“From leper to god in three heartbeats. It’s terrifying. Really.” Urian passed a disgusted grimace to Davyn as he dislodged another beautiful woman from his crotch.
This one actually whimpered in protest.
Urian was tempted to do so as well, especially given how irritated he was at the never-ending line of women who were intent on his seduction.
“I’m married,” he repeated to her for the third time. Gah! Where had all this attention been when he’d been literally starving and in need?
She pursed her lips at him. “As am I. My husband said he wouldn’t mind. That your infused blood could fortify us both. He wants me to feed from you. He’ll even join us if you want. My sister, too.”
Disgusted by that, Urian stood up and moved away as if she were on fire. Last thing he wanted was an orgy from people who only wanted to use him. Forget that!
Davyn quickly stepped between them to provide a block for him. “Sorry, love. If anyone gets an extramarital piece of his scrumptious ass, I’ve a prior claim to it, as I’ve been the one begging for it far longer than you.” He winked at her.
Her jaw dropped.
As did Urian’s. Flashing his fangs in an unrepentant grin, Davyn grabbed his arm possessively and dragged him away. But not before he cast an evil smirk at the woman, then grabbed a handful of Urian’s buttocks.
“Hey now!” Urian gasped, stepping away before Davyn got them both clobbered by a jealous Paris.
Or worse, a furious Xanthia. “I can’t believe you just said or did that.”
Davyn shrugged. “I can’t believe she had the nerve to search your private business in such a public manner. Makes me rather jealous I hadn’t thought to do so, but I’m not so rude. Or suicidal. Paris would kill me if I dared to sit on your crotch or fondle it.”
“So say you. I recall a few rather daring gropes from you in that particular area in the past.”
Davyn scoffed. “Name me one!”
“You were drunk, still—”
“Those don’t count.”
Urian snorted in defiance of his glib tone. “I beg to differ, and so does my private business, as you say.”
Davyn laughed. “Aye, well, be that as it may, I don’t remember it, so it didn’t happen. Besides, I can’t believe we’re now having to guard you as carefully as we used to have to guard my man-lamb and his hind and front quarters from others. Who’d have thought?”
“Indeed,” Urian agreed. “The world’s gone madder than normal.”
“It’s not that.” Ophion grabbed Urian away from Davyn and hauled him toward an exit in a different direction.
Once they were on the street, Ophion reached back into the building and pulled Davyn through the door, then slammed it shut and locked it. “Word’s out on you, adelphos. Everyone knows what you did for Telly. Now they all think you have the powers of a god and can heal them. So if they partake of your semen, they believe they’ll become instantly immortal.”
Urian’s jaw fell again. “I’m not the god Set! Are they insane?”
Ophie raised his arms in surrender. “Don’t spear Hermes. Merely passing on the town gossip. They’re the ones hailing you as the savior of our people. Sickening, truly, as I know you for the idiot you are. Half of them are proclaiming you as the mystical Day-Walker, prophesied to save us from our curse. They think you’re capable of anything, now.”
Urian went bug-eyed. “Shite to that! Last thing I need is a bunch of fools tossing me to the daylight like I’m Andromeda to Poseidon’s sea monster or something.”
“Well, I’d like to feed you to a sea monster, most days, but for other reasons.”
Urian shoved at his brother. “You’re such a pain.”
“Learned it from you.”
Growling, Urian rolled his eyes. “Oh, to have had a solren who could have kept his prick to himself for one night. Damn him for all the brothers I trip over constantly. Should have let Hades take the bastard and beat him, rather than save his life and start this.”
Ophie kissed his cheek. “Ah now, you’d miss us if we weren’t here to aggravate you.”
Urian scoffed. “Doubt that.”
Davyn stopped suddenly and without warning, causing Urian to walk right into him.
“What are you doing?” He rubbed at his forehead, which he’d banged into the back of Davyn’s skull.
Davyn didn’t speak. He merely gestured at the crowd lined up outside the door of Urian’s home.
Ah, bloody hell …
He’d never seen the like. It was as if they were giving out alms on a feast day.
Davyn leaned his head back to grin at him over his shoulder. “One well-placed god-bolt could take out about half of them.” He flashed his fangs in an evil grin. “What say you?”
Urian grimaced in absolute agony of the thought of what waited there for him. “Don’t tempt me.” And it was tempting. These were the same people who’d had no use for him just a few days ago.
Until he had a power they thought they could make use of.
Funny how that worked.
And it left Urian extremely disenchanted with the lot of them. For he’d seen their true colors at a much earlier age than most saw it. Because he’d been born with the abnormality of blue eyes and not their brown Apollite ones, they hadn’t hidden their disdain for him. That made it all the harder for him to hide his resentment of them now.
