Fierce ownership.
It was a warning to any god who saw it that Apollo would fight hard to keep Styxx as his slave. And Apollo didn’t do that lightly. The Olympian god had never marked Ryssa as his property. He hadn’t cared enough about her to do it. For that matter, Artemis had never officially marked Acheron, and they’d been together thousands of years before Tory had freed him.
And as Ash stared at the mark, Ryssa’s last day, with her screams of how Styxx had seduced Apollo, took on an ominous tone. While Ash might have been wrong about many things to do with his brother, the one thing he knew for a fact was that Styxx was completely and staunchly heterosexual.
But Apollo wasn’t. And if Styxx had fought his ownership, Apollo would have retaliated with a vengeance. Look what the bastard had done to his own people.…
His own son.
Acheron himself.
Tory’s words about the gods in human form rang with a frightening possibility. He’d always wondered how Styxx could be so vicious to him. How his own twin brother could essentially assault himself whenever he attacked Acheron.
Apollo castrating him made a lot more sense than Styxx doing so. The Olympian would have wanted vengeance on Ash for having slept with Artemis and “defiling” her. The savagery of that attack over Artemis made a lot more sense than Styxx attacking him for a woman he couldn’t have cared less about.
Putting an apple in his mouth and holding it there with his teeth, Styxx stood up with two bottles of warm water and a sketchbook and pencils. He sat down on the bedroll without disturbing the dog, then opened the water to sip at it. While he ate the apple, he turned to a page in the book where there was a sketch of a woman who sat in a beautiful meadow, holding an infant in her arms. The baby’s hand was on her lips as she smiled down at him. Even though it was only a drawing, the love in her expression was haunting.
Ash’s gaze went to Styxx’s left hand, which held his apple, and then down to the names of his wife and son that Styxx had meticulously carved into his own flesh.
An ultimate tribute. Not something a man would have done lightly.
The full magnitude of what Styxx had lost and how much his brother had loved his family slammed into him with such force that for a moment he thought he’d be sick.
Styxx set the apple aside and wiped his hand against his thigh, then leaned over so that he could draw. Ash winced as he watched the way Styxx had to use his left hand to wedge the pencil into the grip of his damaged right hand so that he could use it. The way Styxx did it said that he was so used to making accommodations for his partially paralyzed hand that he didn’t even think about it anymore.
Tears misted in Styxx’s blue eyes as he lovingly brushed his fiercely scarred right hand across the page. “Miss you, Beth,” he breathed before he began filling in more details. He pushed the book back a bit as he worked, and it was only then Ash realized why.
He was protecting it.
Every so often, a random tear would fall as Styxx worked. Silent and focused, he would wipe it away on his shoulder and keep drawing.
Awed by his brother’s heart and talent, Ash sank to his knees to watch Styxx’s precise, expert strokes. He’d had no idea that his brother could do such.
Once it was finished, Styxx sniffed back his quiet tears and flipped through the book that was filled with pictures of the same woman and the baby boy at various ages that ranged from newborn to adulthood. It was as if Styxx had created the memories of his wife and child that he’d wanted to have.
Memories that had been stolen from him.
By Acheron’s mother.
But what tore out Ash’s heart was how much the boy looked like Bas. And when Styxx paused on a drawing of Styxx holding his wife and child, Acheron had to leave.
Sobs tore through him as Urian’s words came home to roost and he thought about trying to live without Tory and Bas for even one day. Never mind centuries.
How could I have asked him to save my wife’s life and embrace the killer of his own?
Urian was right. He was a fucking prick. And he knew nothing about his brother.
Pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, Ash fought for control as he saw the drawing Styxx had made of the boy holding a teddy bear. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear his brother had met his son.
Now that he thought about it, even their wives favored each other enough to be related.
Was it possible that he’d allowed his hatred for Estes and Ryssa’s jealousy toward Styxx to infect him so completely and color his own opinions? Surely he wouldn’t have been so easily swayed.
Would he?
All his life he’d preached to others that there were always three sides to every event—yours, theirs, and the truth that lay somewhere in the middle.
Yet when it came to his brother …
