Authors: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Seph, get out of there.
She held her hand up to signal her husband that she was fine. Her legs trembling in trepidation, she reached out to touch the god.
He opened his eyes, which were a yellow-orange encircled by red. They flashed from that to a swirling silver color. And they were filled with raw anguish.
“Am I dead?” he asked, his voice demonic.
“You want to be dead?” She actually dreaded his answer, because if he didn’t desire his current location, there could be serious consequences.
“Please tell me I’ve finally made it. That you’re not going to send me back.”
Those desperate words tugged at her heart. Reaching out to comfort him, she brushed the black hair back from his blue cheek. “You’re dead, but as a god you live.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t want to be any different than anyone else. I just want to be left alone.”
Persephone smiled at him. “You can stay here as long as you want.” She summoned a pillow for him and tucked it under his head then she covered him with a warm, thick blanket.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because you seem to need it.” She patted him on the arm before she got up. “If you need anything else, I’m Persephone. My husband, Hades, is the one in charge here. You call for us and we’ll come.”
He gave a subtle nod before he closed his eyes and returned to lying quietly in the darkness.
Mystified by him, she returned to her husband. “He’s harmless.”
“Harmless, my ass. Seph? Are you insane? Can you not feel the powers he holds?”
“Oh, I feel them. Go near him and you’ll have nightmares. But he doesn’t desire anything. He’s hurt, Hades. Badly. All he wants is to be left alone.”
“Yeah, right. Left alone here in my Underworld? Another god whose powers rival mine? How stupid would I have to be? You know there’s a reason pantheons don’t mix.”
“You can ally him,” she said, trying to calm him down. “Having a friend is never a bad thing.”
“Until the friend takes your hand off.”
She shook her head. “Hades…”
“I’m a lot older than you, Seph. I’ve seen what can happen when one god turns on another.”
“And I think he poses no harm to either of us.” She lifted herself up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I have to go before my mother finds me missing. You know how she gets when I see you during her time with me.”
“Yeah, and a pox on the—”
She playfully pinched his lips together before he could let fly the insult. “I love you both. Now behave and take care of your guest.”
Only his wife could get away with treating him like this and being so cavalier with his body. But then she held his heart and he’d give her anything.
He kissed her finger. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. I’ll be home soon.”
Soon. Yeah, right …
But there was nothing to be done about that.
Hades nodded glumly then cursed as she faded away from him. Damn the bitch, Demeter, for cursing them to live apart half the year. But right now he had bigger problems than his wife’s mother.
And at about six foot eight, that god-killer in his cell was definitely a
big
problem.
* * *
A
pollymi gasped as
she felt the weight in her chest lift. Without being told, she knew that she now had the ability to leave Kalosis.
Leave …
“No!” she screamed as she realized the significance of that. There was only one way for her to gain her release.
Apostolos is dead.
Those three words chased themselves around in her head until she was nauseated by them.
Unwilling to believe it, she ran to her pond and summoned the universal eye. There in the water, she saw Xiamara, her best friend and protector, lying dead on the palace floor, and Apostolos …
“No!”
From the deepest part of her being, a scream of rage and grief swelled, and when she gave vent to it, it shattered the pool and rocked the garden around her.
“I am Apollymia Thanata Deia Fonia!” she screamed until her throat was raw.
She was the ultimate destruction.
And she was going to bring her son home.
May the gods have mercy on each other because she was going to have none for them. Every single member of her pantheon would pay for this!
Once she finished,
none
would be left standing.
* * *
B
ethany gasped as
an unexpected, unmitigated pain racked her.
“Bet? Is it the baby?”
She shook her head at her mother. “No. It feels more like my heart’s been snatched out of my body and crushed. Something’s wrong. I can feel it. I have to get to my husband.… He needs me.”
Something had happened to Styxx. She knew it with every part of her being. Her heart was destroyed. She could feel it.
Her mother rubbed her back. “Breathe. Just breathe, daughter. There’s nothing wrong. You’re pregnant. It does strange things with our powers. I once sneezed while I carried you and set fire to your grandfather.”
She laughed at the thought. “Did you really?”
“I did.” Her mother kissed her brow. “But I also know nothing will calm you down until you visit your mortal and make sure he’s all right. So let us go say good-bye to the family and then I’ll send you on your way.”
“I love you, Matera.”
“And I love you, too.”
* * *
A
pollymi staggered on
the rocks of the sea where Apostolos’s broken body rested. Her precious son had been dumped here as if he were nothing but garbage. After all the bastard Greeks had done to him, they couldn’t even provide a decent funeral.
Weak from her unshed tears, she made her way to him. His body was as cold as her heart. His beautiful silver eyes that matched hers were open and glazed, yet for all the horror of his death, his features were serene.
He looked so beautiful and perfectly formed. So tall and strong …
Choking on a sob, she ran her hand over the long gash in his chest to seal it closed. And then her tears broke. This was the first time she’d held him since the moment she’d cut him from her womb.
Agony ripped her apart as she cradled his head to her breasts and screamed out so loud that the sound was carried on the wind all the way to the halls of Atlantis. “Damn you, Archon! Damn you!”
She buried her face in her son’s wet blond hair and cried until her sobs were spent. How could her precious Apostolos be dead? How?
Why?
But she knew those answers and they cut her all the way to her soul. They’d both been betrayed by the very ones who were supposed to love and honor them.
Their worthless family.
Now there would be Kalosis to pay.
Heartbroken, Apollymi clothed her son in the black formesta robes of his godhood. As the son of the Destroyer, his symbol was that of the golden sun that represented her, pierced by the three silver lightning bolts of his power.
Picking him up from the surf, she took them both home to Katateros.
