A muscle flexed along his jaw. “Nothing I say will change it, will it?”
“Fuck no!” I shouted. Outside, thunder rattled the temple. My abilities might have been temporarily blocked in here, but a storm was coming outside. “We summoned you and you ignored our calls. Your daughter was missing and you had to know what that meant—who had her. And you ignored us—ignored her.”
Apollo turned his head, looking away.
There was so much more I could rage at him about. The fact that he’d lied about her mother. How he’d never treated Josie like a damn daughter whenever he was around her. How he’d unbound her powers without explaining what that entailed. I could keep going for a fucking eternity, but I had to focus. “Josie is not doing well.”
His head sharply swung in my direction. Now I had his attention.
“But you might even know that already. That wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Proceed with caution,” he warned.
I smirked. “Aw, thought we can’t hurt each other?”
“Doesn’t mean we can’t try.”
“Like to see you do it,” I replied coldly. “Because I’m learning that what I can throw down will make what you can do seem like a kid playing with a water gun.”
Apollo’s nostrils flared. “What’s wrong with my daughter?”
Hearing him say the word “daughter” had me seeing the world in amber. But pissing Apollo off and having him run away without getting what I needed wasn’t going to help Josie. So I really needed to slow my roll.
I drew in a deep breath. “She isn’t recovering as quickly as she should. She’s been physically sick, and I can barely feel any aether in her.”
Apollo glanced at the door and for a moment I thought he was going to leave the temple, but he briefly closed his eyes. When they reopened, there were irises—eyes as blue as the sea. They were identical to Josie’s with the exception of the pupils. His weren’t black. There were white, and that was some weird-looking shit right there.
“When she was being held by the Titans, they placed these bands on her wrists to block her powers,” I explained.
“Shit,” Apollo said.
That didn’t sound good. “So you know of these bracelets?”
He nodded curtly. “Those bracelets are fashioned in Tartarus to entomb the Titans. They mute the effects of aether. They may slow down healing if her injuries were . . . were significant enough.” He frowned slightly. “They shouldn’t make her sicker.”
“Well, they are. We need to get them off of her now.”
“Only Hades would have the ability to unlock them.”
“Then can we get Hades’s ass up here and do it?”
“None of the other gods will come near you or Josie. They will not risk it.”
Anger hummed under my skin. Fucking cowards. “Bring him to this temple and I can bring Josie here.”
“They will not risk it even inside this temple or any temple,” Apollo replied. “They do not trust you. They do not trust what you are and aren’t capable of.”
“And you do?” I retorted.
Apollo’s gaze leveled on me. “I simply know you’re capable of anything. I could take Josie to Hades—”
My jaw locked down. “Not going to happen.”
“You’d refuse aid for her?”
“I will refuse the idea of her going anywhere with you by herself,” I shot back. “Do not think I’ve forgotten how Hades wanted to take out Alex.”
“This has nothing to do with Alex.”
“But it shows a long history of you guys making shit choices.” I unclenched my hands. “I will not leave Josie unprotected, even with you. Figure something else out. Those bands have to come off.”
A strange look flickered over Apollo’s expression. It was strange because it almost looked like pride, but that made no sense. He was probably constipated. “I will go to Hades and see what can be done.”
Disbelief thundered through me. “How could you be unaware of what has happened to her? What she’s going through? Or do you just not give a fuck?”
“Do not question how I feel about my daughter or what I would do for her,” he cautioned, his voice eerily low and calm. “You do not understand. You couldn’t understand.”
Yeah, that sounded like a whole load of bullshit. “At least I can admit that I made a mistake by leaving her. You can’t even acknowledge that you weren’t there for her.”
Apollo closed his eyes and looked like he was counting under his breath. When they reopened, he still appeared to want to hit me. Too bad. “You made the right decision.”