New to the story or need a refresher? Begin with the prologue:

Jaden’s world solidified from the nebulous edges of…a dream? His eyes, heavy with the remnants of sleep, caught sight of his suitcase leaning against the nightstand. Vacation. He remembered that much. Free from the shackles of needing to be somewhere. He could sink back into the soft sheets, burrowing in a comfortable bed.

Then he saw the urn.

It rested beside his luggage, small and stubbornly real, and the heaviness of the world cocooned around him again. Those were his mother’s ashes.

To fulfill her wish to see Greece, Jaden had her cremated and put together an itinerary to travel around Europe for six weeks. The first stop was Amsterdam. The last stop was the island of Crete, one of Greece’s largest islands, where he would spread her remains.

Right after they had moved to Davis Court, Jaden remembered his mother buying cigarettes at a rundown convenience store four blocks away from their new apartment. At the register, a yellowed travel magazine featured the white (turned sepia) sand shores and beautiful crystal waters of Balos Beach. She ran her chipped fingernails across the cover while waiting for her change. Her eyes lit up, and she left that shop almost imperceptibly. Beaches always had that effect on her.

“We should go there,” Jaden said.

“Who are you to say such things?” she asked, hateful. “Just look at you. You black, you poor, you ugly, and you not a man. Just a little boy. What you got going for you?”

Before Jaden could answer, his mother gave him one. “Exactly. You just nothing at all.”

Standing in the line behind him, he recognized some of his new classmates. The horde of them, laughing and grinning. Everyone except one, the biggest guy in the group.

Most of them would later go on to taunt Jaden in school about how his mom could be like that, mouth full of talons instead of teeth. And how the only thing he could do in the face of her anger was to agree with her and pacify her with the likes of, “Yes, Mommy Lady.” That part killed them, with all the smugness of nasty nine-year-olds.

When he got older, he learned to protect himself by avoiding his mom altogether. No Christmases or Thanksgivings. No phone calls or texts. Yet now she was here with him anyway.

Only smaller.

Her ashes would never tell him that she was proud of him, that he had succeeded despite her unpredictable anger. But he was determined to show her that he was, in fact, something.

Getting run over by a cyclist hadn’t been part of that plan, however. He lay in bed and replayed the previous day like sifting through photographs in a dark room.

He couldn’t have met three Greek gods. He couldn’t have been turned into a cat by one and nearly killed by another. Twice. It had to be dream residue. Like some kind of underexposure. If you didn’t leave the photographic paper in the developing solution long enough, the image came out looking faint. He couldn’t have had those experiences because he had gotten off the plane in Amsterdam, taken a picture in the center, and then went...

...where?

The answer clicked into place like a well-timed shutter.

Here.

His hotel room. Where his 35mm camera stared back at him from atop the nightstand, and a comforting wave washed over him.

Jaden held on to his reasonable, rational version of events. Until he saw Apollo on the far end of the room, trails of light following Apollo’s fingers as he wrote something. Not on paper but into the air itself. The incandescence was a gentle nudge that if this were all a dream, Jaden’s entire life must be one, and regardless, he was still living it.

Why shouldn’t gods be real, was the better question. Why shouldn’t the room burn with the golden sparks from one of them tinkering at something?

Jaden watched him.

You could learn a lot from someone if you studied them, especially when they thought nobody was looking. There was something very competent about Apollo—possibly even arrogant—that pulled at Jaden. He was completely in the throes of his craft, and Jaden found that level of concentration attractive. The living script shimmered:

On the first day that I saw you

Your quiet soul shined bright

Then I pulled you into my world

I don’t know how you will survive

Gods and goddesses have wicked schemes

We pursue them to new extremes

But you’ll rise above the challenge

Even though—

“Even though…even though,” Apollo repeated out loud, filling in words that didn’t fit quite right, only to dissolve entire lines with a jab of his finger.

Jaden reached for his camera. The black enamel body fit into his hands, and the chromed parts that his fingers pressed and twisted were smoothed and welcome fixtures that had been a part of his life for years. His Minolta SRT 101 had proved its loyalty time and again.

Jaden peered through the viewfinder, framing Apollo, studying the fuzzy wisps of light surrounding the ethereal being. Slowly, Jaden turned the manual focus ring. The god sharpened into clarity—the curve of his shoulder, skin almost alight, and the long blond hair that swished as he hummed out the lyrics. Only through the mechanical eye did the world settle.

The camera had always revealed the truth of things to him. And Apollo hadn’t been some strange conjuring from Jaden’s imagination.

Jaden’s fingers longed to crank the film forward, to press the shutter button. To capture a god who embodied the quote from Chuck Close, who described the creative process in two perfect sentences: Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

But the frame ignited. Flames licked the edges of the room. The wall of instruments blackened. And light bent inward.

It mesmerized Jaden, called to him. He swore he could almost hear the fire whisper to him, songlike, and something inside Jaden opened in answer, as if mental windows were thrown open, after years of neglect, to welcome the heat from the hot sun.

Jaden’s voice interwove with Apollo’s: “Even though you’ll lose your mind.”

“Beautiful.” Apollo finished the verse, his back still turned. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

The fire vanished the moment Jaden lowered the lens.

“I’m alright. All things considered,” Jaden said. “I still don’t even know where I am.”

“My sanctuary,” Apollo said. “In Amsterdam.”

“And will I?” Jaden twitched his cheek. The vague feeling of still having whiskers prickled across his face.

“Will you what?”

“Lose my mind.”

Apollo crossed the room and sat beside Jaden. “Probably. Your kind always does in the end.”

That wasn’t comforting. But the nearness of Apollo aroused a simmering pressure throughout Jaden’s body. His eyes betrayed him as he snuck in glances of the god’s physique: the cut of his chest, the strength coiled in his arms. And when Apollo looked back at him with his enigmatic eyes, Jaden wondered if Apollo knew how feverish the god’s effect was on him while Apollo appeared at ease in his room.

Room was the wrong word for this place. Gallery maybe. Or hall? As Jaden allowed his eyes a brief break from soaking in the god, he settled on one large hall full of natural light, musical instruments, and canopies of plush cushions. Books towered in deliberate stacks everywhere else, bursting from every corner, crammed in every available nook.

Everything radiated outward from a central wooden slab.

“That’s no ordinary camera you have, is it?” Apollo asked, his voice a mesmerizing hum in the quiet room.

“How did you know?”

“Just a feeling.” Apollo’s finger traced the outline of the 35mm camera, and for a fleeting second, Jaden felt a curious connection between them—the human, the god, and the conduit that bound them together. “Then again, you’re no ordinary person.”

Jaden almost laughed at that.

He had built an entire life on invisibility. Not an extraordinary person. But he was a great photographer. He always figured what made him so great was that he could come off as a prop in the background, not noticeable, important, or all that valuable compared to his subject.

“You’re the god,” Jaden said as he broke away from Apollo’s gaze to regain some measure of control. “You tell me.”

Apollo reclined onto the cushions, considering. “I will share with you a truth. Despite our divinity, there are things even we gods do not understand, particularly when a force far greater intends for it to remain a mystery. Even after thousands of years, I can find myself caught off guard. Intrigued. In this, I still feel the thrill of being alive. And you, Jaden,” his eyes sparkled with anticipation, “you are full of surprises.”

