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“Leo…” I had the vague sensation of him coming closer, and then there was new, strong pressure on the knife wound. I winced and choked back another bout of coughing long enough to say, “Don’t trust anyone.”
He laughed humorlessly. “How about you pull through this, and then you can tell me who to trust, okay?”
“Cade. Trust Cade.” If there was anyone alive outside of the temple who could bring Leo in safely, it would be Cade. Bad luck be damned.
“Shut up, okay?”
“Not…the boss…of me.”
“No, but apparently my dad is.”
Sure, before he didn’t want to acknowledge it, and now he was using the fact against me. Whatever, I was too tired to fight anymore.
I closed my eyes and followed the light.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Warm sunlight kissed my skin.
I opened one eye a sliver, then the other, and lay still, basking in the glow of daylight. Nothing hurt, and there was no blood on me when I lifted my hands and looked them over. Everything was fine.
So, surely I was dead, right?
Instead of panic or sadness, I just stayed there, drinking in the perfection of a sunny day. Most of my life had been cast in shadow and rain, forever trailing the storm. Blue-skied summer days were as rare as a four-leaf clover for me.
Whatever this was, I wanted to enjoy it a few minutes longer before admitting to myself what it meant.
I didn’t get that.
Sunny leaned over me, her perfect blonde hair falling over one shoulder in waves, the color of wheat and honey. Her skin was tan, cheeks aglow with a peachy rose shade that made her look like she’d been running. Her beautiful features were set into an expression of concern that was so intense it bordered on anger.
I expected her to be smiling. If this was my passage to the afterlife, surely she’d be smiling.
Something about this whole situation was wrong, but I couldn’t put into words what was bothering me.
“Lu?” She touched my cheek, her skin soft and hot. I leaned into her hand and closed my eyes, smiling to myself. How long had it been since we’d been together? Years. Years and thousands of miles divided us, yet I could remember the exact smell of her—sundried linen and flowers—and it felt as if no time had passed at all.
I opened my eyes again and took her in. Sunny was my opposite in every feasible way. She was tan, blonde, and elegant, and looked like our mother. Or what I dimly recalled our mother to look like. I took after our father, all darkness to Sunny’s light.
My perfect sister.
I knew without needing to see it she bore a mark in the shape of the sun on the back of her neck, exactly where my storm cloud was.
We were an anomaly, a never-before-seen aberration: twins who were both chosen to serve, but each destined for a different god.
I went to Seth. Sunny went to Apollo. And twenty years went by where we passed each other like ships in the night, always apart but never really leaving each other.
How do you give up one half of your soul?
It’s a hole that never fully heals, especially if you don’t want it to.
Taking her hand in mine, I squeezed, holding our linked fingers close to my heart. “I knew I’d see you before I died.”
“Lu, you’re not dead.” She lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles, brushing hair away from my cheeks. “And you need to wake up.”
Was it a dream? Had any dream ever been this real? The smell of her, the way her hand felt in mine. I felt so full of love I thought I might burst at the seams. For most of my adult life I’d been wandering around as an incomplete person, and now that I felt whole again, she was telling me it wasn’t real.
I couldn’t accept that.
