Apollo felt the pressure in his head spike, a drumbeat that matched the priest's cadence. He wondered if anyone else could feel it. Nik looked bored, Lyra wary; Thorin had closed his eyes, lips moving as if in silent calculation.
"What is the rite?" Apollo asked, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice.
The priest's smile was a wound. "You drink, and you are forgiven." He gestured to the altar, where a set of clay cups waited in a careful line. Behind the cups, a basin brimming with a thick, iridescent liquid.
'Don't do it,' Apollo's instinct spat, but he moved forward anyway, compelled by the logic of the place, the certainty that whatever this was, it would not let them leave unmarked.
He reached the altar, looked down at the cups. The liquid inside smelled of honey and vinegar, and something else, something that reminded him of the blood that ran in the old temples, the taste of iron and dusk.
He took the nearest cup, weighed it in his hand. "Does it matter which one?"
The priest smiled again, wider this time. "They all lead to the same place."
Apollo turned, looked at his companions. Lyra's expression was pure refusal; Nik's, blank calculation; Thorin's, a resignation that bordered on relief.
He brought the cup to his lips. The liquid was thick, almost gelatinous. It clung to his mouth, coated his tongue, slid down the throat with a slow, deliberate heat.
The taste was not entirely unpleasant, but it lived in the back of the throat like a memory of smoke.
He set the cup down, wiped his mouth. The priest watched, expectant.
"Now what?" Apollo asked.
The priest bowed his head. "Now you are one of us, for as long as you wish."
Apollo waited, but nothing happened. No lights, no rapture. Just a steady, deepening sense of being watched, not by the priest, or the acolytes, but by the stones, the air, the memory of the building itself.
He turned to the others. "It's safe," he said, though he wasn't sure what he meant.
The priest pointed to a side chamber. "You may rest there. In the morning, you will understand more."
They filed into the chamber, which had once been a vestry but was now a cold, stone cell with a straw mattress and a basin of water. Apollo lay down, closed his eyes, and waited for the world to catch up.
–
He dreamed of the old gods: a parade of faces, all wearing his own features, but each twisted by a different version of regret.
They marched through a field of white flowers, which withered as he passed, curling into black ash.
At the center of the field stood a well, its water thick and red. He lowered a cup, drank, and felt the fire blossom in his chest, spreading outward until every nerve was alight.
He woke to the sound of Lyra whispering. "He's burning up," she said. "Look, sweat, everywhere."
Nik's face hovered above, shadowed and uncertain. "You want me to hold him down?"
"No," Lyra said. "He's not thrashing. Just…glowing." She sounded awed, or maybe exhausted.
Apollo tried to sit up, but his arms were leaden. He could see the world through a filter of gold and blue, as if someone had poured sky into his eyes. The pain was gone; the hunger, gone; but in their place was a new, clean emptiness.
He looked at his own hands. The skin was the same, but the line of old scars had faded, replaced by a faint lattice of gold veins visible just under the surface.
He coughed, and the sound echoed like a shout. The dog, sleeping at the foot of the mattress, looked up, ears cocked, then settled back, unconcerned.
Lyra pressed a hand to his forehead. "That priest drugged you," she said, but she didn't move her hand away.
Apollo shook his head, slow. "No. It's not a drug. It's…" He couldn't finish.
Lyra watched him, eyes narrow. "You're not making sense."
He tried to explain, but the words refused to come. He felt a memory, sharp and precise, of the moment he'd drank the cup: the way the priest's face had split, just for an instant, into hundreds of overlapping expressions, rage, hope, boredom, hunger.
He remembered the taste of the liquid, the way it seemed to recognize him.
He let his head fall back. "We need to leave," he said. "Now."
Nik grinned. "You partying already, Lio? You just got some color in your cheeks."
Apollo set his jaw. "We need to go. It's not safe here. Not for us, not for anyone."
Lyra looked at Nik, then back to Apollo. She nodded. "Say the word. We can be out in five minutes."
Apollo tried to stand. The world pulsed; the gold lines in his arms glowed, then dimmed. But he did not collapse. He found his balance, and when he looked in the mirror, a cracked, fogged thing above the washbasin, he saw something that was not quite his own reflection. It was more alive, more cruel, more awake.
He turned to Lyra, voice flat with certainty. "Get the others. We leave now, or not at all."
–
Outside, the temple had changed. The acolytes now stood in neat rows, blocking the exit with a patient, impersonal menace.
Their faces were identical, the same unfinished features, the same hungry eyes. The priest stood at the head of the line, hands folded as if in prayer.
"You drank," the priest said. "You belong."
Apollo felt the pressure again, stronger this time. He let it fill him, then pushed back, not with magic, but with the stubbornness of a man who had spent his life resisting every easy answer.
"We're leaving," he said. "Try and stop us."
The priest smiled, but it was the smile of a man who had never once considered losing.
The priest's smile surfaced and froze, translucent as ice on graveyard water. The air inside the nave thickened, pressure, but not the ordinary kind.
Apollo knew this sensation: the hush before a lightning strike, the moment when a crowd at the games leans in to see the blade drop.
He saw nothing on the priest's face, but the acolytes behind him began to shiver, their pale hands fisting and unfisting at their sides.
The priest's arms rose. His cowl fell back. The skin underneath was already seaming, bubbles forming along the jaw, the lips splitting open to show a second, row of teeth, childlike and crowded.
He spoke a single word. It was not from any tongue Apollo had heard, but the syllables were shaped like hunger, and every acolyte in the room doubled over, retching threads of white mucus onto the floor.
Their bodies spasmed, then went rigid, then stood again as if nothing had happened, except for the small, wet heap left behind at each set of feet.
Apollo reached for the power under his own skin, felt it answer in a slow, reluctant bloom. Not enough. Never enough.
He braced for the priest's attack, but it was Torgo, absurd, hat askew Torgo, who darted past Lyra and hurled a fistful of something blue and fizzing into the priest's open mouth.
The priest gagged, bulged. The front of his robe puckered, then split.
He doubled over, hands clawing at the altar until his nails snapped off and blood, thick, not red but dark as rust, splattered the basin.
What he vomited was not liquid, but a twist of something like rope, studded with teeth and tiny, frantic fingers. The air reeked of copper and burnt honey.