The tips of her wings fluttered in time to her purr.
Urian stretched out along her spine. “So what did you do all week?”
She scoffed.Ate. Bathed. Slept. Circled the garden. Slept a bit more. Thought about setting fire to Apollymi … you know, the ushe. What about you?
“Fought with my brothers. Fought with my sister. Was punished by my father for fighting with my siblings. Trained to fight. Was lectured on why fighting was bad, which confuses the hades out of me. Got snubbed a few dozen times by everyone around me. You know, the ushe.”
Sorry.
“It’s fine. I don’t mind. Kind of used to it.”
I hear the lie in your tone.
Yeah, and he felt the lie in his knotted gut. How he wished it didn’t bother him. “And here I thought I was being subtle.”
She turned her head so that she could look at him on her back.So what do you want, my Uri?
He sighed wistfully. “I don’t know. When I was little, I wanted to see the sun. To walk out into daylight. Now … I want to rip out Apollo’s throat.”
Don’t you want a family?
Urian shook his head. “I have all the family I need. Most daysmorethan I want.”
She laughed.But what about love? A woman of your own?
That was beyond him. No female would ever feed him. He’d given up all hopes ofthatuseless dream and reconciled himself to his cold meals. Which disturbed him most of all. As Theo and Archie kept pointing out, he was destined to die an unwanted virgin. “I don’t believe in love. At least not what the poets peddle.”
You’re young.
Perhaps. But there was no way to miss the disdain and suspicion that hovered in the eyes of everyone he met. Or to miss hearing their whispered hate. How he cursed his superhuman ears that allowed him to pick up every syllable of their vicious gossip.
He sat up on her spine. “What? You disagree about love?” Of all creatures, he would have assumed she’d be with him on this topic.
Aye. I know the love of which they speak.
“Then you’re lucky.”
Xyn fell silent as she thought about it and realized that Urian was wrong. She wasn’t lucky to love him. Not as long as he felt the way that he did about the subject.
Not as long as he thought of her as his pet and had no idea how very human she was beneath her scales.
To love someone born of another species, who didn’t believe in it, was without a doubt the cruelest fate ever devised by the gods who hated them all. And she wished she could tear out her heart and stop it from beating. Because as long as it beat, it would always beat for a man who would never return her love to her.
October 17, 9512 BC
Missing Xyn and wishing he were with her, Urian paused as he saw his sister on a stoop near one of the abandoned temples of the old gods who’d once called this realm home. Diafonia’s temple. The Atlantean goddess of discord. Born to the rulers of the underworld, Misos and Thnita, she and her sister Pali—goddess of strife—used to walk the human realm, where they would set humanity and the Atlanteans at each other’s throats. Just for fun. And usually for no other reason than they were bored.
He’d never understand that kind of cruelty. Any more than he’d understand his grandfather for cursing them.
It also baffled him why Apollymi would choose Pali and Diafonia as her favorites, given their cruelty. Yet even so, that hadn’t been enough to spare them from her wrath when she’d rained down her vengeance against her family.
It was said those two goddesses had been among the first to fall.
Which made Urian’s blood run cold. Treachery never knew any limits. It always came in the darkest of night and from where you least expected it.
From the hand of the one you trusted most.
No one could ever be trusted. Especially not with your life or well-being.