His instincts cautioned him to be careful. And yet, Jaden did not sense deceit when he allowed his gaze to wander back to Apollo. He did, however, observe something strange in Apollo’s eyes. They were made of something golden and elusive. Like flecks of soft gold, melting.

“I’d imagine you’ve had plenty of things happen to you that you couldn’t explain?”

“You could say that.”

Apollo’s lips curled into a smile. “Tell me about them.”

The conversation felt surreal as Jaden ranked some of the more bizarre occurrences of his twenty-five years on the planet. Being turned into a cat might rank third. The old number three was that time his mother chased off a corpse-eater from their neighborhood once. Then there was that time his father was shot, and light danced out of his eyes. But the strangest occurrence was when Jaden and his best friend, Tank, found this camera. Because it seemed to attract the impossible ever since.

Never before had Jaden told someone all of this, but something about Apollo compelled him to share.

With each passing story, Apollo edged closer to Jaden. “Fascinating. By your accounts, I can’t be your first encounter with the divine then.”

“So, it’s all real, huh?” Jaden said. “Gods?”

“Of course.”

“What’s it like? Being a god?”

Apollo paused. “Do you dream?”

“I don’t always remember them, but yeah.”

“It’s like living inside a dream. A dream where you’re able to dream the exact adventure you’ve always wanted to dream.”

“But what about after that? What happens after you’ve had all your fun?” Jaden asked. “Don’t you get bored?”

“Something tells me things won’t be boring with you around.”

Jaden felt an unmistakable pull as Apollo leaned forward. For a moment, Jaden waited for the kiss. He wanted the kiss.

“Your wounds are fully healed,” Apollo said as he brushed his fingers along Jaden’s neck. “I thought I almost lost you when I shot you with that arrow. There’s more strength in you than my sister realizes.”

Jaden pulled Apollo closer to seize the kiss he wanted for himself. Who was this version of himself? So bold and hungry. He was convinced that nobody else wanted Apollo as physically as he did, and no one ever would.

Jaden opened his eyes as their lips met, and he blushed.

Not because he felt he was violating some unwritten rule to making out by opening his eyes. What made him feel the heat of embarrassment was the thrilling realization that Apollo wanted to kiss him too. Like light meeting mirror.

This cannot—had better not—be a dream, Jaden thought as he pressed his eyes shut again.

That feeling ended a few weeks later.

New to the story or need a refresher? Begin with the prologue:

Generally speaking, Titan parties are the worst. The performances: bland. The crowds—restless. Everyone stays up late to find the one thing that’s supposed to make the entire endeavor worthwhile. You really need to drink to power through the stuffy get-togethers. All those gathered try to make the jubilee work for them, and they all fail.

By the end, everyone becomes a dense, almost viscous swamp of desperation. The hall grounds are full of vom. Yes, gods heave too. And it’s perfectly rancid. You can’t get a chariot out of there fast enough. While you wait, the very venue itself feels feral. Every divine being has that hungry look in their eyes as they latch on to someone to club and drag home. Those shindigs are truly a goddamn nightmare.

I detest them, I realized as I woke up with a start the following morning. For a while, I subdued the feeling that I was forgetting something as I gazed up at the live murals Hephaestus had charmed onto my ceiling when he redesigned the residences on Mt. Olympus. This morning’s scene featured rolling waves with dolphins twirling out of the water.

The hues of blue pacified me until I was reminded of a chat I had with Poseidon at some point last night. I turned over, trying to recall what awful thing had come out of my mouth. I had that feeling that I had said something inappropriate.

When the lump of bedding stirred next to me, that dread multiplied by a hundred. I felt that same jarring feeling mortals must have when they hear their alarm at an unexpected place, at an unexpected time.

I peeled back the silk covers.

“S’matter?” asked Polydora, stretching.

“What are you doing in my bed?”

“Good morning, handsome! There you are. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, I did. What are you doing in my bed?”

“We had an afterparty at your place.”

“Yes,” I said, recalling a particularly delicious nightcap. Or three. “But what are you doing in my bed?”

Polydora smiled at my words and stroked my beard. “What a rascal you are, mentioning this bed nonstop. You don’t recall that devious mind you had all night?”

“No, I—”

Then she serenely rolled over me by rehashing all the sexual positions we had contorted ourselves into.

It was then that I surmised that I was dreaming. A nightmare of sorts but a dream all the same. “This isn’t happening,” I said to myself. This was clearly a me issue. I pulled the sheet back up and gently covered her face to rectify the situation.

And with good timing too. The moment my hands left the sheets, Pan zipped into the room with my morningly glass of wine. “Drag yer ass outta bed, sunshine!”

As much as I wanted this all to be a prank, my hand did move under the sheets to cover Polydora’s mouth, which continued to recount the intricate details of my genitals.

“What a riot, yeah?” Pan said as he uncorked a bottle. “I mean, not as wild as some of our rad sprees when we were younger, but people were guzzling wine from serving bowls filled to the brim. We did the night justice, I reckon.”

“We did?”

“No rules, no reins. Just chaos in all its naked glory.”

“Right,” I said. “And what happened exactly?”

“You flipped the damned thing inside out. All thanks to that crazy stick of yours. What was it…seven taps by the end?”

“Seven times!” The last I remembered was five. And even that was fuzzy.

“Yeah, seven. Can you imagine? Well, yeah, you were there. It was debauchery raised to an artform. Rumor has it that it will be the front-page story of The Golden Trumpet.”

Polydora licked my fingers as if she were channeling some measure of last night’s sin into today.

“Stop that!”

“Stop what?” Pan asked as he turned around from the serving tray, two glasses of wine prepped.

“The wine,” I improvised. “I’d rather not have that just yet.”

“Lay off it. You resist every morning with all this talk about how you hate how much we party, and you’re going to swear off wine because you’ve done something crazy again that you regret, but I know it’s all talk. I see you when you’re in the moment. You enjoy the revelry. The drinking, the dancing, the frenzy of it all. It all means too much for you to give it up.”

“Fine,” I said, changing my tactic to get rid of him. “But not that bottle. Get the Hyacinth Hope.”

In a flash, he was gone.

“You need to get out of here before Pan returns,” I said to the covered mass that was Polydora.

“What?” She emerged from the bedding. “Why?”

“You’re the girl of his dreams. He’s the one I was trying to tell you about at the party. He’ll be absolutely crushed if he finds out that we’ve…you know.” I did not want to give power to the word, thus I gestured vaguely. Honestly, I don’t know how the fuck this could have happened.

“But you’re the one who couldn’t keep your hands off me. I don’t think I heard one mention of your little friend last night. At least, no mention other than this little friend.” Polydora’s hand shot out toward my crotch. In all my hangovers, never have I moved so quickly. I popped right out from underneath those sheets.

“Will you just get out of my bed?”

“Why are you so obsessed with this bed?” Polydora countered querulously, apparently fed up with discussions about sleeping quarters.

I had no words. There was something about her obstinance that sapped all of my willpower.

“You are a funny one,” she said finally. “First, you hit on me in that roundabout away, and then you practically scoop me up into your room. And now you’re trying to pawn me off to your friend.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” I pleaded.

