Aside from a brief moment of shock, which never appeared on his face, Prometheus didn't ... he couldn't. Either she had done it deliberately, to throw him out of balance because she knew what was coming next. Or she truly meant it and wanted to point out something - anything - that he had not correctly identified. Maybe it was that simple. Part of him thought that, once again, no matter what he had missed - in the end he knew Apate because he had seen her kind a thousand times before. Well... not exactly her kind. Nowhere near as intelligent as she was, with the gifts to succeed in whatever arena she chose. Which made it all the more frustrating that...
"Maybe you do, and maybe you don't," he finally said quietly. "But look at what you did to yourself. You made your life into pattern that you can't break out of, no matter how you try. If something isn't useful to you then it has no value, and it's easier to hate something than to need something, to miss something, isn't it? All your life you've been doing this. Being happy for Dolos, trying to forgive your parents, you couldn't do that, could you? You're not looking at the whole picture, Apate. That's all I've been trying to tell you. If you had come to me, told me how you felt, that would have been one thing. You tried to destroy something I cared about and told yourself that you couldn't say no because it was Aphrodite who asked you, and you did it because you've never stopped being angry at me - to your way of thinking, the most important thing about me was simple. By taking Dolos in I'd hurt you. If it didn't fit your theory of Prometheus as the soul-killing tyrant, it wasn't remembered or recalled. Do you think that makes you a better person? A stronger person? What happens when you hate Dolos more than you love him? Are you going to do the same thing to him that you did to me? All to keep yourself from ever feeling hurt again, abandoned or alone?"
Too much.
He'd said too much, but it was too late to stop. Apate didn't understand, did she? He kept waiting for a sign that she understood. What he received was petulance. Petulance, and a jibe that stood in for pointing out all of the things that Prometheus would never understand, acknowledge or accept. To her he was fatally limited in her vision, never realizing all the time that she possessed every quality needed to eliminate the chaff and focus on what really mattered. No doubt she could give a reading of crimes that so many people had committed against her that would rival a hangman's recitation, but she didn't realize it was more important to try and grow from the experience. She was shrinking.
She'd been shrinking all her life.
And none of the facts he hadn't named, including her hatred for Dolos, was going to save her.