Done with trying.
Honestly? He just wanted to die and be done with it all.
Ash found Urianon his knees in the center of the trashed living room. There was a small gold locket in his hands as the man wept silently.
“Urian?” Ash said in a low, steady tone.
“Go away!” he snarled. “Just leave me alone.”
“You can’t stay here. The Apollites will turn on you.”
“Like I care.” He looked up and the empathetic pain Ash felt from Urian made him take a step back. It had been a long time since Ash had come into direct contact with so much hopeless grief. He remembered a time, long ago, when he’d felt the same way, and it staggered him for a moment. “Why didn’t you let me die too? Why did you save me?”
Ash took a deep breath as he grappled with a past that had once brutalized him and left him a hollowed-out shell. If he could, he would save Urian from that additional misery. “Because if I hadn’t, you would have sold your soul to Artemis over this and killed your father.”
“You think I’m not going to kill him over this?” He turned on Ash with a growl. “There’s nothing left of her. Nothing! I don’t even have anything to bury. I …” His words broke off as he sobbed.
Ash placed his hand on Urian’s shoulder. “I know.”
“You don’t know!”
God, how he wished that were the truth. Ash gripped his chin and lifted it until their gazes locked. “Yes, Urian, Idoknow.” In ways this Daimon couldn’t imagine.
Urian struggled to breathe as he saw images flickering through Ash’s swirling silver eyes that were identical to Apollymi’s. There was so much pain there, so much agony and wisdom.
It was hard to maintain eye contact with him.
“I don’t want to live without my Phoebe.” His voice broke on the words.
“I know. For that reason, I’m giving you a choice. I can’t lock onto your father to monitor him. I needyouto do that. Because sooner or later, he’ll be back after Apollo’s lineage.”
So what! Urian curled his lip. “Why would I protect them now? Phoebe died because of them!”
“Phoebe lived because of them, Urian. Remember? You and your father were responsible for killing her entire family. Did you ever tell Phoebe it was you? You. Who killed her grandmother? Or her sisters?”
Urian looked away shamefaced as that guilt tore through him. “No. I would never have hurt her.”
“Yet you did. Every time you, your father, or one of your Spathis killed one of her family, she felt the pain you feel now. Her mother’s and sisters’ deaths tore her apart. Isn’t that why you saved Cassandra to begin with?”
Of course it was. One tear from Phoebe’s eyes had always shattered him. “Yes.”
Acheron stepped away from him while Urian pulled himself together as best he could.
“You said I had a choice?”
Acheron drew a ragged breath. “The other is that I will erase your memories of everything. You’ll be free of all of this. All your pain. The past, the present. You can live as if none of this had ever happened to you.”
A blank slate. Thousands of years gone. It sounded so easy, but Urian didn’t believe even Acheron had those powers. He knew the gods better than that.
Besides, he was tired of it all. Life meant pain. It was brutal and it gutted everyone to their knees. And he was so sick of this. “Will you kill me if I ask it?”
“Do you want me to?”
At the moment, it was all he wanted. How ironic was that? He who’d taken so many lives in an effort to live one more day, to breathe one more breath, just wanted to finally expel his last and be done with it all.
But in this, his weakest, darkest moment, how strange that it was Xyn’s voice he heard.
Remember the precious cost …