“It’s okay. I’m not angry. I think the whole night was rather sweet. But it’s time that I take control of this situation. It’s clear to me that you want someone to look after you even though you have a strange way of expressing it. It’s probably because of all that wine you’ve been drinking.” She looked me up and down in a possessive kind of way. “Don’t worry, I will be able to fix you. It’s true you’ve led a bit of a wasted life up till now, but you are immortal, and I see a lot of potential in you. All those rumors of you being an insane drunk aren’t half as bad as they’re told.”

“No, there really isn’t any good in me at all,” I said shrinkingly. “And you’re not getting it.”

“Oh yes. Yes, I am. You simply need someone to guide you. Now get back in this bed that you love so much.”

Pan has this manner of shimmering into rooms. There I was, upright and stark naked, thinking of how to hoist this nymph out of my room, who now sprawled across my entire bed, when suddenly, I looked up, and there Pan was, full of radiant splendor. He moves from point to point with as little fuss and production as a falling leaf.

Luckily, his eyes were firmly attached to the label on the bottle as he recited:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

More rich, more smooth, and more divine than this,

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

While every sip brings warmth and joy and bliss

“Ain’t that sweet,” Pan said. “This your handiwork?”

Being the god of theater, one of my lesser-known roles, afforded me the luxury of a strong sense of prose. Well, recognizing when prose was strong. I may have retrofitted parts of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18,” but he wouldn’t have been much without me. I told Pan that I created the composition as I submerged Polydora under the silks. Again.

“That reminds me,” Pan said as I sat on the bed to conceal the lump behind me. “Since you’re one of those creative types, how ‘bout sprucing up this poem I’ve scribbled?”

Polydora’s hand slid out from the covers and squeezed my bare ass.

“Leave me alone!”

Pan looked up from pouring, hurt. “I know ya get your horns in a twist in the mornings, but there’s no need to be rude.”

“I mean…leave me alone with it. The poem. I’ll work my magic.”

His face lit up. “Ahh, that’s gold. I want to end the poem with a proposal. If you can get it back to me in a few days, I can pass it along.”

“Pan,” I couldn’t help saying. “Aren’t you moving things ahead rather quickly?”

He shook his head. “Sure, we haven’t dated or anything yet, but who needs those silly rituals? Plus, she told me last night she has a thing for me.”

“Really?” For some odd reason, I felt a pinch of jealousy. Who was this nymph to play us both for fools?

“Yeah, I tried looking for you to tell you that the most extraordinary thing happened to me, but I couldn’t find you. What happened to you last night?”

“Me?” I asked.

Pan glanced around the room in such an exaggerated fashion that he didn’t really look at all. “Who else do you think I’m talking to?”

An arid laugh rose from my throat. “Yes, of course. Me. Well...I was”—I took the glass of wine from Pan and thanked him—“waiting with Polydora for you to start your performance.”

“I almost forgot ‘bout that,” Pan said. “How did things go with her?”

“Things kind of…escalated.”

“Escalated?”

“Yes, escalated.” I couldn’t very well lie to him. He was too near and dear to my precious memories to feed him falsehoods. “This is completely shameful, but I slept with Polydora.”

Pan searched the floor. I swear it almost looked like one of his horns drooped.

It undid me completely.

“But she’s a whole lot of nymph,” I added. “It could very well be that there’s plenty of room for her to be fond of you, too!”

“Polydora?” Pan asked.

I nodded and unearthed her. With the scar on her face, she arose like some sort of creature from the depths of my bed, giving me a bit of a fright.

“Oh—yeah. Forgot about ya,” Pan said gruffly. He blinked once, then seemed to gather himself. “Here’s the deal. While warming up my flute, this dazzler struts in. Clytie. She is the most beautiful nymph in the world. There is none like her. None. When our eyes met, I swear the air altered. She drew me in like a siren. And the two of us were alone in a world of music and good times.”

“What?” I said, looking on in horror between the two of them.

“Oh, Didi, you are a funny one!” Polydora stretched toward me. “Making up your silly stories to rope me in.”

“Our Didi sure knows how to tell them,” Pan said, mimicking Polydora’s new, sinister nickname. “He was just gabbing about that wild story about the human Artemis turned into a cat and Apollo accidentally killed.”

“Yes!” she cried, springing up from my bed, luxuriant with enthusiasm. “He went on and on about Jaden last night at the party. Why don’t you finish telling us the story?”

Pan passed her a glass. From where he conjured up the thing, I did not know. All I could do was sigh and gulp down my own.

Right away, the wine had a vibrant zing. Lemons and limes, maybe some grapefruit. The fresh and energetic taste was the perfect thing I needed to zap me into proper form.

Sometimes if you can’t beat them, you pour another glass.

New to the story or need a refresher? Begin with the prologue:

“Which one is he?” Apollo hoisted up a Calico by its neck. No, the eyes weren’t quite right. There was a specific look that humans had when they turned into animals. This furtive awareness.

“Maybe this one?” He floated upward to inspect a black-and-white cat nestled in the branches of an alder tree.

No. Too unbothered.

“Are you going to help me?”

“Nah,” Artemis said. “Just leave him be. That mortal is lucky enough that he’s not in the Underworld right now. You’ve helped him enough already.”

“His name is Jaden,” Apollo said, stepping over one of the springs that channeled throughout Artemis’s room, flowing with crystal blue water. “And what was the point of helping me save him if you just imprison him as a feline?”

“The world could use one less man.” Artemis returned to picking the last iris she needed from the soft meadows that used to be where her sterile hardwood floors once were.

“But he’s different,” Apollo said. “There’s something unique about him that I can’t explain. You know, I tried reading his soul while piecing him back together after the accident, but something prevented me from seeing who he is.”

“Maybe you’ve lost your touch. It’s not like we have a steady supply of ambrosia to tap into our full powers these days.”

“It wasn’t that,” Apollo said. “Something is protecting him.”

“Then let it and let him be. We left Mt. Olympus to stop interfering with mortals. Besides, they only complicate things.”

“You’re starting to sound like Athena.”

“Well, she has a point.” Artemis’s voice softened. “Look, can’t we simply enjoy our time here without them?”

Jaden watched the two of them maneuver about the forest room. He tried to listen to the language they spoke. The sounds were familiar to his ears, which rotated and flitted in positions he never thought possible, but he had difficulty placing the meaning behind the words. Or their importance. How could he fret over human noises while large birds were flying above the thick copse of trees filling the room—owls and falcons and long-necked cormorants whose business was with the sea, not in a city.

He slunk low across the mossy floor, every muscle tuned, every instinct humming, as he kept the forest’s creatures in his line of sight. He had always watched the world this way. Framing. Waiting. First with his camera lens, now as a cat. In the dark recesses of his mind, he knew exactly what he would do once one of the critters flitted by him.

“You know that you always do this, right?” Artemis said. “And it always ends in heartache.”

“Heartache? That’s dramatic.”

“Yes, brother of mine. It is drama. Drama and heartache. That’s what humans are. They’re weak, and they die, and they’ll disappoint you with all the ways they’re not like us. I thought you had learned all that already. Need I remind you of how long it took you to get over Hyacinth? You were morose for at least a century.”

“It was a decade,” Apollo corrected. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about him. Can you just tell me which one is Jaden?”

