But then his father was good at that. Especially when it came to the gods. Stryker barely questioned anything the gods did.
Not wanting to think about that, Urian closed his eyes as they fell through the vast nothingness that bridged the worlds together. He hated traveling this way. It left him disoriented and sick to his stomach. But it was the only way to leave Kalosis.
When they finally arrived and stepped out into the dark human world, it was near a small, stone cottage on the edge of a majestic Greek cliff. A huge full moon lit the olive-scented landscape with buttery shadows that danced across a dark, crested sea. Because it’d been so long since she last saw anything more than the dull, dreary gray of their realm, his mother gasped. Tears filled her eyes.
“Mata?”
She placed her hand on his shoulder as the wind blew her pale blue veil from her hair so that her blond curls sprang free from her braids. “I’m all right, Uri. They’re tears of joy that your father remembered the details of my home from when I was a girl. It looks just as I told him so many times.”
Grateful that she was happy, he carried her case toward the small cottage door. It was nestled in the midst of a good-sized farm that should sustain her quite well. There were apple trees aplenty, along with a small vineyard and livestock. He could hear the cows that would easily provide her with the milk she loved to drink that had been so hard for them to procure for her in Kalosis.
He headed to the cottage and opened the wooden door for her, then pushed it wide with his elbow.
She went in to inspect her new home while he waited outside and set her case on the ground at his feet.
The Daimons who’d come along to help secure her moved to stand at his side so that they could peer inside the cottage. “May we come in, akra?”
She turned toward them with a smile.
“Nay!” Urian snapped the moment his mother opened her mouth to say aye.
The smile on her face died instantly.
As did the joy.
He quickly tempered the anger in his tone as he used his foot to push her case through the threshold. “Never invite a Daimon or Apollite into your home, Mata. Remember that you are always safe inside the doorway. We cannot enter so long as you haven’t granted us permission to be there.” Another curse of his grandfather to ensure that they couldn’t go where the gods didn’t want them.
Something that left all of them feeling even more unwanted and outcast than they already did. All it did was ram home that they were less than humans. Less than animals. In the eyes of the gods, his people were the lowliest of life forms, unfit for even the most basic form of shelter or care.
Their lot in the world was to be spurned and ridiculed throughout their absurdly short lives.
“But, Urian—”
“Nay, Mata.” Tears choked him at a necessity he hated that would keep him from his mother forever. Yet it was for her protection. “Not even I’m worth it. We will meet elsewhere when I come to visit. I beg you to keep your home safe. From all of us. Even me.”
Because the truth was that when the hunger was bad enough, when the day came and he went Daimon, she wouldn’t be safe even around him and he knew it. No human soul could ever be safe near a Daimon.
No matter how much they loved them.
Tears flowed down her cheeks as she realized that he had no intention of ever staying with her. That he didn’t trust himself not to give in to the Daimon that he would one day become. She returned to stand outside with him. “I will miss you so much! Won’t you stay?”
He crushed her against his chest, wishing to the gods that he could. “I have no way to eat here.” It would be even more difficult than it’d been for her to eat in Kalosis. At least there, the Charonte and Apollymi had shared his mother’s diet. There had been a variety of food for her to choose from. Maybe not milk, but most other things had been in abundance.
An Apollite or Daimon in the human realm was only asking for trouble as they needed another of their kind to feed them.
His mother glanced over to Trates and the others. “Your father didn’t wait until his twenty-seventh birthday to turn Daimon. Can’t you turn early?”
“Mata,” he chided, “I’m too young. And I’d still need to feed.” Not to mention, he could turn trelos—the Daimon madness that caused them to kill indiscriminately. If he did that here, she would never be able to stop him from harming her. As a human, she was too weak and tiny.
The thought of destroying his own mother was more than he could stand.
With a ragged sigh, she nodded. “I just hate the way they treat you in Kalosis, and I blame myself for it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m human. I keep thinking that if I’d been an Apollite, too, you wouldn’t be different and they wouldn’t spurn you so. You should be married…”
Urian shook his head. “Mata, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Worry about my son? Telling a mother not to worry about her son, Urian, is like telling someone not to breathe.”
He laughed. “I shall be fine. I swear.”
“And I shall worry about you, every minute of every day that I live. But with that worry, know that I love you ten times more.”
“I know. Just as I love you, too.” He glanced over his shoulder to where the others waited. “You should go in and make sure you have everything you need. I’ll wait here until I see you light the fire. Solren said that he’d arranged for servants to come on the morrow. They’ll bring food and supplies and everything you need.”
His father hadn’t wanted those servants to be here on her arrival for fear that they might realize Urian and the others were Apollites and Daimons, and harm her for it.
These days, too many Apollites preyed upon the humans just for shits and giggles. After Apollo’s curse and the destruction of Atlantis, those who’d managed to survive had taken a sick pleasure in rampaging against the Greek humans in an all-out frenzy.
While human blood couldn’t sustain or feed them, it slaked their thirst for vengeance and sated their need to strike back at the gods who’d cursed them. Not to mention the crazed trelos Daimons who were insane killing machines. Without conscience or restraint, they didn’t care who they tore apart. Their basic motto was, “Give me somebody.”
The treli wreaked such havoc as to spawn all manner of grandiose stories and legends among the human populations about Apollites and Daimons. It went a long way in spreading fear and suspicion, too.
For their melees and sprees alone, it was a wonder the humans hadn’t been on an eternal quest to exterminate them all.
His mother glanced over to the others. “Could you please step away so that I might have a moment alone with my son?”
Trates and the others moved off.
Taking Urian’s hand, she switched to Greek so as to give them even more privacy from what the others might overhear. “I know that your feedings bother you.”
“Mata…” He tried to pull away, but she held him in place with a grip so firm that the only way to break free would have caused her harm, and that he refused to do.
“Listen to me, Uri. I know how much this embarrasses you. That you haven’t had a live feeding since you hit puberty…” She cupped his cheek and forced him to look at her, even though he was mortified by this topic.
And she was right. Because of the color of his eyes and the fear the other Apollites had of him and his father and grandfather, no one was willing to pair with him in any way. They were terrified of what other defects he might carry.
“There is nothing wrong with you. You’re a good boy. A wonderful son. Your father and I are so proud of you. And one day, you will find a woman who sees that, too.”