Broken God Read Online Free PDF Page A

time, I can forget everything but her, laughing and
breathing into my kiss.

 

 
    Chapter 5.

 
    I spend the next hour sitting next to Iris, and feeling that
familiar tug of mine every time she
flashes a smile at me.
    “What does it
mean?” she asks, nodding at
the tattoo on the inside of my wrist.
    I got that one
without Artemis, after my raven, one particularly awful week of visions and
being barely able to function. When I was finally lucid again, I was in a small
town in Arizona, and a girl with hair the color of fire was asleep next to me
in the bed, and my wrists were both throbbing with the familiar sting of a
fresh tattoo.
    On the inside of my
right wrist was a bow with a simple arrow. It was tiny and delicate, and almost
feminine, and it felt like a shackle for my power. Not binding me from it, but binding it, wild and
elusive, to me.
    On the left was a
laurel, wrapping around my wrist like a cuff, as intricate as the one I wore
when I walked the walls of Troy with Cassandra. It drags my power to me as
surely as my raven, a buzzing brilliant thing that I can ignore more often than
not.
    When you live for
thousands of years as the Sun God, with power beyond measure, it becomes easy
to ignore it. Like a wild living thing, trapped beneath my skin, waiting for me
to shake off mortality and revel in my power.
    It itches now, and
my raven shifts under my skin, anxious and impatient.
    We want to hunt, I
realize, abruptly and startled. Want to stretch my power and force the sunrise
and throw disease like a barbed weapon.
    I shiver, and Iris
touches my hand, just below the arrow and power jumps, between us. Her eyes
widen just a little, and her pulse jumps under my thumb.
    When did I take her hand in mine?
    “You’re a strange
one, aren’t you, Not Bill ?”
    I smile at her, and
try to control my heartbeat. It’s pounding too hard. My power screaming and
every instinct in me wants her.
    Wants to make her
mine.
    I haven’t had a
response like this since the last time I saw Del.
    “I have to go.” I
say, abruptly. Her expression stutters and closes, but I can’t focus on that.
Can’t focus on anything but the want burning through me and the girl with
bright , bright eyes
watching me.
    I hesitate. “It’s
who I am.” I say, softly. Nodding at the tattoos. Against my better judgement,
I offer her my hands. Try not to shiver when her fingers smooth over the lines
of the laurel, when she traces the simple bow with a fingernail.
    Try to ignore the
way my power shudders and preens under her touch.
    Who is this girl,
and am I really going to walk away from her? Artemis will shoot me for this.
Set her hounds on me and hang me in her forest by my entrails.
    I smile, a fond
little smirk because annoying my sister will never lose its appeal.
    Iris sways closer
to me, and her strange eyes are almost lazy as she lowers my hand in hers,
until they’re both hanging at our sides, and she tucks something into my pocket
and licks her lips.
    I try very hard to
not track the motion.
    “It was nice
meeting you, Not Bill. I hope I see you again.”
    I open my mouth to
answer her, and reality shudders and shatters, splintering into a thousand possibilities
and in every one, flashing before me like a cruel promise, I am breaking her.
    Kiss her. Break her. Love her. Destroy her. Claim her. Curse
her.
    I gasp and yank
away and I don’t bother to see what’s on her face.
    I bolt out of the
little shop and fumble for my phone. It will work better than my prayers at the
moment.
    “Apollo,” Artie
says, her voice sharp and alarmed.
    “Hunt,” I gasp.
“Need to hunt.”
    And because my
sister is a good sister, she doesn’t question me. “ Okay ,” she says simply.

 
    Hunting with
Artemis has always been a favorite thing. And tonight is no different. When I
get back to my apartment, she’s already there, in black jeans, scuffed, and
ripped along the thighs. She’s wearing a long - sleeved, tight - fitting black
thermal