Artemis fashioned the irises she had collected into a wreath, the petals arranging themselves around her head and reaching out to their neighbor. As they gathered and braided into her hair, she served her brother a playful smile. “Why should I?”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Apollo abandoned his investigation of a particularly shock-orange tabby.

“I’m looking out for you if that’s what you mean,” Artemis said. “You don’t know what you’re messing with.”

The twins have always shared their blind spots as much as their strengths. What one of them senses, the other feels. What one cannot see, neither can fully name. They don’t deliberate yet somehow arrive at conclusions together. I guess from some sort of instinct rather than reason.

Which I think makes sense given how they were born.

You remember what Hera put the twins’ mother through, right? Kicked Leto off Olympus and barred every scrap of land from giving her shelter while she was in labor with the twins. All because Hera found out Zeus had gotten Leto pregnant. Leto wandered until she reached Delos, a floating island that belonged nowhere and therefore slipped through the cracks. And when she finally gave birth, Artemis came first. Practically leapt into the world. And instead of resting like a newborn ought, she turned right around and helped deliver her brother.

They haven’t been ordinary duplicates since.

“I’ll play you for him in a hunt.” Apollo whistled, and his bow materialized and fell into his hands. “I’ll even let you name the stakes.”

Apollo knew that deep within the ichor that flowed in Artemis’s veins, it was instinctual for her to howl with the wolves, run with the deer. She was the goddess of the hunt. How could she resist pursuing the wild?

With a thrill, she reached for her bow. Unlike Apollo, who kept his stashed out of sight, Artemis always had hers with her. She wore her bow the way most others wore clothes. “First to strike the Ceryneian Thrush wins. You win, I’ll tell you which one is Jaden. But if I win, you give up pursuing mortals. Forever.”

“What? I’m not at all like you, content to live alone in a castle full of cats.”

“Those are my terms,” Artemis said, unbothered.

The forest held its breath.

“Alright,” Apollo said. He knew full well that Artemis wouldn’t relent, and it would take an eternity to sift through her brood of felines.

In one fluid motion, she knocked an arrow, the silver limbs more of an extension of herself. She scanned her domain for the flashes of the small bird’s golden bill and its bronze-colored talons. The only way to capture it was before it took flight, as the bird darted about in such a way that it could outfly even her arrows.

An arrow pierced through one of the rows of cypress trees. Apollo watched his sister shoot too early. Birds squawked and crowed as they fluttered into the air. The commotion of the birds resettling released a lingering, pine-like scent.

Suddenly a flash of gold whizzed by the twins. The thrush flew so fast that it resembled trails of light zipping around the room, difficult to decipher where it made its next hiding place.

“Too quick.” Any other animal would have been dead on impact. Apollo would never tell her, but she was the better archer. However, he was the superior musician. He knocked his arrow and closed his eyes while the bow’s tension flowed into his body.

He opened his ears to the sounds of the environment. He heard the deep, guttural calls from the gulp of cormorants and picked past their porcine grunts. He ignored the falcon’s shrieks, its “kak-kak-kak.” But right behind him, a little to his left, he mapped the call he sought, beginning with a long whistle. The high-pitched and fast trills that followed reminded him of some sort of woodwind instrument.

Jaden, somewhere in the depths of his catness, felt the tightening of a weave. A bird perched a mere whisker’s length in front of him, its round head faced away. His heart thrummed when the bird hopped down into the leaf litter. Every nerve aligned toward one inevitable act. The delicious snack’s tail cocked in such a way that invited—insisted—that Jaden pounce. As the bird foraged, it sang.

Jaden unleashed forward.

Apollo turned. He waited for the harmonic series to reset. His death dealer shot forth as soon as the base note floated to his ears. It saddened him to take the life of such a gifted creature. He nearly shed a tear as the beautiful musical scales produced by the Ceryneian Thrush were cut short. A dull thump as the arrow found its target. But sacrifices were a necessary part of life.

When he opened his eyes, he saw not a bird but a cat. No ordinary Felis catus either, but one with a certain kind of secret intelligence quickly fading from its eyes.

P.S. I’ll be putting together a small group of advance readers for the full book soon. People who want to read it early and leave an honest review when it’s released.

If that sounds like you, just shoot me a message and I’ll add you to the list!

I’m serializing the first part of my novel The Art of Killing Gods, Book One of The Broken Pantheon.

Seventeen chapters. One per week. No paywall.

The full novel releases July 2026.

The prologue awaits below → Go on, step into the pantheon.

A Note Before You Enter the Pantheon

This is not a retelling.

The Olympians still exist in the 21st century, but they are not what they were in the epic poems. Belief has eroded, systems have calicified, and the divine have adjusted to market conditions.

At the center of this story is a question:

When gods begin to lose control, who decides what replaces them?

A Note on Content:

Nothing here exists for spectacle. Everything exists because systems don’t collapse gently. With that being said, this story includes:

• Violence

• Grief and generational trauma

• Coercion and divine manipulation

• Power struggles that feel uncomfortably familiar

Take your time. Even immortals need breath.

Prologue: On the Matter of Twelve

Recorded but Not Heeded

They warned us, of course. There is always, always a warning. A scrap of verse. A whisper from a Fury? A footnote, perhaps, in a ledger no one bothers to read until the world is already burning.

Something about twelve. And a mortal who refused to behave as mortals should.

We laughed. Because we always laugh.

When you have been immortal long enough, even warnings begin to feel like theater. Something staged for the benefit of lesser beings.

It wasn’t.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Prologue: A Note Before You Enter the Pantheon

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8 (Coming April 19, 2026!)

Serialization Schedule

New chapters every Sunday at 11:30 AM EST.

Part I concludes June 21, 2026.

If you’d like the rest of the record delivered as it surfaces, subscribe for free. ⚡

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New to the story or need a refresher? Begin with the prologue:

The solemn sea palaces were no comparison to Mt. Olympus’s cloud-capped spires. It wasn’t so much their underwater aesthetic—they were as lavishly appointed with marble and gold and dotted with precious jewels—but something about the atmosphere was off.

Goddesses and gods, heroines and heroes just sort of…milled about? Dulled by those around them, the partygoers had an air of perseverance, waiting to jump ship as soon as something better came along.

I could tell by the way they snuck in glances of their general vicinity for the chance of a better conversation elsewhere.

“Another glass, sir?” a cupbearer asked me as I looked on at the scene in horror. Even the serving staff had those pitiful smiles that never quite seemed to reach their eyes.

“No, thanks,” I replied. “I’m the god of the grape harvest. I can’t be seen drinking that armpit wine.”

I waved the cupbearer back, raised my thyrsus, and tapped it to the floor. Two clicks from my fennel staff and the ivy vines that roped around my trusty party accessory fluttered to life. A call to arms as the same two beats were echoed back to me from my followers. Each person in my entourage had their own thyrsus, some covered in ribbons, others with grapes.

Let’s see, there were the maenads, my female followers who wore chic costumes that incorporated the likes of fawn skins or bull helmets. People sometimes referred to them as the “raving ones,” but I simply saw them as fellow ecstatic souls who knew how to have a damn good time. There was Pan, of course, and his entire crew of Paniskoi, mini replicas of the lovable little violator who were subsumed into my squad. Also, there were various nature spirits, nymphs, satyrs, and the like, with the satyrs, in particular, being known to race through parties with their horse-like ears and tails in a manner some could find brutish and disruptive, but I saw as a required quality for efficiently serving wine.

