Rosario felt cold in the pit of her stomach, cold in a way that had nothing to do with the winter air nipping at her exposed skin. Cold in a sparking, prickling kinda way that she'd felt before, in the mountains.
You used to talk to them—
She'd been a kid. Just a kid, tryna find some refuge from insomnia and a hotbox apartment and the whispered arguments in the next room. Connecting the dots – it was hard-coded human instinct to connect the dots – and making up stories.
The sister bears who saved a baby and got put in the stars. The two dogs, one who never lost and one who always won, racing each other night after night and always drawing. The dragon guarding his tree of golden apples.
Just making up stories, like kids did.
Apollo was smiling at her in that way he seemed to think was reassuring. Rosario had never been reassured. That whole time he'd thought he'd been getting to know her as Archer, she'd been convinced he was screwing with her, an impression he'd only cemented with his sketchy answers and unnerving familiarity and his all-too-open smile. A smile that open, she'd thought, could only be hiding something.
Rosario wanted to believe he was messing with her now. Maybe he kinda was, getting Brody to say that stuff, because she could yell at him but she couldn't yell at a little kid. Brody was gazing shyly at her with those big innocent eyes, and his sister was standing right there, hunched over her phone with a stiff posture that said she was listening in on every word, and there was no way Rosario could accuse Apollo of making shit up (even though he wasn't, fuck, he wasn't) or demand to know how he could possibly know (even though she could feel the answer the answer prickling in her fingertips). She couldn't say a damn thing.
The stars said they miss you.
Not a damn thing except, with a stiltedness that came from holding together a straining levee wall with her whole body, "I have to go."