This was the home of the Atlantean gods. She had claimed this area aeons ago and had allowed her family to settle here with her. Similar to Atlantis, it was an island surrounded by islands. The tallest of them belonged to her personally. One of them housed the paradise lands where the souls of their Atlantean people went to rest until reincarnation. Another had been held by the Charonte before her banishment, and one had been intended as the home of her son.
But this one where she currently stood, the second-largest and tallest of the islands, was the main one where the hall that ruled and united all of the islands stood.
Archon’s.
Music from the hall drifted out to her. Oblivious to what had come to pass, they were having a party.
A party!
She could feel the presence of every Atlantean god inside.
All of them.
And her precious son was dead.
Holding him close, she ascended the stairs and slung the doors wide with her powers. The white marble foyer was circular with statues of the gods taking up station every four feet against the pristine walls.
She walked through the center of the foyer where her emblem of the sun had been etched into the floor. And as she crossed over it, she changed it to that of Apostolos’s.
The colors, now red and black, represented her grief and his spilled blood.
Without hesitating, she walked straight for the set of gold doors that led to Archon’s throne room. To the room where the gods made merry while her son lay dead from their treachery.
She opened those doors with the full force of her fury. A resounding crash resonated as the heavy doors snapped against the marble walls.
The music stopped instantly.
Every god in the hall turned to look at her and one by one, their faces blanched white. As well they should.
Without a word to her betrayers, Apollymi cradled her son in her arms and walked with a calmness she didn’t feel toward the dais where her throne was set beside her husband’s. Archon stood up at her approach and moved to the side as if to speak to her.
But it was too late for that. There were no words that could save any of them from her wrath. Not after every degradation and abuse her son had suffered in his human lifetime.
Apollymi ignored Archon as she placed Apostolos in Archon’s throne where he belonged. Her hands shaking, she sat him up and carefully placed each of his arms on the railings. She lifted his head and brushed the blond hair back from his bluish face until he looked as if he would blink and move at any moment.
Only he would never blink again.
And it was all their fault.
Her heart beat with fury as her powers mounted. A feral wind exploded through the hall, sweeping her hair up and out as her eyes glowed red. She turned on the gods then and leveled a malevolent glare at each one in turn as they held a united breath in expectation of her wrath.
One that was going to be fierce indeed.
She didn’t pause until she came to Archon. Only then did she speak in a voice that was deceptively calm. “Your bastard daughters deprived my son of his life. Those little whores damned him. And
you,
” she snarled the word, “dared to protect them instead of my son.”
“Apollymi—”
“Don’t you ever speak my name again.” She sealed his mouth shut with her powers. “You had every right to be afraid. But your bastard bitches were wrong. It won’t be my son who destroys this pantheon. It is I. Apollymia Katastrafia Megola. Pantokrataria. Thanatia Atlantia deia oly!”
Apollymi the Great Destroyer. All powerful. Death to the gods of Atlantis.
It was then they scrambled for the doors or tried to teleport out, but Apollymi would have none of it. Drawing from the darkest part of her soul, she sealed the hall closed. No one was going to leave here until she was appeased.
Archon fell to his knees, trying to plead for her mercy. But there was nothing left inside of her except a hatred so potent and bitter that she could actually taste it. She kicked him back and blasted him until he was nothing more than a statue remnant of a god.
Basi screamed out as Apollymi turned toward her. “I helped you.”
“You didn’t do shit, except whine and piss me off.” Apollymi blasted her into oblivion.
One by one, she went to the gods she’d once considered family and turned them into stone as her relentless fury demanded appeasement. The only one she hesitated at was her beloved step-grandson, Dikastis—the god of justice. Unlike the others, he didn’t cower or beg. He stood with one hand braced on the back of a chair, meeting her gaze as an equal.
But then he understood justice. He understood her wrath had been earned by all of them.
Inclining his head respectfully, he didn’t move as she blasted him.
And then there was Epithymia. Her half sister. The goddess of desire. She was the bitch Apollymi had trusted more than the others.
With tears of crystal ice in her eyes, Apollymi confronted her. “How could you?”
Tiny and frail in her ethereal appearance, Epithymia stared up at her from where she cowered on the floor. “I did what you asked. I made sure he was born into a royal family. Why would you destroy me?”
Apollymi wanted to claw out her eyes for what she’d done. “You touched him, you slut! You knew what that would do to him. To be touched by the hand of desire and to have no god powers to countermand it … You made it so that every human who saw him was driven mad with their lust to have him. How could you be so careless?”
And it was then she saw the truth in her sister’s eyes.
“You did it on purpose!”
Epithymia swallowed. “What was I supposed to do? You heard the girls when they spoke. They proclaimed him to be the death of us all.”
“And you thought the humans would kill him in their efforts to possess him?”
A tear slid down Epithymia’s cheek. “I was only trying to protect all of us.”
“He was your nephew,” Apollymi spat.
“I know and I’m sorry.”
Not as sorry as she was going to be.
Apollymi curled her lip. “So am I. I’m sorry I ever trusted you with the one thing you knew I loved above all others. You ungrateful bitch. I hope your actions haunt you into eternity.”
She blasted her sister.
“What have you done?”
Apollymi turned at the sound of Symfora’s question. She sent the force of her winds to knock both Symfora and her daughter back into the foyer. She flashed herself outside to stalk them like the predator she was. “What did
you
do? You hunted my son! And you killed him. All of you!”
“We didn’t kill him. He still lives.”
Apollymi shook her head. “He was slaughtered this morning by the Greek god
you
invited into
my
lands.”
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 for speaking a truth that speared her with guilt.
Bethany pulled every bit of power she could from her mother and from her Egyptian blood as she faced the older, primal goddess.