Speaking of, one such satyr appeared from the throngs of the retinue and had filled Pan’s cup and mine to the brim with wine from our private collection. I had trained them long ago to respond to the beats. Every time, such coordination brought a smile to my lips. Oh, how organized revelry could be! Those precious darlings even served us a sparkling wine before the feast because they knew it was fresh and fun and really only the right thing to do.

“I notice when I come to these Titan shindigs that my body tries to fall asleep,” I confessed, strolling with Pan through the lethargic crowd. “Suddenly I’m more exhausted than I’ve ever been in my entire—”

I stopped.

Pan had stiffened visibly. “There she is.”

“Who?”

“Polydora,” he bleated.

“Oh, right.” I had nearly forgotten the purpose of mingling in this sea of monotony. “Why don’t you go talk to her?”

“I can’t.”

I took a glimpse around. “Are you busy just now?”

“No…I-I’m…nervous.”

The way love could change the god of the wild was stupefying to contemplate. This dismal creature before me, who spoke in hushed tones and practically hid behind his wine glass, was the same god I had seen in wilder, more reckless days rip apart villages that stood in the path of a rightful party succession. Crops were trampled, homes looted, all while he and his crew had a swell time riding their high spirits but causing a nightmarish mess.

“I have an idea.” I took a sip of my wine. Fruit-forward. Firm effervescence. Definitely the Hydra Sec we had bottled last season. “I’ll go talk to her while you gather the Paniskoi.”

“And then what’s the next act in this circus?”

“What you do best.” I grabbed one of his horns and twirled about him merrily. “Woo her while you play the flute and your boys do their hooved dancing. Not to mention, you need the practice for the Summit opening ceremonies if you intend to outshine Apollo this year.”

The plan didn’t seem to strike Pan.

“Don’t you like the idea?” I asked a trifle testily.

“It’s just that we always do that and leap headfirst into the frenzy. Why don’t we take it slow this time? Class it up. Put my best hoof forward and all that.”

“My dear old soul, if she’s the one, she’ll accept you. The real you. Now, I’ll send the satyrs to fill people’s glasses with proper drink and the maenads to get people grooving.”

“Fuck it. Fine,” he said and sampled a quick rustic tune on his flute that he always had on his person.

“Very good.” I clicked my thyrsus, this time three taps, and my retinue dispersed.

They filled up the cups and plucked off dance partners while I parted through the crowds to make my way to Polydora, whose eyes were fixed on the buffet.

Actually, come to think of it, I had met her at her father’s thousandth birthday hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but she was a different Oceanid back then. Nowadays, something about Polydora made almost anybody else in the same room seem malnourished and trivial by comparison.

At first, I was going to dive right in. Unfortunately, my wits failed me at the exact moment I turned toward her and truly saw how nasty that scar was that had cleaved her face in two.

I awkwardly stood there, empty plate in hand.

Grotesquely mesmerized.

“You’re quiet,” she said after I hovered around her a bit.

Made me jump. I had been intensely wondering how long Pan would take to start so that I wouldn’t have to stand there and think of something clever to say.

“Eh? Oh, umm, yes. I was just thinking…”

“About what?”

“If I wanted any salmon.” It was the first thing that surfaced.

“Go for it,” she said. “If you don’t like it, I’ll eat it.”

I took a strained forkful of the fish and wondered what to say next.

“Fruit salad?” Polydora offered.

“Sure.”

“Serving of broccoli?”

“Uhh, no thanks.”

She helped herself to some olives. I found some potato salad which I had overlooked in my flustered state. Then I said, “I wanted to say,” right as she said, “Have you tried,” and there was a collision.

I chivalrously circled my wine glass in the air to convey that she had the floor, and she started again: “Have you tried the Brussels sprouts?”

“Not yet.”

She loaded a healthy serving on my plate. “With a suspicion of sage?”

“Why not.”

“Slice of bread?”

“No, thank you.”

“Something to drink?”

“I’ve got that covered.”

There was another loud silence as she took more olives. She seemed to like olives.

And as I was plainly shirking from talking about what I came to speak to her about, it became clear to me that the talking turns wouldn’t leave the topic of victuals without me pushing forward. Seeing how devoted she was to food and all. It was too ridiculous that a pair of divines in our position should stand around scarfing down salmon and olives in each other’s orbit without any real conversation.

Thank the gods for wine. A healthy gulp of my fruity offering later, and the ideas lubricated right out. I decided to continue the conversation by paving the way for Pan. You know, without actually mentioning him. That way, I could prepare the nymph’s fragile heart for the fact that as surprising as it may seem, there was someone who loved her from afar. Sometimes I feel like wine tapped into some future version of myself who had already gone through the motions, so I already knew his lines, and knowing what to say was already half the battle.

“It might sound silly, but there’s somebody who is dangerously in love with you.” I took another swig. I was starting to brim with sparkling charm and wit. “A friend of mine, that is.”

“A friend of yours?”

“Yes, a very dear friend.”

I didn’t hear her laugh so much as I could—swear to Zeus—almost hear a couple of her ribs part from their moorings under the strain of a giggle.

“Why doesn’t he tell me himself?”

“I said the same thing, but that’s the sort of god he is. Kind of shrinking in these scenarios while having an excess of character in others. Hasn’t got the nerve and thinks you’re the most wonderful girl he’s ever seen. Even likened you to a goddess.”

Polydora leaned forward. “How very interesting.”

I nodded. “Very. He’s not a bad chap, either. Sometimes he can be an ass, but he’s got all the good bits there too.”

Polydora finally broke out into laughter. “How funny you are!”

She had a piercing laugh that shattered right through me. Before I could inquire what she meant, the crowd shuffled backward, parting the room as the main hall opened. Oh good, that little rascal had finally started the show. And with such pomp and style emerging from the entrance like that.

I almost screamed his name, groupie that I was.

But it wasn’t Pan at all. Out strolled Oceanus and his sister-wife, Tethys, fashionably late to their own party. Normally, I would not have cared to watch such a dull procession being that Oceanus was never good at sustaining a performance. His grim face was always set in a way that conveyed he was persevering. In much the same way he had sat out the Titanomachy, the war between the Titans and the Olympians, he seemed to sit out life. And sticking around afterward for the roll call of the titan couple’s thousands and thousands of children, various river gods and Oceanids, would be a snoozefest. I just—that’s so much time spent solely heralding. There must be a way to consolidate.

Luckily, the crowd was already starting to get loose enough to find even that kind of procession fun, thanks to my retinue. The rites of a good party had started, and I felt we were all cresting toward something divine, assuming Pan would finally get this show on the road.

I was midway through imagining how else I might make his appearance even more of an orgasmic experience for those of us gathered when a flash of gold broke my concentration. Trailing out after Oceanus was Poseidon. In fact, the god of the sea upstaged both Oceanus and Tethys, his golden trident gleaming as he was paraded out on his ornate chariot. His hippocampi came close to trampling those that didn’t move out of the sea-horses’ way.

