I was a spoiled human child, arrogant and haughty. Showered with toys and told I was superior because of my wealth and breeding.
Then Aphrodite came to collect me.
I was a tortured Spartan teen.
My fourteen-year-old self screamed inside my head.
He’d never stopped.
Torture makes the manwas the infamous Gorgon tagline.
Sometimes I wondered if it would have been better to be born in rags because the fall would have hurt less. A pampered child doesn’t suffer well. Better to be nothing all along, than to think you were a somebody and have it all ripped away.
Alexis made a noise, and I came to a halt—I’d been stalking toward her mindlessly.
Two-colored eyes narrowed as she tilted her head to the side like she recognized something in me that I didn’t want her to see.
Shivers prickled down my spine. I felt sick.
Augustus slowly draped his arm over Alexis’s shoulders. There was a warning on his face. He reeked of danger.
Kharon smirked beside them as he pulled on his black creature cloak. “The locker room is all yours,honeys.”
His familiar greeting was acid on the open wound that once was our friendship.
How far we’d fallen.
“Fuck you,” I mouthed.
Kharon bared his teeth and reached for his chest holster.
Achilles moved in front of me protectively, and Alexis frowned as she looked between the three of us.
Skin crawling with sweat, I shoved past all of them and threw open the door, eager to wash the filth of training away.
Kharon’s taunting chuckles rang behind me.
Ripping off my clothes, I turned the shower up until it was scalding and scrubbed as hard as I could, digging the washcloth deep into my skin.
It wasn’t enough.
The dirt remained.
When the past rose up to choke me, as it always inevitably did, the only thing that ever helped was cleanliness—it was my religion, the only piece of my spoiled self that I had left. I’d always been obsessed with feeling put together.
Grinding my teeth, I scrubbed harder, reaching for more soap.
It was basically empty.
With a desperate groan, I chucked the bottle onto the tile floor.
I raised my fist to the wall and swung—Achilles caught my wrist.
Vermillion eyes softened as smoke rose out from his muzzle, water spraying across our naked flesh.
He smelled like fire and rage, likehome.
Knuckles cracked as he gripped me tighter—DEATHwas in stark relief across them. I flexed my hand—LIARstared back at me.