Especially when they turned to rush him, begging for favors, these Apollites who’d refused to share the most basic sustenance with him when he’d been in need. They’d have seen him dead and in the street without losing a bit of sleep over it.
They were deplorable in their hypocrisy.
“Urian! Remember how close we were when we were boys? We were always together. Inseparable!”
He stared at Theo’s friend Iolus, who’d never spoken to him before. This was the same friend who used to tell Theo to make sure he left Urian at home, because he couldn’t stand Urian. “Your brother creeps me out with those freakish eyes of his.”
Aye, Urian remembered him well.
“Enough!” his father roared as he joined them. “Let the boy alone! If you want a miracle, write them down and hand them to Trates. Urian can review them later to see if he wishes to indulge you.”
They protested, but luckily his father wouldn’t be swayed.
Urian jerked his head as he felt something strange in the air.
His father scowled at him. “You all right?”
“Feel what?”
“Something …” Urian scanned the dark street around them. But the sensation crawling along his skin only grew worse, not better. “There’s a god here.”
His father gave him a droll, bored stare. “That would be Apollymi. You can’t miss her. Tall, blond, angry goddess. Lives in the big, dark hall on your right.”
He snorted at his father’s sarcasm. “Nay. This is different. Can’t you sense it?”
His father shook his head. “I can only feel Apollymi and her Charonte.”
Yet Urian sensed it. Fiercely. There was no denying the powerful sensation of another god in their midst. The sensation crept along his skin. Undeniable.
Unmistakable.
Worse, it was malevolent.
“This is something else, Solren.”
His father glanced around the crowd that didn’t want to disperse before he lowered his voice to speak to them. “There’s something I need to speak to all of you about. I was going to wait until later, but …”
“What?”
“War’s coming. Unlike anything you’ve seen. The devastation in Xanthia’s village wasn’t just an isolated attack. We’ve been blessed that the goddess took us in when she did. Because life on the surface …” His father visibly winced. “After Apollymi’s attack on Atlantis that devastated most of the world, and the loss of the Atlantean pantheon, it’s thrown the power balance of the gods into turmoil. And with it, the Chthonians.”
Paris scowled. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. With the destruction of one pantheon, the Chthonians are at each other’s throats on how to restore the balance of the universe and realign the gods and their territories. And while they fight, the gods are vying for power. Our scattered people haven’t found their footing and are being systematically slaughtered the instant they are identified.”
Urian glanced to his brothers as he digested that news and what it meant for all of them. “Is that why so many Apollites have bartered with all manner of fey and demons? To spawn races in an effort to try to circumvent Apollo’s curse?”
His father nodded. “I don’t know how that’ll play out in the coming years. But knowing the gods as I do, they usually put such races down like rabid beasts. Until we see how this goes, my suggestion is to lie low and give them time to kill each other off.”
Ophion bristled at those words. “You speak of cowardice at a time when we should be helping them?”
Their father backhanded Ophion for the insult. “I speak of sanity, idiot! The nail that stands out is hammered down. And I won’t see our people fall needlessly to feed anyone’s ego.”
“What of our mother?” Urian braced himself for an equally violent reaction from his father.
To his surprise, he handed him a small yellow sfora similar to the red one Stryker used to spy on the human realm. “I’ll entrust this to you. I gave her a means to summon us should she be attacked, as well as the option of returning here to live. She chose to stay among her own kind. Hellen made it clear that she doesn’t want to return to Kalosis.”
Those words stung his heart, but Urian wouldn’t fault her for them. It was wrong to make her live in darkness when she didn’t have to. His mother deserved to live in the light. “I will watch over her.”
Paris took Davyn’s hand. “Do we have a Chthonian who protects us, Solren?”
“Nay. They don’t care about us. Apollites are on their own as far as the gods are concerned. Apollymi is all we have. She alone cares.”
Ophion’s eyes darkened. “That’s not right.”
“Since when is life fair or just?” Urian laughed bitterly at his brother’s stupidity.
His father sighed. “Sadly, Urian’s right. This isn’t about fairness. It’s about survival. Fuck my father! I am not burying my sons or daughter because he’s an asshole who had to screw a cheap Greek whore. Let the world above burn to the ground and let them tear themselves apart. We’re safe here, and here we will stay.”
Paris cleared his throat again. Louder this time. “Um … Solren? There’s only one small problem.”
“And that is?”
“You’re already a Daimon and the rest of us aren’t far behind. So how are we to survive locked down here without the human souls we need to keep from becoming dust?”
Urian flinched at a very raw truth that could kill them all. A truth that filled him with absolute terror.
Urian?