While Poseidon swished his trident about, creating dozens of water spirals that zoomed and whirled, some combining to create geometric patterns and artful symbols, his wife, Amphitrite, coordinated a series of tricks with their armada of dolphins. Her jewel-encrusted bracelets rolled up and down her arms as she pointed about, directing the creatures into various formations and flips. The power couple looked dazzling. I admit, I even got caught up in the performance and starting cheering.

When they finished, I turned to Polydora to ask, “Why is Poseidon here? He never comes to these things.”

Except not one word seemed to register on Polydora. All I heard was her lips smacking and sucking as she tried to press the weight of a kiss on me.

I tossed my food and fled.

Within the safety of the dance floor, I couldn’t recall the last time I had a nastier shock.

I downed my glass of wine to regroup. Only to turn and find that Polydora had given chase! I tried everything: hiding in plain sight within various crowds, stalking the party from behind the cover of the Doric columns, and even camping out in the bathing chambers. But there she was at every turn with a sort of hideous coolness.

In my caged condish, there was only one thing I could do. The last thing I remembered of the night was tapping my thyrsus to the ground.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Four.

Then five.

New to the story or need a refresher? Begin with the prologue:

Jaden woke up feeling as if all the water had been siphoned from his body. Then someone had replaced it with venom.

He catalogued the sensation without panic. Dry mouth. Heavy limbs. A skull-splitting ache that pulsed behind his eyes. He pushed it all to his mind’s back burner because there were more immediate problems.

He had no idea where he was.

For a stretch of his childhood, home had been wherever he and his mother ended up for the night. Borrowed couches if they were lucky. Often the backseat of their car with the windows cracked just enough. He’d learned how to wake up without expecting familiarity.

Still, he’d hoped those years were behind him. That adulthood meant waking with context.

When he tried to stand, a wave of red mist flooded his vision, dropping him back on the edge of the couch. He looked around the large, unkempt room that contained him and the musty aroma of neglect. The floors were covered in a thick layer of dust, and around the dated armchairs and worn chaise lounge, really stuffed in any free spaces, was every kind of musical instrument imaginable. One instrument looked like a horn grafted onto some sort of cello.

Despite himself, the instruments made Jaden feel slightly less endangered. Artists collected like this. Hoarders of sound and potential. It meant someone here cared about making things, not just breaking them.

He searched his memory. The canal houses surfaced in his mind. Golden light. Then nothing.

Movement at the doorway made him look up.

“Not again,” a statuesque woman said. “And who are you?”

Her irritability was as real as the eyebrows she furrowed together. It didn’t help that they were paired with an expression that said she didn’t think much of Jaden, and he doubted that he would improve his standing by introducing himself.

“I’m Jaden,” he said. “You?”

“Athena,” she replied, crisp and precise.

“Like the goddess?”

“Nope,” Athena said. “Nope. Nope. Nope. I am not doing this again. Apollo? Artemis? Can you both come downstairs for a moment?”

Jaden felt an icy pit underneath the sweet notes she floated up to the two names in the house. He tried to pretend that he did not notice.

What he couldn’t ignore, however, was Apollo. When he walked into the room, Jaden found himself stealing little glances at him, trying to sit up straighter and smooth out the wrinkles in his clothes. Generally trying to make sure that he didn’t look like a hot mess in front of one of those faces that was not so much sexy as sickeningly sexy. The defined jawline, the structural symmetry. It all demanded attention.

A stampede of about a hundred and five felines of varying sizes and colors descended the stairs and filled up the room in a rush.

“Great.” Athena rolled her eyes. “Your sister brought her whole entourage.”

Trailing after the last cat was Artemis, a cup of tea in hand.

Jaden noticed something of a fawn in her bashful grace and shy eyes. If he were to photograph her, she would be most at home with trees framing the sides of her face, a fine morning dew at her feet.

“We’re holding an emergency roommate meeting,” Athena said.

“Okay.” Apollo crossed his arms. “We’re all here. What’s wrong?”

“We can’t do it here,” Athena snapped. “Official meeting room.”

“What’s the official meeting room?” Artemis asked, anchoring her hands around her mug while one of the many cats purred at her feet.

Athena had an intensity of expression that gave Jaden the impression that she was refraining, with great difficulty, from biting not just Jaden’s head off, but all of those gathered.

“You look weird. What’s wrong?” Artemis asked.

“Just get in the kitchen.” Athena pointed with a muscled arm. “I want everyone to go in there. It’s procedural.”

Artemis shrugged and followed her brother while Athena slid the stained-glass doors shut behind them.

Even without Apollo telling me about their little powwow, I have lived with Athena before. When she uses that word, procedural, it means the decision is already made.

“We agreed that the house rule was no more humans,” Athena said. “Every time you bring one in, we start falling into old habits like we need all these sacrifices in our names. Worship and commands. And it just escalates into a whole dependency.”

“It’s only until he recovers. I hit him with my bike,” Apollo said. “And I couldn’t just leave him.”

“There’s always some exception with you.” Athena threw her hands in the air. “Sometimes I think you intentionally hurt people just so you can help them. As if you get some sort of sick satisfaction from mending the damage you caused yourself.”

Apollo gasped. “I would never!”

“Yeah, well, observable behavior. Besides, being both a prophet and a healer, it’s not out of the realm of possibility,” she muttered.

“That’s actively insulting. Some of us enjoy using our powers for the greater good, helping others simply out of the kindness of our hearts.”

“And some of us enjoy the privacy of our home. I should be able to walk around in nothing but the aura of my divinity without the side-effect of turning some mortal into a bonfire because you’ve broken the rules and brought home yet another stray.”

“Please, Athena. You want to talk about house rules? Fine, let’s talk about house rules. I didn’t want to bring this up, but I don’t think we have all been pulling our weight around here.”

“What are you implying?” Athena asked through gritted teeth.

“I think we both know who is mysteriously away every time it’s her turn on the chore chart.”

“I do my chores,” Athena said evenly.

“You haven’t touched a broom in a decade,” Apollo protested. “It’s unhygienic.”

“Unhygienic? We’re gods. We don’t need to sweep.”

Apollo crossed his arms. “It’s uncivilized.”

Athena gestured toward Artemis, trying to get her support. “Are you going to say anything, or are you always on his side? If he wants to relapse into old habits, he should do it somewhere else. That same rule breaking is why you kicked out Aphrodite. Why doesn’t it apply to him?”

Artemis glanced at her brother, but the goddess of the hunt did not speak.

I’ve lived with her long enough, too, to know what that silence usually means. Artemis dislikes choosing sides, especially when both are technically wrong. To her, the problem with living with gods has never been the house rules. It’s the gods themselves. We both know how Athena becomes a nagging neighbor when she feels order slipping. And Apollo—well. He has always relished pointing out her deep, deep contradictions.

Athena’s jaw tightened when Artemis stayed quiet. She has never tolerated neutrality well.

“Okay. You two want to keep playing these games?”

“You two want to keep playing these games,” Apollo mocked her. He couldn’t resist.

An eyelid flickered. “That’s it. We are not doing this again!” Athena tore open the kitchen doors. The cats scattered.

Power aligned around the angry goddess, like soldiers taking position.

Jaden tried to stand. His legs failed.

Behind Athena, something passed between the twins. A look too fast to name.

Jaden’s world lurched. He felt himself slip, almost like a hand yanked from a glove. His body collapsed to the floor. Then the room stretched around him, too large, too loud. The smells alone were overwhelming.

