There was a sound from the dark edges of the hall, like the sound of something hard tapping on the stone walls. Cassandra turned to see a flash of golden hair. For a god named Phoebus, Apollo was all too skilled in hiding in the darkness. As he approached, the pale moonlight slowly revealed his features. He wore a grin like the one Cassandra had observed in young boys when they crushed anthills under their sandals, though there was a glint to his eyes--ever present--that sent her heart skittering like a frightened animal. He was not quite human, no one who looked at him for long could mistakenly think otherwise. The cut of his jaw was too perfect, his eyes too cold and distant, his posture too practiced and his footfalls too light.
"You aren't going to warn him?" He asked, light glinting off his eyes in a display of spiteful delight.
"No." Cassandra wiped the tears from her cheeks, stood up straighter. She tried to appear as the proud princess of Troy she was meant to be, as if she hadn't burst into tears only moments ago at the sight of her brother holding his son.
"Why not?" The way Apollo's features twisted was unnatural, an uncanny display of disingenuous concern. He did not quite manage to wipe the smirk off his golden face.
Cassandra balled her fists at her sides. "I will not give you the satisfaction. It would please you, wouldn't it, far-shooter, to see me beg at my brother's feet? Sob and kiss his hands and insist that he not return to war?"
"Oh, it would." Apollo agreed, his grin stretching just too far to look right. He pleased himself, when he was like this.
"Then I will not." Cassandra insisted, trying to sound proud although she did not feel it.
"Not yet, perhaps." Apollo waved off the delay in the inevitable as if it meant nothing to him. Of course it meant nothing to him, he was a god. It would only seem a short wait. He shook his head after a moment, like the agitated lion shaking his mane to free himself of petulant flies. "It did not have to be like this. I could have made you a deathless one like me, taken you as a wife. None of this would have mattered then."
Cassandra paused. For a moment, she felt as though all the air in the room had been pulled from her lungs. Apollo may as well have been making the argument over her eldest brother's corpse. "No, you couldn't have." She said quietly. Realization crept over her like a chill which reached the bones. "It did have to be this way. You knew as much. You must have."
Apollo's features had gone stony. He did not rage loudly. She knew this from only once before, but it was like a horrible storm that one did not so easily forget, but Cassandra had long since grown too tired to fear him.
"You knew, Foreseer, and you condemned me to your own wrath the moment you asked." She spat the words like venom.
Apollo looked least like a human, now. His expression was an unearthly cold and his skin seemed drawn taut over his faultless features. "What is it our dear Helenus says, princess?" When he spoke, his words were scathing. They reverberated in the air in a way words spoken so softly should not. "It is not about who will win or lose, one must learn to enjoy the game. He always did understand that better than you."
