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“I hope I have not caused offense, my lord Apollo,” Dax whispered upon my dampened lips.
I knew I burned quite hot indeed when I saw him watch my tears steam away, but it was not so hot that he recoiled. “None at all. Shall we play a bit more music together, young Dax?”
I expected the usual disappointment at my sluggish pacing of our courtship, but he smiled and kissed our clasped fingers before releasing me. He once again retrieved the pan flute. “Perhaps you will allow me to try keeping up with your new composition again. It was lovely.”
“Thank you. And perhaps.” I retrieved my instrument, but rather than sit on a stool again to play, I held it toward Dax. “Or perhaps you would like to try it on the lyre this time.”
Dax looked more flushed than at the onset of our kiss. I might want our courtship to mostly be as equals, but being a god, I did still enjoy causing the occasional wonderment. He accepted my offer and, in turn, handed me the flute.
As came as no surprise, Dax proved just as talented with his fingers as he was his lips.
Chapter Four
DAX
When Apollo and I finished in the music hall, I was pleased he didn’t immediately dismiss me. Instead, he led me somewhere new. When I asked where we were going, and he answered, “Toward my quarters,” I was elated, but we did not enter his rooms directly.
We followed a railing back behind what I took for his rooms until we stood on a great balcony, massive, and with a space in the middle with no railing at all. I needn’t guess why because his chariot was parked on that balcony. This was where he took off with it into the sky each morning.
It was gold and glorious and vaster than I would have guessed. It had a lounging sofa within it as large as a bed. My excitement grew again, but although Apollo allowed me to admire the chariot up close, he quickly led me in through the balcony doors to what I discovered was his private courtyard, where something even grander than instruments that could play themselves awaited us.
Apollo’s horses.
I gasped to see them grazing within touching distance, should I dare touch.
“Since the sun has set, I knew they had returned,” Apollo said. “They do not need me to guide the chariot, you see, but I do still start them on their path each morning. Would you like to meet them?”
The horses were a marvel. I had to wonder how they didn’t set on fire the very grass they fed on, for each of them was aflame. They were identical in build, but the coloring of the fire that emanated from them and made up their manes and tails were each a different hue.
Blue, white, orangey-yellow, and burning red.
“Can I even go near them without—”
“Burning?” Apollo asked. He once again took my hand. “Keep in contact with me, and no flames of Olympus, the earth below, or the deepest depths of Tartarus can ever harm you.”
Now there was a poetic promise, one I was afraid to test, but with my fingers lacing with Apollo’s once more, my fear ebbed. “Which one is which?” I asked, as we neared the amber-colored horse first.
“That is Aethon, one of the stallions.”
Its silken coat was warm, like playfully hovering fingers over a burning candle, but without sting or harm to my skin. Aethon nickered and flicked his tail in response to my pets upon his neck.
“Pyrois is the red mare.” Apollo led me to the next one.
She turned for me to pet her nose and bucked against my hand.
“Phlegon is my other mare,” he said of the white horse.
She seemed the most serene and did not even turn at my stroke along her back.
“And Eous the final stallion,” Apollo said of the blue.
He was the most unique looking, although I suppose I had seen all four colors in the twinkle of stars. He preened the most too, turning this way and that, following my pets, but also as if to show off his beauty from different angles.
He reminded me of Aikos in that. I would have to tease my friend that he was no different than a vain stallion, though he’d likely take that as a compliment. More the reason to envy Aikos, for even something to chide him over, he could take in stride and embrace like a blessing.
That I could learn from him—to be less unforgiving of my faults.
“Have any of them produced a foal?” I asked.
