This is what I’m good at, Selene thought, dodging the crowds on the sidewalk, keeping her eyes on the bright lights of Broadway up ahead. Hunting, punishing. Not loving. Never loving. She banished the image of the pain and disbelief in Theo’s eyes and slammed a door closed over her heart. She didn’t have a choice. The only way to save him was to abandon him. Then, with or without a divine weapon, she needed to face Apollo.
It came as no surprise when her cell phone registered that she’d missed a call while underground in Grand Central: Her twin had always known when she was thinking of him.
“Come quickly,” Paul said in the message, his voice thick. “She’s holding on for you, but it won’t be much longer now.”
It was obviously a trap. But if it meant the chance to confront her twin tonight, then it was a trap she would gladly enter.
Paul Solson lay on the narrow hospital bed with his mother cradled against his chest. Leto’s breathing, quick and shallow, barely stirred the thin blanket swaddling her narrow frame. She still wore the purple veil Selene had brought her, but the lotus flower lay shriveled and brown on her lap. No tubes snaked from her arms; only a single wire emerged from beneath the blanket, connected to a monitor on which a silent green line jerked erratically with every Titan heartbeat. Trap or not, Paul had spoken true. Their mother was dying.
“You came,” he whispered as Selene entered. “I didn’t think you would.”
She hesitated at the doorway, unsure what he meant. He didn’t think she’d come to their mother’s deathbed? He didn’t think she’d come to challenge him? He hadn’t even looked at the javelin in her hand. It was as if he hadn’t seen it.
“You didn’t save her,” she said, more entreaty than indictment.
He shook his head, his face crumpling with grief.
Leto’s eyes fluttered open. When she saw Selene, the merest hint of a smile curled her lips. Slowly, she turned her hand over so it lay palm up on her son’s arm. An invitation.
“Whatever has been between us,” Paul said softly as Selene hesitated by the door, “whatever harm I’ve done to you, be with me now. For her. For me. I can’t do this alone.”
Selene’s grip tightened on the javelin as she readied herself to fling his words back in his face. But her mother silenced her angry retort with the faintest of whispers: “Come to me. Let us be a family.” In the words, as quiet as breathing, lay the ineluctable command of a mother to her daughter.
Deep inside Selene, a thick heaviness, a long-brewing despair, finally broke through in a crack of thunder. Tears sprang like lightning flashes, blinding her, and the sudden storm of misery washed away the hard edges of her anger, leaving her shuddering and hunched beneath its pounding force. She staggered forward, dropped her weapon, and knelt at the bedside. With her face pressed against her mother’s skeletal hip, she listened to her heartbeat grow ever slower.
“Tell me about Delos,” their mother whispered at last. A final request from a goddess who’d never asked for anything.
Selene lifted her head and reached for her mother’s hand.
Her brother took a deep, shaky breath.
“O far roamed Leto, heavy in travail,” the God of Music began to sing. Selene recognized her twin’s favorite poem: the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. “But none dared receive her—”
“Not in their words,” Leto interrupted, her voice barely more than a breath. “Yours.”
Selene raised her head. The desolation she saw in her brother’s face reflected her own. They had always been opposites, she and her twin, but together they had once formed a perfect whole. She knew him better than she knew herself. When he wore a mask in his role as hierophant, she couldn’t trust anything he said. But now, with his face, so like her own, revealed before her, she saw the truth. No matter what he had done, what he had planned, the tears that swelled his eyelids and streaked his cheeks were as genuine as her own. And so, if Leto wanted to hear of an earlier time, before her children had grown to despise each other, then the Delian Twins would give her that gift. But what was their story? Do we even have memories besides those mankind has given us? she wondered. Delos is so faint. So far away. The recollections of a different person in a different age.
Selene took a deep breath, reaching into the past. “I remember the palm tree beside the Sacred Lake,” she began finally. “When we visited it, you would tell me how you walked across the dusty rocks with me, a newborn infant, on your hip. Wracked with pain, for my brother refused to leave your womb. And I spoke my first words, pointing to the one spot of green in the middle of the island, and told you to seek the trees, for they were our friends.” Leto’s eyes closed, but Selene knew by the smile on her lips that she still heard. “From that time on, every year, we returned to bless the sacred date palm that you’d grasped in your labor, when the Bright One came forth into the world.”
“You had a temple there, right next to ours.” Paul took up the story. “The Letoön. Always bathed in sun. So much sun. That was my gift to Delos and to you.”
“We went as priestesses, to listen to the supplicants at your shrine.” As Selene spoke, the old memory returned to her, surprisingly vivid. She could smell the sunbaked stucco on the walls, the sweet smoke of burnt offerings rising from the brazier, the salt tang of the ocean wafting through the colonnade. “A woman, heavy with child, crouched at the foot of your statue. You sat beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. With a tear-streaked face, she told you she’d lost her first three children to miscarriage and stillbirth and had come to ask the Mother of Twins for a healthy babe. You turned to look at me, and I could see in your eyes that she would never bear a living child. Yet you clasped her head against your breast and stroked her hair, as you’ve done so often for me. And you whispered in her ear—you said, ‘You will be a mother to many, for true motherhood lies in the heart, not the womb.’” Leto nodded imperceptibly as Selene continued. “We saw her again, years later. She’d lost her child, but started a home for orphans. I’d never seen a woman so content, so fulfilled. You did that for her, Mother.”
