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The thought of Apollo handing me his bow chilled the blood in my veins worse than her stare.
“Between you and me,” he said. “We each take a shot. If my aim is truer, Dax may ask you a question. If yours is, you may ask something of him.”
My terror abated. It seemed Apollo already knew me well. Questions I could ask and answer, but I would have been no match against Artemis in a battle of bows. He also must have known she would ask for such a contest herself if he hadn’t stepped in.
Still, she seemed skeptical.
“That is hardly a fair test of him. Does he need your protection?”
“No. Neither do I need his.” Apollo squared off against her, and their paralleled complementary appearances was like being witness to an eclipse—in mid-sibling banter. “I do not require a companion who rivals me with weapons. I am the master bowman, after all.”
“And I the master archer, neither man nor woman being of consequence,” she spat back.
I chuckled, and although Artemis cast her eyes on me like a blade strike, I steeled myself. “Forgive me. The pair of you makes me envious. I did not have siblings as a babe. Although my fellow acolytes became as such, and it was in similar exchanges that I felt the most among kin.”
Apollo’s sunny expression melted me, much as Artemis’s continued to chill.
She manhandled Apollo into position, facing the distant targets.
“I have already made my first shot, brother. Beat that.”
He nocked an arrow that manifested like fire and took but a single breath before releasing it.
The flames licked Artemis’s silvery arrow as it struck the central target nearly overlapping. It seemed so close to my eyes, the shots may have been identical.
“My win,” Artemis said.
“Indeed,” Apollo conceded.
I trusted the eagle-eyed vision of gods. “Ask away,” I said to Artemis.
“How many partners have you been with in accordance with your patron’s tenets?”
Straight to the point then. “I gave myself fully to the priest who claimed me as courtesan. Before him, I was with all my year’s acolytes at one point or another. Unlike Aikos, I did dally with both female and male acolytes, although as I aged, my preference became clearer to me.”
“So, many, would you say?” she pressed.
“Yes, most in youthful teasing and exper—”
“Many,” she reiterated and raised her bow to fire again.
Her shot was as equally impressive as the first.
As was Apollo’s.
“My win,” he said.
“Yes.”
Again, I took them at their word.
“Tell me the story of Orion,” I prompted, noting that both twins straightened at the name. “I mean no offense, but it is my experience that not all tales of the gods are completely accurate in how mortals pass them down.”
“And how has that tale been passed down?” Artemis asked.
“As I heard it, Apollo tricked you into killing Orion, someone you might have loved, simply because he didn’t like him and was jealous of his affections for you. But I believe there must be something missing from that version.”
“And why do you think that?” Apollo asked with a calm smile.
