And Urian would be crying them before he ever repeated the mistake of returning to Xanthia’s bed.
Smirking, he cut his eyes to his brothers. “How could I leave a home where I’m so wanted?” He leaned back against his brothers so that they could grope him more openly.
She screwed her face up in distaste. “You’re all degenerates!”
“We are?” Urian asked with a laugh. “You’re the one I caught fucking Erol! At least my brothers aren’t diseased.”
Shrieking in outrage, she rushed through the crowded hall to flee their presence as quickly as possible, while calling him every name she could think of.
Ophion sucked his breath in sharply as he moved away. “Damn, Uri, that was cold.”
Unrepentant, he sat up with a grimace and straightened his clothes. “Not as cold as I’d like to be. Besides, I didn’t do it in front of the kids and I have yet to killher.” Tannis still wasn’t speaking to him over the fact that she was a widow after Urian had dispensed with her first husband.
Though to be honest, his sister should be grateful. Her second husband was much kinder to her than that ass had ever been. Especially whenever Urian was around, as he didn’t want to meet the same fate as Erol.
All marriages should have one good disembowelment in them. It set the tone for proper respect.
Atreus fell silent as they resumed their game.
Ophion wasn’t so kind. “So what are you going to do for food?”
Urian glanced over to where one of the xoron was soliciting a client while both of them eyed him like he was the sweetmeat of choice. Finding someone to feed him these days wasn’t the problem. “I’m done with marriage.”
“For now, you mean?”
His gut clenched at his brother’s question as remorse and guilt speared him. He touched Xyn’s necklace, which was concealed beneath his chiton, and tried his best not to think of the one and only woman he’d ever met who’d understood him completely. She alone had known his soul.
And she was lost to him.
“Forever.”
March 22, 9503 BC
“Urian!”
Sucking his breath in, Urian groaned at the sharp hysterical tone. At first, he thought it was his sister’s screeching howl. Surely, no one but Tannis could hitthatparticularly heinous note.
But as it continued and grew even louder and shriller, he realized it was Xanthia.
And it took on a whole new level as she crashed into his room and found him entwined in furs on the floor with three naked women who were draped over and under him. Not that he liked the floor. Simply, it’d been the only option as the bed wouldn’t accommodate all of them and the bacchanalian orgy they’d been having the night before.
“What is this?”
He would assume it was fairly obvious given that his pillow was an extremely large bosom, and there was really no doubt given where his hand was buried. And he knew from having walked in on his ex-wife’s antics that she was by no means a woman of pristine virtue.
“Keep your tone down,” he snapped, then cursed himself as even his whispered tone cut through his head like a dagger. “What’s wrong with you now?” He yawned and carefully extracted his hand so as not to harm his sleeping companion whose name he couldn’t quite remember.
“It’s Nephele! For spite, she’s run off with that … that … piece of nothing I forbid her to marry!”
Rubbing at his head, he lay back down and snuggled up to the nicely rounded, warm bosom on his right. To his deepest chagrin, he couldn’t recall the name of its owner either. But then to be fair, she hadn’t asked his. “I’m sure she’s at Daphne’s or Idora’s.”
Xanthia moved to squat beside his pallet and dared to tug the covers off him. “You’re not listening to me, Urian!” She rudely shoved something in his face. “She’s left Kalosis!”
He blinked to clear his vision and took the note she was waving in front of his nose. After a couple of seconds, he was able to focus on the words.
And with each one he read, his blood ran cold.
“Damn it, woman! Where were you when she did this?” He rose to his feet.
