“You just said I wasn’t.”
“I know what I said. But you’ve gone kind of green.”
Urian snorted irritably. “My head hurts.”
“Well, if I had a head like yours, it’d hurt, too.”
Grimacing at the oversized oaf, Urian groaned again. “In retrospect, I think I would have rather they killed me.”
Ruyn hugged him before he got up and helped Urian to his feet. “Do you believe any of what they said?”
“About ending the curse?”
He nodded.
Urian considered it as he continued to rub his throbbing temples. “I don’t know. It’s the gods. Anything’s possible, especially when it comes to screwing us.”
“Well, if it is … will your father be able to kill his own children to save his people?”
That was an easy answer. “Nay. Never. But I don’t think it would matter.”
“Why not?”
Urian laughed bitterly. “Given the number of women my father and brothers screwed before they turned Daimon? There’s no telling how many children they could have fathered between them. The only two in my family I know haven’t spawned are me and Paris.”
“You sure?”
He nodded even though it felt like his brain was slamming against his skull. “I’m sterile. It’s why Sheba and I never had children.”
“And your brother?”
“Doesn’t sleep with women.”
Ruyn let out a heavy sigh as he cleaned his axes off on his vambraces, then returned them to their sheaths. “So are you going to tell your father about the prophecy?”
“No idea. Not sure he’d even believe it. He doesn’t put a lot of faith in the gods … other than Apollymi.” Urian glanced around the barren, windy precipice where they stood. “Not that it matters right now. We might never get out of here.”
“How do you mean?”
“Not sure where we are and for some reason, my portal isn’t opening. You and I could be here for a while.”
Ruyn let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “Awesome. Trapped here with you. No wine. No beer.” He scanned him with a look. “And you can’t even shapeshift into a woman. Damn, I pissed off the wrong god last night.”
“Excuse me?”
“I would, but there’s really no excuse for this level of incompetence. So I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up if you ever figure out how to open a portal or something else decides to eat you. If I’m bored enough, I might lend another axe.”
Urian snorted at the irritable ass. He didn’t know why he liked him as much as he did. On his brothers, that attitude was intolerable. For some reason, Ruyn made it charming and funny.
Though at the moment, he was more than a little tempted to kick him.
Still, he wondered about Helios’s prophecy. Could there be any truth to it?
Was there a way to ever free them from Apollo’s curse? Or was it simply another lie from the gods? After all, that was what hope really was. The worst of all the curses Zeus had laid at the bottom of Pandora’s box so that when she opened it, she would release into the world that one stupid thing that would make sure humanity carried on and kept going no matter what despair, degradation, and nightmare the gods heaped on them.
So long as they had hope, they suffered.
How he hated that bitch. She was the worst of all plagues ever concocted by the gods and the cruelest joke they’d ever played on any sentient being—hence the real reason it was inside Pandora’s box. But for his own hope that he might find Xyn again, he wouldn’t be here now.
