“You killed him. All of you!”
Symfora—their goddess of death and sorrow, who was as dark in coloring as Apollymi had been before they’d interfered with her first and only love—shook her head. “We didn’t kill your son. He still lives.”
Narrowing her swirling silver eyes as her white hair cascaded around her lithe body, Apollymi curled her lips. “My Apostolos was slaughtered this morning by the Greek god you invited into my lands.” A god who had killed her son and then cursed all the Apollite people to die painfully at age twenty-seven.
Symfora’s eyes widened in terror. “I never welcomed Apollo here. That was a decision made by you and Archon.”
“Shut up!” Apollymi blasted her into oblivion for speaking a truth that speared her with guilt. She refused to be blamed for what had happened to her child.
The gods had betrayed both her sons, Monakribos and Apostolos! And she was done with them.
Now alone in the wake of her mother’s fate, Bet’anya faced Apollymi without any help whatsoever. Her dark caramel skin turned pale. The Atlantean goddess of wrath, misery, and the hunt was the last one standing.
She would be the last one to fall.
But as Apollymi reached for her, she hesitated at the sight of Bet’anya’s distended belly. The much younger goddess was pregnant. About to give birth any day by the looks of her.
In that moment, rage and pain warred within her heart. Most of all, compassion flared deep as she felt the pangs of a mother who’d lost her child, not once, but twice. How could she deliver such pain to another?
Her breathing labored, Bet’anya met her gaze levelly, without fear or deceit. Of all the goddesses in Katateros, she was by far the most beautiful. Half Egyptian and half Atlantean. Her exotic features were sharply chiseled, and framed by a wealth of thick ebony hair that set off her almond-shaped eyes to perfection. Apollymi could see why the Egyptians called her Bethany. In Atlantean, Bet’anya meant “keeper of misery,” but in her father’s language, Bethany meant “oath of grace.”
A far more fitting moniker for such a fetching creature. “I didn’t incarcerate you or hunt your son, Apollymi. I took no part in their cruelty. The one time I thought I’d stumbled upon your son in the human realm, I came to you with that information and not the others. I never breathed a word to them against either of you.” Tears choked her. “You know it’s true. I came here today to leave this pantheon forever so that I could have my own baby in peace, away from their politics. Please, do not do to me what I did not do to you.”
The girl was right and Apollymi knew it. No matter how much she wanted Bet’anya’s blood, she couldn’t kill another innocent baby. Especially not on this day. Not while the soil was still damp and stained with the blood of her own son. “Who among the gods is his father?”
“The father’s mortal. Human.”
Human …
There was something Apollymi would have never suspected from a goddess she knew hated that disgusting species even more than she did. “His name?”
“Styxx of Didymos.”
For a moment, Apollymi couldn’t breathe as her rage renewed itself with a vigor unprecedented.
Of all the mortals, in all the world, that was not the name to give her.
Not today.
Not after she’d seen through her son’s own eyes the life he’d lived and what had been done to him because of Styxx of Didymos …
Damn him! For Styxx was the prince she’d chosen to bond with her own son to protect him from the gods who’d been hell-bent on killing her precious Apostolos. The human twin brother who was supposed to have protected her child and his birthright!
Instead, Styxx had stood by and allowed her son to be slaughtered and betrayed. Of all men, he was the very human whose throat she wanted most to personally rip out!
She felt her eyes turning from silver to red as her Destroyer form took over.
Bet’anya stumbled away and wrapped her arms around her belly to protect her baby. “Please, Apollymi … my baby’s innocent.”
“So. Was. Mine!”
Both of them. And yet her sons had been given death sentences by the gods.
All of them.
Before she could stop herself, Apollymi reacted on instinct.
And she returned to the goddess what her pantheon had done to her.
In the blink of an eye, she ripped Bet’anya’s son from her belly with a furious scream.
Bet’anya staggered back and fell to her knees. Gasping, she stared at her unmoving son in Apollymi’s hands, and she reached out to touch him.
But Apollymi wouldn’t have it. No one had shown her an ounce of mercy. Not once.
Therefore, she delivered it back, full force. She blasted Bet’anya away and turned the bitch into a statue like all the others. Let her sit out eternity in a fathomless void where she could hear and see, but never again move or be part of any world. It was what they all deserved for what they’d done to her.
What they’d done to her children.
Then Apollymi looked down at the tiny infant in her hands and started to discard it as they’d done her son.
To toss him into the sea like he was garbage. Without a second thought so that he could die.
But because he was the son of Styxx, it was as if she held her own son in her arms. He looked like her Apostolos.
Identical, in fact. Every last part of him was the same. His tiny little fingers and toes.
His lips that had never had a chance to call her mother …
Tears filled her eyes as she remembered that day, twenty-one years ago, when Apostolos had been ripped from her womb and taken from her. So small and fragile.
Just an innocent babe in need of love …
And she remembered when Monakribos had been so tiny and sweet. When all he’d done was beg for his father’s love after they’d stolen his father from both of them and left them lost in their grief. Powerless to keep the world from crushing them with its unkindness.
“Just like you,” she whispered to the baby. “They were helpless, too.”
No one had taken pity on them.
For her sons, alone, she’d allowed her powers to be bound. Had allowed the gods to lock her into a dark, hollow prison until she’d lost what little sanity she’d had.
Her tears formed crystals on her cheeks as they fell silently and her grief shredded a heart she’d never wanted to begin with.
Damn you, Kissare, for making me feel love.
Because of him, the goddess of destruction was not without feelings. Her heart was shattered and she was devastated. And no matter how much she hated Styxx of Didymos, she couldn’t bring herself to kill this baby who looked so much like the creature that had fathered him.
A baby who looked so much like her precious Apostolos who wasn’t supposed to die so very young.
So very brutally.
More tears blinded her as she struggled to breathe past the pain that lacerated her heart.
I will protect you, little one. You will grow to be a strong, fine man.
“Out of darkness comes the light. From the loins of this Stygian hell, you are born and you will be called Urian—the flame of our new people. And one day, you will be my blade. My vengeance upon them all. They took my son from me, and I will take theirs from them. Together, my precious Flame, we will destroy the human race, and all the gods of this earth.”
But first, he would have to be reborn in the land of the mortals and from the belly of a mother who would have no idea of who or what she carried …
What this child’s destiny would become.
And Apollymi knew just who his new temporary mother would be. What father would be the best to mentor him to manhood.
Aye, the world of man would tremble before them all.
June 26, 9527 BC
Dawn
Strykerius Apoulos cringed in horror as he heard the screams of a thousand Apollites dying in utter agony. Why hadn’t they listened to him when he’d told them to take cover, and heed the warnings of the priests and priestesses?