“Am I dead?” Jaden asked. Or so he thought. What came out of his mouth was a series of meows instead.

“No more humans around here,” Athena said, already turning away from the crumpled body.

Jaden pressed a paw to his former hand.

As fur met skin, a memory came without warning: his mother’s fingers cold in his own.

He had waited for something then, too. A squeeze. Some sort of sign. And, for a moment, it appeared she would smile for a change and pat him on the shoulder.

Good boy, Jaden. Thank you for trying to stand by me, and I’m sorry for all that I put you through. Pat, pat, pat.

Under the morgue’s fluorescent lights, his dead mother had done no such thing.

She was, of course, off. This whole world, Jaden had surmised early on, was one big on-and-off switch. Now you see it, now you don’t. One moment his mother was alive, the next, she wasn’t. And Jaden knew she had been tired. He knew that being—the “on” side of the switch—required so much effort of her. Therefore, he was not surprised that she took her life and sank into death.

That did not mean that he didn’t cry, that he did not worry about what life would be like without her, or that he did not think about all the memories they had shared. She was, after all, the last remaining link to his childhood, to his father. What her death did mean, though, was that fundamentally, deep, deep down…he thought he would feel sad, even relieved; all he felt was anger.

You left me. That was what burned.

As a cat, instinct rose—to hiss and claw. But each attempt to rebel was met with being herded into the collective. He was shuffled along with the rest of the felines, and the quiet, seething knowledge that something else had ended, and nothing had bothered to ask him if he was ready.

New to the story or need a refresher? Begin with the prologue:

“Get your hooves off my ottoman,” I said, snapping my fingers at Pan and rousing him from his slumber.

He muttered something as he came to, unfurled his hircine legs, and stomped them on the floor. His hair was already everywhere. Pan was passed out somewhere in my palace several times a week, and I usually cleaned up after. Still, I managed to find strands of his shaggy fur embedded in either the couch, the carpet, or my clothes. The last thing I needed was for him to smear all his woodland dirt over my upscale furniture.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Geez, someone’s grouchy,” he repeated, with a touch of rebuke.

“I’m not grouchy. I’m hungover. And we have to stop drinking this much every time we have a party.” I plopped down on the couch next to him, nursing my temples.

Pan gave me a grave, sympathetic face as if he knew that despite my best wishes, that would never happen.

“By the gods, what even happened last night? And why is my couch wet? I swear to Zeus, if you pissed on my couch, I’m going to—”

Before I could finish, Pan was on his feet, and he seemed to flicker. A blurred dash of his horns whirred by my line of sight. I heard him rummage about in the kitchen, and then he returned as swiftly as he left with a wine glass balanced on his index finger.

“Just toss this back,” he said in a tone somewhere between a request and a demand.

“Is that the—”

“The ‘86 Fury Noir? Damn skippy.”

“I need to eat something,” I said, waving away the temptation. “We drank plenty last night.”

“You don’t need to eat. You need a stiff drink. I hate to tell ya, but you ain’t so much fun unless you drink.”

“Well, that’s rude.”

“Centuries of field research,” he said. “When you’re hungover, you always get a bit fussy until you have some wine.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” Pan echoed, nudging the glass under my nose.

Smokey, cedary notes layered with rich, ripe fruits and a hint of leather crawled up and camped out in my nostrils.

I do not deny that my body greatly desired the drink.

Damn that Pan, I thought as I took the glass. He didn’t need to know, but things did immediately improve after I had a couple of sips. The lighting in the room seemed less aggressive—cozier somehow. My headache subsided. And seeing that scoundrel brought a wry smile to my lips. Generally speaking, hope flourished once more after I tasted the velvety texture on my palette and smacked my lips at the long finish.

“For the record, yer couch is covered in water, not piss,” Pan added and tucked himself next to me.

“Water? From what?”

“From whom,” he corrected, in that strangled kind of tone that came out more as a bleat. “And it’s from Polydora.”

“Polydora,” I repeated. “That Oceanid?”

I anxiously looked at the poor goat-god as his cheeks flushed, and he nodded eagerly. I already knew where this was heading.

“I worship her. I worship the very current she treads on. She is a true goddess.”

It was remarkable how quickly his language cleaned itself up whenever he fell in love. And ever since I have known Pan, he has been perpetually falling in love. But it didn’t seem possible that he had fallen for Polydora. Sure, she was his type in that she was a nymph, but she wasn’t by nature particularly gregarious. Pan needed someone who would complement him on the party circuit. Someone who took an interest in him and his low-brow buffoonery. Not to mention that unfortunate accident with the cruise liner where it looked like she got a propeller dragged across her face.

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same girl? There are like thousands of these ocean nymphs. I’m referring to Polydora, the one with the scar on her face.”

“Yeah, that’s the one we’re talking about.”

“And she strikes you as a true goddess?”

“She does.”

“Zeus bless you.”

He seemed perturbed. “You don’t think she’s the most wonderful girl you’ve ever seen?”

“Sure,” I said, if only to soothe him, all the while privately pondering who would want to dally with the discount rack of divinity. Lesser goddesses who would probably need to crowdfund for their continued eternity.

“Then you’ll help me,” Pan said, unable to stop himself from smiling.

“Help you with what?”

“My problem.”

“What problem?”

“Why, to snag Polydora! During last night’s party, she kept taking the form of water before I could woo her with my charm. But I found out she’ll be at Oceanus’s celebration tonight.”

There was no mistaking it. Pan was obviously all for her. No surprise there, considering he was at peak horniness during the spring. The change in weather seemed to act on him like magic.

“Sorry, but I’ve got a prior engagement already. Pretty important too.”

It’s not that I didn’t want to help Pan. It’s just that these things always ended the same way for him.

“What engagement?”

“Well—I—”

“See, you don’t have any commitments! And even if you did, you need to weasel out of them. It’s party time, and you’re my wingman.”

Some of the other gods, no doubt, find Pan to be a bit rough around the edges. As an aside, I have found his fur to be surprisingly silky, however insidious its manner of lodging itself everywhere. Anyhow, despite Pan’s element of irreducible rascality, from the first time we partied together, I have come to see him as a confidant and friend.

“Oh, alright. But we will need to bring our own wine. Those Titan parties are a drag. A bit too old school.”

“More wine,” Pan agreed. “And you can finish telling me that story along the way.”

“What story?”

“The one you were telling me last night after everyone left the party. About that human? The one Apollo told you about.”

I hesitated.

“You’re the first I’m properly telling it to,” I said. “I haven’t decided what I think about it yet.”

“Even better.”

Normally, by morning, other people’s secrets taste like nothing. This one still had a shape to it.

“Well, as you know, with humans,” I said as we readied our entourage, “they tend to die.”

New to the story or need a refresher? Begin with the prologue:

Jaden had been carrying his mother for two days.

Not all of her. Just what was left after the fire and the paperwork and the quiet, efficient way the funeral home reduced people to manageable portions. The ashes sat in a sealed travel container inside his backpack, wedged between a folded jacket and his camera.

The train slowed, stopped, and sighed open.