He savored the sound of Xyn’s voice in his head. It was like a mental caress that never failed to warm him all the way through.
Desperate to see her, he found her next to her falls, near the orchard. “Greetings, my fairest lady.” He wrapped his arms around her long, warm neck and breathed in that sweet scent that was uniquely his dragon.
She lifted him up in her clawed hand to cradle him. What’s wrong?
Laughing, he eyed the razor talon that was only a few inches from his face. “Most would see this.” He carefully tugged at it. “What kind of fool am I to lie here with that, this close, and not have any fear?”
You know I’d never harm you.
“True.” Sighing, he tucked his hands behind his head and crossed his ankles while she carried him toward her cave. “I felt a god here earlier. Did you?”
She arched a spiny brow at that. Apollymi.
Irritated, he grimaced up at her. “I swear, if one more person says that to me, I will react violently. Not Apollymi. Someone else. Completely different power.”
Sarraxyn pressed her lips together as fear spread through her. Somehow, Urian must have sensed her father’s earlier visit when he’d dropped in again to press her to act against Apollymi and Urian. She’d told Helios not to come.
He didn’t listen. Part of being a god—they thought they knew best and were always up to speed. But if that were true, then Helios wouldn’t have been pushed aside so easily by the Olympians.
However, the last time she’d made the mistake of pointing that out to her father, he’d blasted her so hard that her brother Veles had been forced to intervene. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have survived the vicious assault.
Closing her eyes, she tried to think of some way to distract Urian from this mess.
How are you adjusting to your wife? Though she hated to ask, and resented Xanthia with a passion, it seemed the safest topic.
At least that was her thought until she felt him go rigid in her palm. Perhaps marriage didn’t agree with her little Apollite, after all.
One could hope.
Urian?
He sighed and sat up to make a face. “I should be grateful.”
I sense a “but” in that statement.
“But”—he smirked at her—“there’s a coldness to her sometimes. Is that normal?”
Xyn bit back a scoff at the question. You’re asking me when I’ve never been around anyone to know?
He winced visibly. “Sorry. That was cruel of me. I didn’t think.”
She fell silent as she listened to the rhythm of his heart change. He was so sad that it made her own heart ache for him in sympathetic pain. More than that, it made her bold enough to speak a secret that she kept buried deep inside. What if you had someone who loved you, Uri? But couldn’t feed you?
“What do you mean?”
Like your father. What if you fell in love with a human or someone else? Someone not an Apollite or Daimon. What would you do?
He snorted disdainfully. “That would never happen. I wouldn’t let myself.”
Xyn felt her heart shrivel with his bitter words. It’s rather small-minded of you, isn’t it?
“Hardly. I’m only being practical. How could I eat if I chose to love another?”
How easy he made it sound—like love was a choice. If it were, she wouldn’t be in this kind of pain. And his attitude seriously pissed her off. Her vision darkened as she had a sudden urge to fling him to the ground and crush him. “Being an idiot, you mean!”
His eyes widened as she spoke her words out loud. “Xyn?”
Furious, she set him down on the ground before she gave in to her impulse to harm him. “Go home, Urian. You’re not safe here.”
“What do you mean?”
When he refused to go, she shot a blast of fire at him.
Urian barely dodged Xyn’s incendiary breath. The flames were a lot hotter than a normal fire. As it was, it singed him and burned his skin even though it didn’t come near his position.
Holy Katateros! He’d had no idea of her power until then. No idea just how dangerous his dragon actually was.
Blowing cool air over his skin to alleviate the burn, he rushed away from her garden. He was halfway home before he realized what must have angered her.
The question she’d asked before she lost her mind.
But no … Xyn couldn’t care for him. Not like that. She was a dragon.
He was an Apollite.
That wasn’t even physically possible.
Then again, dragons abducted maidens all the time. Of course, in his mind, he’d always assumed they’d eaten them.
Now he wondered about the outcome …
Zeus and even his grandfather had supposedly impregnated humans while in the forms of other beasts. Bulls, swans, water …
Surely Xyn didn’t want him to do that with her.
Did she?
The thought terrified him. It horrified him. He was married, and even if he weren’t, they were friends.
Best friends, and had been for years. Like …
Paris and Davyn.
Shite.
Urian slowed down as he realized that they were closer than regular friends. The two of them had shared much in their seclusion. More than that, Xyn had taken care of him. She’d been his refuge when the others were more than he could bear.
It can’t work, Uri. She’s an animal. A dragon.
And he had a wife to care for. There could never be anything between him and Xyn.
Never.
Yet still there was something inside him … something that scared him even more than his thoughts. A feeling he had that he honestly couldn’t deny.
He did love her.
And that would damn them both.