"Why would anyone hate you, Matisera? You are wonderful and kind. Loving. I can't imagine why someone wouldn't see that about you."
Artemis smoothed her blond curls. "I wronged him, Katra. Greatly." She sighed regretfully. "I had the entire world in my hand at one time and I didn't know it. I let stupidity blind me and I lost him because of that."
"Then tell him you're sorry."
"As your father would say, there are some things 'sorry' can't repair. Some pains run too deep to ever be healed by something as simple as words, no matter how much you mean them."
Katra sat up in bed. "But I can heal anything. I will put my hand over his heart and make it all better. Then he will love you again."
Artemis pulled her close and held her tight. "My little treasure. How I wish that you could. But it's all right. He gave me you, and you I can love without regret."
Kat released Ash and pulled her thoughts away from that memory. "She wasn't always a perfect mother, but I couldn't have had much better. And even when she was less than perfect, I always knew that she loved me."
Ash couldn't speak as the image of them haunted him. It was a side of Artemis that he'd forgotten existed. Since the day Artemis had brought him back from the dead, she'd punished him for the fact that she loved him.
She would pull him into her bed to use his body and then kick him away once they were finished. Even when he'd loved her, her love had been selfish.
She'd blamed him for everything.
But in the beginning, she'd been kind to him. She'd once held him and laughed with him over nothing at all. Now he couldn't remember the last time they'd laughed at anything. The last time she'd just touched him for no other reason than he was near her.
The loss of the friendship stall made him ache.
He took Kat's hand in his. "I'm glad her anger at me never spilled over onto you."
She gave him a teasing smile. "Me, too." She reached up and brushed a strand of hair away from his face. "I can't believe this is real. That you're here, seeing me."
Neither could he. It was surreal.
But for a quirk of fate, they wouldn't be here now.
Which brought another question to him. "Why were you with my mother in her garden?"
"I was trying to help Sin fight the gallu and Dimme. He has a brother-"
"Zakar."
She didn't know why, but she was surprised he knew about Zakar. "You know him?"
Ash nodded. "I've met him a few times. He's a decent enough guy."
That was nice to know. The last thing she wanted to do was unleash another enemy into the world. "Well, he's missing. One of the gallu says that they have him held prisoner. Sin needs to know if that's true."
"Did my mother help you find him?"
"We saw something, but I don't know if that was him or not. It was blurry."
"Yeah, the sfora has its moments." He reached under his hair and removed his necklace. It was a small red glass ball, and it wasn't until he put it around her neck that she realized it was a tiny sfora. "This is a bit stronger than the pond. It has a part of me in it."
Her heart hammering, she closed her hand around it, unable to believe he'd give her something so valuable. With his DNA in it, she could use it not only to see what she needed, but to destroy him.
Given how little he trusted anyone, she understood the total significance of his gift.
He stepped back. "Tell it what you need and it'll guide you to it."
"Thank you."
He inclined his head to her.
Smiling up at him, Kat lifted herself on her tiptoes and placed a kiss to his cheek.
Ash couldn't breathe as he felt her gentle kiss. His daughter's kiss. It was tender and sweet and it made a wave of love well up inside him that he'd only ever known whenever Simi was near him.
He wanted to crush Kat to him, but she was too old to be held like a little girl. His daughter was grown and he'd have to respect her as a woman.
"Be careful," he whispered in her ear.
"You, too."
Ash took another step back and did the hardest thing he'd ever done. He let go of his daughter's hand. "If you need me, call and I will come no matter the cost."
"I know... Thanks, Daddy."
With tears in his eyes, he watched as she vanished and left him alone again in Artemis's room. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.
I have a daughter...
It seemed so unbelievable.
"Are you angry at me, Apostolos?"
He clenched his teeth at the sound of his mother's voice in his head. "No, Metera. I'm just hurt that you kept her from me."
"I would rather you be angry at me. Your hurt makes me ache."
"I'm sorry."
"Why do you apologize when I'm the one in the wrong?"
"Because I would never hurt you for anything."
His mother appeared to him then as a pale Shade. "Come home, Apostolos. Free me and I will make sure you never hurt again."
He shook his head. "I can't, Metera. You know that."
She let out a tired breath. "One day, my child, you will seize the destiny you were born to."
Ash hoped not. If he did, the world would end.
Kat manifested back in Sin's penthouse. He was right where she'd left him by his bar, looking just as gorgeous.
He stood up from the bar stool and crossed the short distance between them. She could see the worry in his eyes. "Did you find him?" he asked anxiously.
She shook her head at the irony. She'd gone to find his brother and instead had found her father.
"Not exactly. But my father gave me this." She lifted the tiny red ball on her chest up so that Sin could see it. "He said it would lead us to Zakar."
A deep scowl marred his brow. "You met your father?"
She nodded.
"Are you all right?" His concern warned her a lot more than it should have. It was so touching.
"Yeah. In a weird way, I think I am."
He approached her slowly and placed his hands on her shoulders. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I really am."
There was a tenderness on his face that she couldn't even begin to fathom. But it only lasted until his next question.
"So did he kill Artemis?"
Well, that was certainly an "ah" mood killer that wasn't helped by the eagerness of his tone. "Sin!"
"What?" he asked, his face a mask of innocence. "It's a legitimate question. I hope he cut her head off and stuck on a pike."
Men! Or more to the point, Sin! He was terrible. "Sorry to disappoint you, but she's still breathing."
"Damn," he said in a low tone. "Just once couldn't he give that-"
She arched a warning brow at him before he used the noun she despised.
"Woman," he said with an expression that let her know he really resented using that word, "that she deserves?"
"Would you punish the mother of your daughter?" No sooner were those words out of her mouth than she realized she'd hit a hard chord in his heart. She could feel his pain and it stung her deep.
Honestly, he looked as if she'd struck him.
"Sin..." She took a step toward him, but he quickly stepped back.
"We need to find Zakar," he said from between clenched teeth.
"Sin, don't change the subject. I want to know what's wrong. Why did my comment hurt you? "
"Let's just say you gave me clarity with one comment and leave it at that."
But she didn't want to leave it at that. She wanted to understand him. "I know your wife cheated on you. I saw it."
"And now you know why I never killed her over it. She was the mother of my children. Any other sore spots you wish to salt? I was once humiliated when I first tried to use my powers of flight as a kid. Instead of soaring over the mountain, I fell down and busted my chin. Why don't we call me incompetent all the way around? I assure you it was much less embarrassing than being a fertility god who couldn't satisfy his own wife."
So that was the source of it...
His shame made her ache for him. She cupped his face in her hands and stared at him so that he could see her sincerity. "And having been in your bed, I can honestly say that there had to have been something profoundly wrong with a woman who wasn't satisfied by you. Maybe it was a birth defect."