Page 94 of Hades

“She matters most,” Apollo said.

I looked at him then. Held his stare. “If she’s Colette, I want my sister back,” Apollo admitted, the words scraping their way out of him. Tearing pieces off as they came. Raw and bleeding and honest. “I want to know her. I want Dad to know her. I want her to know she was loved. That she was wanted. That we never stopped looking.”

Rykard made a broken sound behind him. A sound that came from somewhere deep. Somewhere that had been hemorrhaging without stopping. Apollo closed his eyes for a second. “But I don’t want to hurt her,” he said. “I don’t want to rip open her life because I need answers.”

The room was too quiet.

Then I said, “You won’t.”

Apollo opened his eyes.

I wasn’t threatening him. Not exactly. I was making a promise. To Lettie. “If this is true,” I said, voice low and lethal, “whoever took her will pay. No matter who it was.” That included her mother.

A few brothers shifted. No one argued. Good. Because I meant every fucking word. If someone had stolen Lettie, if someone had ripped her from her family and raised her as their own while Apollo’s mother died not knowing her baby was alive, I was going to find them. And I was going to make them suffer in ways that would make Kronos’ death look merciful. I’d start with their fingers. Break them one by one. Then their hands. Their arms. Work my way through every bone in their body until they were begging me to stop. Until they were screaming for death. And then I’d deny it. Keep them alive. Keep them suffering. Make them understand exactly what they’d taken.

“Rykard can meet her,” I said.

Apollo’s head snapped up. So did Rykard’s.

“But not alone,” I added. “Not today. Not with this shit hanging over her head and her not knowing it.”

“When?” Apollo asked.

“Harvest Festival’s coming up,” Zeus offered.

I looked at him. He shrugged. “Town event. Public. Natural. Rykard can see her without anyone forcing shit.”

Something shifted in the room. Not proof. Not even close. But interest. Suspicion didn’t always arrive screaming. Sometimes it walked in quietly and sat in the corner until everyone realized it had been there all along.

“Since when do we go to Harvest Week?” Hermes asked.

“It’s a start,” Apollo said, ignoring the question. “Public enough that we’re not forcing anything. Natural enough that it doesn’t spook her.”

“We wait until Harvest Week,” Zeus declared. “Rykard meets Lettie. Talks to her. We go from there.”

Rykard exhaled. Apollo hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath.

“Until then,” Zeus continued, looking around the table, “this doesn’t leave church.”

One by one, brothers nodded.

I didn’t.

I was staring at Apollo again.

“What?” he asked.

“You sure?”

He knew what I was asking. Was he sure enough to risk Lettie’s peace? Was he sure enough to potentially destroy her world if he was wrong? Was he sure enough to live with the consequences if he was right?

“I’m sure something isn’t right,” Apollo said. “Every time she looks at me, something in me recognizes her.” He looked down at his useless legs. At the limbs that had betrayed him. “If I do nothing and she turns out to be Colette, I’ll never forgive myself.”

I nodded. Not happy but I accepted his answer. Because I understood that too. The weight of not knowing. The guilt of not acting. The fear that doing nothing would be worse than doing something.

Zeus picked up the gavel, then paused. “Anything else?”

No one spoke.