(Apollo)
He’d stayed away for five days.
Not because he wanted to. Not because he had control. But because he didn’t.
Because every time he tried to shift back into a form she would recognise — a form that wouldn’t send her running from him — his body refused. It twisted. It cracked. It mutated into shapes he hadn’t worn in a millennium. Horns that curled too long, wings that dragged the floor, claws that could split a mountain with one careless thought. Bones ground against one another with a wet, grinding crack, tendons screaming as ancient configurations forced themselves back to the surface like old gods digging out of deep graves.
He had stood outside her chamber more than once, chest pressed to the stone, palms braced above the doorframe as he tried to command himself into stilln
