Page 120 of A Veil of Gods and Kings

I’d known Apollo would leave. He was bound to be a deity one day as I would be a king. Our entire relationship had been unstable from the beginning.

A piercing disquiet slipped through my body, like it argued that point.

But it didn’t matter how I felt about the subject. It was done.

I opened my door and strode out down the hallways. The palace seemed gigantic and hauntingly empty. The high ceilings echoed my quiet footsteps, the vast stone walls, the tremendous tapestries.

None of it mattered.

But it wasn’t helpful to think like that.

I reached Father’s office and knocked.

“Come in.”

I slipped the door open, and for a moment my gaze rested on the chair Apollo had spent the summer sitting in, his golden eyes lifting over a parchment of paper, him rising to meet me, pressing his lips to mine.

I swallowed against the emotions that longed to surge their way back up my throat and clicked the door shut behind me.

“Hyacinth.” Father rose, the rings on his fingers casting glimmering reflections over his desk. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

I nodded and walked over, easing into Apollo’s chair. My eyes pricked at me again, but I blinked the sensation away. “The work is easier with two, isn’t it?”

Father’s mouth gaped like he might say something. But then he cleared his throat and dropped into his seat. “That is true.”

I snagged a parchment from the pile and skimmed over it. It was my proposal to change the laws regarding women without male patronage. I traced my finger over the words and then lifted my face. “I have a question for you, Father.”

His brow furrowed. “Of course.”

“Did you know there are women and children who go hungry in the city?”

He sucked in a breath and held it for several heartbeats before his shoulders dropped. “Yes, Hyacinth. I know.”

“Yet you have done nothing about it?”

He sighed and leaned back against his chair, lacing his fingers together over his stomach. “Your mother was very passionate about that herself. We worked towards making changes.” His expression darkened. “When she died, many said it was a judgment of fate for her attempting to alter things.” He thrust his hands out. “For years, it took everything I had to hold our family together while running the country. My grief wanted to drown me during some of that. And the general feeling of the high lords and advisors is that people don’t want changes to the cultural laws. They see it as sacrilege, drawing the ire of the gods to us.”

“You believe that?” I whispered.

“No.” He nodded at the parchment I held. “And I like your proposal, son. You have my full support. I have to say, it’s made me wonder if I’ve allowed the desires of others to overtake doing what I know is right.”

“The proposal was mostly Temi’s suggestions.” I swept my thumb over the smooth paper. “It’s her law, really.”

Father nodded, bushes in the window behind him tangling together in a breeze. “But it’s a cause you were willing to take up even if it cast you in an unpopular light. I have to say”—he hesitated for a moment but then met my gaze—“when you told me that you didn’t care about the risks of being involved with a god”—I shuddered and he continued—“it made me reflect on things I’ve lost as I’ve aged. The ability to stand up without hesitating for something I believed in, for one thing.”

I dropped my face and wrung my fingers together. “Well, that was foolishness in the end.”

“Was it?”

Tears bit at me again, and I struggled to bat them back. “He’s gone. Clearly my feelings for him were much stronger than his for me.”

“That wasn’t the impression I had.”

Me either. Images of Apollo filtered through my mind. His eyes wide and vulnerable. The way his fingers had fiddled over the latch of his knapsack before he’d shared the contents of it with me. The aching sadness that seemed to permeate from him as he considered his future. There had been more to us than just a casual flirtation, sex aside. He’d shown me some part of his soul, and I’d bared mine in turn. But still, he had left.

Father studied me, a muscle by his eye jumping. Gods, I didn’t want to discuss this. It made me feel vulnerable, like a child. And it was too raw. Even thinking of Apollo’s name scraped over something not yet scabbed up. The last thing I desired was to start weeping in front of Father. I tensed and forced my voice to come steady and unaffected, like I did in the meetings with the advisors. “Apollo was here for a temporary time. I should have heeded that better and not let my feelings get the best of me.”

Father remained silent for a long moment, and I lifted my face. He rested his elbow on his chair’s edge and propped up his chin. “I would hate to see you grow jaded so young, Cyn. To see you give up on love.”