“She was only one of many,” said Paul. “Remember, we’d walk through the streets, casting blessings like coins among the crowd.”
“All those people, crammed into an island only a few miles square,” Selene remembered. “All come because we’d made Delos holy.” At its height, her birthplace had not been that unlike Manhattan, she realized. No wonder she’d always felt at home here.
“We’d climb to the top of Mount Kynthos, where Father’s temple stood.”
“The wind rushed from the sea on all sides, whipping our clothes and our hair, so strong it almost lifted us from the mountainside.”
The twins spoke as if they’d never been separated, thoughts and memories intertwined.
“As a child, I thought I might learn to fly if I let the whirlwind take me,” said Selene, “but you, Mother, held me down and said even a goddess must learn her limits.” You were right. Even still, I forget that lesson. Even still, I throw myself into danger.
Paul picked up the memory once more. “The sea cradled our island in its vast blue bowl, with the isles of the Cyclades set into their circle along the horizon. Naxos and Mykonos and Paros, all larger, more fertile, but none so sacred as our island.”
“Delos, the center of the world.”
And with that, Leto took one last breath, deeper than the rest, and let it out in a contented sigh. Selene didn’t need to look at the monitor to know that the green line had grown as still and flat as the Sacred Lake on a windless day.
Delos was never the center of the world for us, Selene realized. She was.
Somewhere on the floor above, Selene could hear the infants in the nursery wailing. In her death, Leto had found the power she’d long ago lost in life. The new mothers began to moan in response, then to cry with great wracking sobs, although they knew not why. The cries grew in strength until the very walls began to vibrate. Nurses scurried toward the sound, wondering what terror stalked their charges. Not terror, Selene thought. Only lamentation. The Goddess of Motherhood is gone. The mourning reached a crescendo as Selene’s own sobs came ragged and quick. Then the mothers and children subsided into quiet tears and hiccupping sighs, and Selene, too, found she could breathe again.
Soft rubber footsteps entered the room. A loud click as a nurse turned off the monitor. Selene could feel her taking in the scene: two children clasping their dead mother in their arms. The nurse said nothing, but left them to their grief. Never before had Selene felt such pity in a mortal’s gaze. What would Theo do if he could see her now? She’d told him to leave, but would his compassion draw him to her anyway? She longed for his arms around her, easing her sadness. No, she thought, pulling away from the bed. Theo can’t come to me. As long as Paul lives, it’s too dangerous.
She stood slowly, as if struggling from sleep. The God of Healing lay motionless on the bed, Leto still clutched in his arms. Eyes closed, tears streaming across his lips. Finally, Paul pressed a kiss to Leto’s forehead. He rose from the bed with his mother still clasped in his arms like a swaddled child. He looked at Selene then, and she read the silent question in his eyes. What do I do now? What does one do with a dead god? She reached to take Leto from him. She needed no supernatural strength to hold her mother’s frail form. Gently, she laid her on the bed and arranged the purple veil over her hair. She would not cover her face. They’ll cremate her, Selene decided. And I will break the old prohibition. I will bring her ashes back to Delos, where we were happiest, and scatter them from the summit of Mount Kynthos so the gentlest of goddesses might overspread the world once more.
After a long moment, she spoke. “I’ve seen photos of Delos as it stands today.” Paul stared at her blankly. “The yellow glow is gone,” she continued softly. “The walls are bare gray stone now, the roofs long burned away, the upper stories collapsed. Our temples are only broken columns and foundation stones. A torso and a hip of your colossal statue, left behind among the weeds by looters. It’s all gone.”
“Is there not already enough grief in this room? Why remind me of how far we’ve fallen?”
“Because you want to bring it back. Don’t you? Return to an age of unlimited power. Divine omnipotence. And you’ll do anything to make it happen. Even if it means denying everything we stand for.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’re you saying?”
“You couldn’t save Mother. I think I could have forgiven you, if you’d done it all for her. Whether you intended it or not, you’ve strengthened me instead. But I’d give it all back. Every ounce of strength, every second of speed, I’d give it all back after tonight if I could have her with us again. But first, I’d use it for one more thing—to bring you down.”
She picked up the javelin from the ground and leveled it at Paul’s heart.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t care that it’s not a divine weapon. I’ll find a way to kill you before you hurt anyone else. Before you drag this city further into chaos. You don’t have your bow now, do you? You should’ve known better. Should’ve brought it to defend yourself.”
“I haven’t used my bow for more than target practice in a hundred years!”
“I saw the silver arrow, Apollo, the night you and your sycophantic bandmates murdered Jenny Thomason. You admitted it! Stop lying to me.”
Like a cloud passing before the sun, the God of Light’s eyes darkened. He reached toward the chair behind him. Selene grasped the javelin a little tighter, ready for a battle worthy of epic. Sing, Muse, she thought. Sing of the duel between twins. Let heaven shake with the cries of Sun and Moon. Let the stars weep as Phoebe and Phoebus, Bright Ones, grow dim.