Artemis was the only one who looked genuinely happy. She even winked at me. Wow. It truly was a day for miracles.
“What’s the first thing you’ll do now that you’re back?” Hermes asked. “Smite some mortals? Maybe drive your sun chariot too close to the earth and smoke the place?”
“Ooh, can I come?” Ares asked.
I gave them a guarded shrug. “I think I may just visit some old friends.”
Dionysus nodded wistfully. “The Nine Muses. Excellent choice.”
But those weren’t the friends I had in mind.
“Well, then.” Zeus scanned the room, in case any of us wanted one last chance to grovel at his feet. “Council is dismissed.”
The Olympians popped out of existence one after the other—back to whatever godly mischief they’d been managing. Artemis gave me a reassuring nod, then dissolved into silvery light.
That left only Zeus and me.
My father coughed into his fist. “I know you think your punishment was harsh, Apollo.”
I did not answer. I tried my best to keep my expression polite and neutral.
“But you must understand,” Zeus continued, “only you could have overthrown Python. Only you could have freed the Oracles. And you did it, as I expected. The suffering, the pain along the way…regrettable, but necessary. You have done me proud.”
Interesting how he put that: I had done him proud. I had been useful in making him look good. My heart did not melt. I did not feel that this was a warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation with my father. Let’s be honest: some fathers don’t deserve that. Some aren’t capable of it.
I suppose I could have raged at him and called him bad names. We were alone. He probably expected it. Given his awkward self-consciousness at the moment, he might even have let me get away with it unpunished.
But it would not have changed him. It would not have made anything different between us.
You cannot change a tyrant by trying to out-ugly him. Meg could never have changed Nero, any more than I could change Zeus. I could only try to be different than him. Better. More…human. And to limit the time I spent around him to as little as possible.
I nodded. “I understand, Father.”
Zeus seemed to understand that what I understood was not perhaps the same thing he understood, but he accepted the gesture, I suppose because he had little choice.
“Very well. So…welcome home.”
I rose from my throne. “Thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
I dissolved into golden light. There were several other places I’d rather be, and I intended to visit them all.
AS A GOD, I COULD SPLIT MYSELF INTO multiple parts. I could exist in many different places at once.
Because of this, I can’t tell you with absolute certainty which of the following encounters came first. Read them in any order you like. I was determined to see all my friends again, no matter where they were, and give them equal attention at roughly the same time.
First, though, I must mention my horses. No judgment, please. I had missed them. Because they were immortal, they did not need sustenance to survive. Nor did they absolutely have to make their daily journey through the sky in order to keep the sun going, thanks to all the other solar gods out there, still powering the movements of the cosmos, and that other thing called astrophysics. Still, I worried that my horses hadn’t been fed or taken out for exercise in at least six months, perhaps a whole year, which tended to make them grumpy. For reasons I shouldn’t have to explain, you don’t want your sun being pulled across the sky by grumpy horses.
I materialized at the entrance of the sun palace and found that my valets had abandoned their posts. This happens when you don’t pay them their gold drachma every day. I could barely push open the front door because months of mail had been shoved through the slot. Bills. Ad circulars. Credit card offers. Appeals for charities like Godwill and Dryads Without Borders. I suppose Hermes found it amusing to deliver me so much snail mail. I would have to have a talk with that guy.
I also hadn’t put a stop to my automatic deliveries from the Amazons, so the portico was piled high with shipping boxes filled with toothpaste, laundry detergent, guitar strings, reams of blank tablature, and coconut-scented suntan lotion.
Inside, the palace had reverted to its old Helios smell, as it did every time I was gone for an extended period. Its former owner had baked the place with the scent of Titan: pungent and saccharine, slightly reminiscent of Axe body spray. I’d have to open some windows and burn some sage.
A layer of dust had accumulated on my golden throne. Some jokers had written WASH ME on the back of the chair. Stupid venti, probably.
In the stables, my horses were glad to see me. They kicked at their stalls, blew fire, and whinnied indignantly, as if to say, Where the Hades have you been?
I fed them their favorite gilded straw, then filled their nectar trough. I gave them each a good brushing and whispered sweet nothings in their ears until they stopped kicking me in the groin, which I took as a sign that they forgave me.
It felt good to do something so routine—something I’d done millions of times before. (Taking care of horses, I mean. Not getting kicked in the groin.) I still didn’t feel like my old self. I didn’t really want to feel like my old self. But being in my stables felt much more comfortable and familiar than being on Olympus.
I split myself into separate Apollos and sent one of me on my daily ride across the sky. I was determined to give the world a regular day, to show everyone that I was back at the reins and feeling good. No solar flares, no droughts or wildfires today. Just Apollo being Apollo.
I hoped that this part of me would serve as my steady rudder, my grounding force,
