I never wanted to tell Artemis because she shouldn’t know those things. She shouldn’t know that about me. She’d never look at me the same.
But then—look at her. She’s killed people before. She’s killed people for me. And she’s okay. She’s okay with it. The blood isn’t any trouble.
I can’t tell her, though, because the first thing that happens is that I throw up more blood.
Whoever’s got my shoulder—Hades, I think—doesn’t let go, and Artemis doesn’t run away. It’s disgusting, and she can’t want to be doing this, but she wipes my face clean anyway. She takes the crime-scene gown off and gets me a new one. And then she takes my hands in hers.
“Tell me,” she says, and squeezes.
I tell her.
Everything.
About Colonel Paul, who told me to do all those favors and what I was supposed to get for them. I tell her what I was supposed to be buying and what I never got. I tell her about my mother.
My mother.
That my mother was afraid until she wasn’t. Until one night, she stepped in to stop one of those favors, which she had never done before because she was afraid she would be killed and she’d leave Ares and me alone.