Amsterdam Central Station exhaled him into noise, and Jaden followed the current of bodies onto the platform. He stood there for a second too long, disoriented by the vast arch of steel ribs and glass panes overhead. Sunlight diffused into pale bands that made the air feel structured, measured. The station was alive with momentum, and everything moved with purpose. Commuters folded into lanes, tourists stalled and recalibrated.

Jaden adjusted the straps of his backpack and made his way to the station’s exit as English announcements stacked after Dutch ones. The gates stood in a row, each with a ticket scanner and waist-high glass barriers. People tapped, the gates parted, people flowed through. Efficient. Impersonal. Exactly the kind of system he needed today—no conversation needed.

He tapped his ticket against the yellow scanner.

The scanner beeped. Green light.

Except the gate didn’t open.

Behind him, someone cleared their throat and went to the next barrier.

“Sorry,” Jaden muttered, already stepping aside, heat rising in his face. He checked the ticket. It was still valid.

The next person scanned their ticket and the gate opened obediently for them.

Jaden tried again, angling the ticket differently. This time the scanner hesitated, then beeped as if it had finally made up its mind. The light flashed green with more confidence than before.

The gate remained stubbornly shut.

“Of course,” Jaden said quietly.

A station employee approached, a woman in a navy jacket with a name tag he couldn’t pronounce. She gestured toward the barrier and spoke in Dutch. “Werkt het niet?”

Jaden blinked at her, then held up his ticket.

She switched to English without missing a beat. “Is it not working?”

“It says it is,” Jaden replied. He passed the ticket to her. “But it’s…not.”

She smiled the practiced smile of someone whose job came with years of dealing with travelers who didn’t know how anything worked. When she leaned in and scanned the ticket herself, the scanner chirped. Green. She glanced at the gate, then at the scanner, then back at the still gate like she expected it to apologize.

“That is strange,” she said.

She opened the access panel and did something Jaden couldn’t see. The gate flickered and powered down. As it powered back up, the glass panels shivered and reset.

She tried again, slower this time, as if careful handling might coax cooperation.

Still wouldn’t open.

She straightened and looked at Jaden fully for the first time.

There was nothing remarkable about him. He knew that he must’ve looked like the hundreds of other men passing through the station. Sure, maybe he had tired eyes and shoulders pitched slightly forward, but that was from the lack of sleep on the transatlantic flight. He met her gaze, waiting for the questions he expected in a moment like this.

Where are you going?

Why are you here?

What’s in the bag?

She didn’t ask.

Instead, she exhaled, sharp and uncertain, and gestured toward a narrow service gate at the far end of the row.

“Just go through there,” she said. “It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” Jaden asked.

“Yes.” There was something in her voice that sounded like relief.

He didn’t see a reason to argue.

The service gate opened manually, squealing slightly in protest, and Jaden stepped through. On the other side, the rest of the station resumed its rhythm like nothing had happened. The woman had already turned away, watching other passengers pass cleanly through the same gate, pursing her lips as if daring it to misbehave again.

Jaden didn’t linger on it. Approval without access was something he’d seen before.

Outside, Amsterdam was gray and bright at the same time. The air smelled like water and metal and something fried. Jaden stopped near the train station’s entrance, taking in the people shuffling past, the trams clanging their way through intersections. Different languages he didn’t speak braided around him in quick, confident syllables.

He set his backpack down carefully and unzipped it just enough to check.

The container was still there.

“I told you I’d bring you here,” he said under his breath.

He didn’t linger over the words. Didn’t need to. He slid the zipper the rest of the way open, and the camera inside came free almost without thought. The strap settled around his neck as naturally as a breath, and the familiar weight grounded him, a quiet reassurance against his chest.

At the age of nine, Jaden had vowed to take his mother on a trip someday. She had laughed at him for it, the sound brittle with disbelief. On the plane ride over, he’d savored the thought of fulfilling that boyish pledge—a warm pat on the back, a “well done” echoing from his younger self to the man he had become.

However, while he ambled past the trams, his suitcase dutifully rattling behind him, the truth made something heavy settle in the cavern of his chest: technically, he was too late.

Still, he could imagine his mom here, balking at the city’s unfamiliar rhythm. As if carved from living stone, her stoic gaze would ask him a total of one question: “How long we gon’ stay here?”

And he wouldn’t know how to answer. Not because he lacked the words, but because they hadn’t practiced speaking to each other in years, their last conversation a dusty, forgotten relic, a token of the silence they had let grow between them.

The city distracted him before he could dive into the dark reservoirs of all the conversations that never happened. On his way to his hotel, Amsterdam eased toward the evening, the clouds breaking to spill a golden bath of light over a row of those stately, iconic canal homes.

Jaden was instantly smitten.

They looked so prim and proper that it made something in him itch; he almost wanted to shrink the houses down and keep them on a shelf somewhere. Just so he could look at them up close and ask what they were trying so hard to prove.

His camera, faithful co-conspirator, was ready. He lifted it and zeroed his lens on a woman standing alone on her balcony, one hand resting lightly along the iron railing that ended in a carved flourish—some old decorative detail shaped vaguely like an owl’s face. She gazed coolly at the world below her perch, as though she were weighing it.

Each snapshot pulled him fully into the moment, his heartbeat aligned with each click of the shutter, the alchemy of film. For a moment, he was not just a man carrying ashes; he was Jaden, the observer, the chronicler, the artist with the ability to stop time.

Through a lens, the world behaved. It framed itself and stayed where he put it.

Chasing a better angle, he stepped onto a strip of red pavement, what looked like an extended sidewalk.

The cyclist appeared as if summoned from thin air.

There was a flash of gold at the edge of his vision and then—

Nothing. Darkness.

I heard all this later, of course.

Apollo told it badly. He skipped over the hesitation thinking I wouldn’t catch the fraction of a second where he should have kept riding and didn’t. Instead, he jumped straight to the spectacle afterward: the pop, like from those vintage camera flashbulbs, and how the god of light, his celestial VanMoof bicycle, and Jaden vanished from the street.

Once, in a time now shadowed by centuries, the old Apollo would have easily left Jaden to suffer. The god’s tempestuous youth was littered with death—warriors felled by his plagues, beasts vanquished by his bow. Not to mention all those tragic love affairs. But those days were now mere echoes in his immortality.

I mean, you’ve seen firsthand how many of us gods have softened over the ages, as my father likes to point out, rather yell unrestrainedly at us, during our rare family gatherings. To him, erosion is a moral failure.

But times change. Even for us.

And these days, Apollo says his prophecies arrive less like technicolor revelations and more like a misstep. Like reaching for the last stair only to find air.

He felt that, apparently.

Not in the collision.

Not in the body sprawled unconscious on the bike lane.

In the pause before it.

Apollo claims curiosity made him turn back. That something about the young man tugged at him. Even banged up, Jaden had a certain kind of gravity, a smoldering presence beneath his pecan-brown skin that resisted immediate categorization.

When Apollo dropped by our party, ambrosia staining his confession and this story spilling out of him in uneven bursts, he admitted something else.

It had been a long time since a mortal surprised him.

What unsettled me wasn’t that Apollo intervened. It was that something had stalled before he did. The ticket scanned. The gate approved.

And yet the world hesitated.

Spend enough centuries amongst gods and you learn to recognize moments like that. It is never the thunder that matters so much as the air right before the lightning strikes.