“Thank you,” he breathed as he looked up into Ruyn’s eyes.
“Don’t thank me yet. I still might come to my senses and let go. ’Cause the gods know you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
“You know you’d miss me if I were gone.”
Ruyn scoffed as he struggled to pull him up and over the jagged ledge without losing his grip, or harming either of them. Grunting and panting, he cursed Urian the whole time. “Lose weight, man! Never seen anyone on a liquid diet weigh so damn much! Shite, already! Usually whenever someone gives me this much trouble, I at least get a blow job for my efforts.”
With one last massive grimace, he succeeded in hauling Urian over and rolling with him until they were tucked underneath a small ledge.
Urian let out a bitter laugh. “You can cuddle me all you want, you brute. But you have to buy me dinner and a ring before you think about kissing me, and any other oral activities are strictly off the table until marriage. I’m not a cheap whore you picked up, you know?”
Laughing, Ruyn shoved at him. “You’re all kinds of wrong, Greek. No idea what my sister saw in you.” He shook his head, then frowned and gripped Urian’s chin so that he could examine his face. “Are you all right?”
“You just said I wasn’t.”
“I know what I said. But you’ve gone kind of green.”
Urian snorted irritably. “My head hurts.”
“Well, if I had a head like yours, it’d hurt, too.”
Grimacing at the oversized oaf, Urian groaned again. “In retrospect, I think I would have rather they killed me.”
Ruyn hugged him before he got up and helped Urian to his feet. “Do you believe any of what they said?”
“About ending the curse?”
He nodded.
Urian considered it as he continued to rub his throbbing temples. “I don’t know. It’s the gods. Anything’s possible, especially when it comes to screwing us.”
“Well, if it is … will your father be able to kill his own children to save his people?”
That was an easy answer. “Nay. Never. But I don’t think it would matter.”
“Why not?”
Urian laughed bitterly. “Given the number of women my father and brothers screwed before they turned Daimon? There’s no telling how many children they could have fathered between them. The only two in my family I know haven’t spawned are me and Paris.”
“You sure?”
He nodded even though it felt like his brain was slamming against his skull. “I’m sterile. It’s why Sheba and I never had children.”
“And your brother?”
“Doesn’t sleep with women.”
Ruyn let out a heavy sigh as he cleaned his axes off on his vambraces, then returned them to their sheaths. “So are you going to tell your father about the prophecy?”
“No idea. Not sure he’d even believe it. He doesn’t put a lot of faith in the gods … other than Apollymi.” Urian glanced around the barren, windy precipice where they stood. “Not that it matters right now. We might never get out of here.”
“How do you mean?”
“Not sure where we are and for some reason, my portal isn’t opening. You and I could be here for a while.”
Ruyn let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “Awesome. Trapped here with you. No wine. No beer.” He scanned him with a look. “And you can’t even shapeshift into a woman. Damn, I pissed off the wrong god last night.”
“Excuse me?”
“I would, but there’s really no excuse for this level of incompetence. So I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up if you ever figure out how to open a portal or something else decides to eat you. If I’m bored enough, I might lend another axe.”
Urian snorted at the irritable ass. He didn’t know why he liked him as much as he did. On his brothers, that attitude was intolerable. For some reason, Ruyn made it charming and funny.
Though at the moment, he was more than a little tempted to kick him.
Still, he wondered about Helios’s prophecy. Could there be any truth to it?
Was there a way to ever free them from Apollo’s curse? Or was it simply another lie from the gods? After all, that was what hope really was. The worst of all the curses Zeus had laid at the bottom of Pandora’s box so that when she opened it, she would release into the world that one stupid thing that would make sure humanity carried on and kept going no matter what despair, degradation, and nightmare the gods heaped on them.
So long as they had hope, they suffered.
How he hated that bitch. She was the worst of all plagues ever concocted by the gods and the cruelest joke they’d ever played on any sentient being—hence the real reason it was inside Pandora’s box. But for his own hope that he might find Xyn again, he wouldn’t be here now.
And that was why he hated Elpis more than any other goddess on Olympus. Because she hid her true purpose behind the guise of lies and treachery. She wasn’t there to comfort. She was there to punish and to prolong the torment of man.
No more. Urian was done with her.
*
Helios glared at the Daimons and Apollites around him. “You were supposed to kill the children of Apollo. Not let them go.”
“He’s a Daimon, my lord. He can’t have children.”
Helios sent a god-bolt through him that splintered him into pieces. Then he glared at the others. “Anyone else want to voice a stupid opinion?”
They quickly backed down.
Feeling the fire ripple up his arms and over his skin, he turned his blazing gaze toward each of them in turn. “When next I give an order, you will do as I say, without question or fail. I want the death of Apollo’s children and grandchildren. Bring me their hearts or I will have yours in their stead!”
He was through with this game, and tired of watching Zeus and the other Olympian upstarts feeding him table scraps.
War had been declared and he intended to win it.
June 30, 9501 BC
“You know what today is.”
Urian flinched at his father’s question as he came into the study where he’d been summoned. “Of course I know.”
“Did you talk to her like I asked?”
“I tried. She wouldn’t listen.”
“Did you get her children to talk to her?”
Urian arched a brow at that question. “Didn’t you?”
“Of course I did!” His father paced back and forth. And then he saw it. The tears that glistened in his father’s swirling silver eyes as he choked on the sobs he was doing his best to hold back. “She’s going to die, Urimou.”
He barely heard those words and the nickname his father hadn’t used for him since he was a child.
“My precious girl. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I even tried to trick her. To bespell her. Damn her for her stubbornness!”
Choking on his own grief, he went to his father and pulled him into his arms. “I’m sorry.”
Urian was unprepared for the ferocity of his father’s hug. While he’d known his father was a powerful man, he hadn’t realized just how much until those arms wrapped around him with the strength of a Titan. Burying his face in the crook of his neck, his father wept with soul-racking sobs the likes of which Urian would never have imagined him capable of making. They made the ones he’d shed for his brother pale in comparison. He fisted his hands in Urian’s chalmys and held him there as if terrified of letting him go.
He had no idea what to say or how to comfort him. So he merely stood there, holding his father and rubbing his back while his own tears fell.
When his father finally pulled back, he buried his hand in Urian’s hair in each side of his face and glared at him. “A father isn’t supposed to bury his children. We live to protect them, and we die first so that we can be there to welcome them on the other side. This is so wrong, Uri.”
“I know, Baba. I know.”
His lips trembling, his father wiped at the tears on Urian’s face, then kissed his cheeks. “I love you, pido.” With a ragged breath, he released him and headed for the door. “Let me go and sit with your sister.”