Authors: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Styxx braced himself as Artemis turned her angry gaze to him. He knew what was coming.
Back to his hell.
“You,” she said, her tone thick with loathing.
I am so screwed.
But maybe if he pissed her off enough, she might yet kill him rather than send him back. “How can you protect something like him? After I died, I was sent to the Elysian Fields while he was—”
“No concern of yours,” she said, interrupting him. “You and your precious family, you turned your backs on him and condemned him for something that wasn’t his fault.”
Styxx was aghast at her words. He’d never held anything against Acheron except what Acheron had done to hurt him. “Not his fault? Please.” He tried to say something more, but his voice vanished.
“That’s better.” Artemis simpered. “Funny, the two of you sound alike and yet you whine. Thank Zeus, Acheron doesn’t have that repugnant quality. But then he was always a man and not some sniveling little child.”
Oh yeah, that so described his brother and him.
The bitch really was crazy.
She backed him against the wall. “I can’t believe you. I gave you a perfect existence. Your own island, filled with everything you could ever desire, and what did you do? You’ve spent eternity hating Acheron, plotting ways to kill him. You don’t deserve mercy.”
Perfect island? Everything he could desire?
Yes, she was insane. She had to be if she thought his life on a desolate island was perfect.
As for Acheron … the last thing on Styxx’s mind had been payback. He’d been too occupied by his own grief for his wife and son, and by trying to survive to even contemplate getting back at a brother he didn’t think he’d ever see again.
“You can’t kill me,” Styxx squeaked out the erroneous thoughts in her head. “If you do, Acheron dies, too.” He choked as she tightened the hold on his throat, cutting off his correction of her misinformation.
“I curse the day the Fates bound your life force to his.”
That was not the Fates, bitch. It was his mother. Get your story straight.
How stupid could one goddess be?
Oh wait. It was Artemis, after all. The twin sister of Apollo. Intelligence was not their forte.
Artemis narrowed her eyes at him as if she wanted nothing more than to splinter him where he stood. “You’re right. I can’t kill you, but I can make living a worse hell than anything you can imagine.”
He laughed. “What are you going to do me?”
Turn me over to your perverted brother?
That was the worst thing imaginable.
She smiled evilly. “You’ll see, little human, you’ll see.”
One moment he was in the factory, and in the next …
Screams surrounded him, piercing the blackness. He tried his best to see something. Anything. But all he saw were the strange pinpoint ghost-lights made by eyes that were desperate to be of use.
This place was cold. Icy. He felt his way along a craggy rock wall only to learn he was encased in a small, six-feet-by-six-feet cell. There wasn’t even enough room for him to lie down completely.
All of a sudden, a light appeared beside him. It faded to form a young, beautiful woman with dark red hair, fair skin, and the green, swirling eyes of a goddess. He knew her instantly.
She was Mnemosyne, or Mnimi for short, the goddess of memory. He’d seen her likeness countless times in temples and on scrolls. She held an old-fashioned oil lamp in her hand as she studied him closely.
“Where am I?” he asked her.
Her voice was faint and gentle, like a breeze whispering through crystal eaves. “You are in Tartarus.”
Of course he was.
What the hell? He’d lived here his entire life.
Styxx swallowed his outrage and hurt. When he’d died aeons ago in ancient Greece, he should have been placed in the paradise realm of the Elysian Fields with Galen and his men … and not alone on a deserted island that vanished if anyone happened to look in its direction.
Tartarus was where Hades banished the evil souls he wished to torture. But hey, in theory it was a step up from where he’d been these last eleven thousand years. At least in hell he had company in his misery.
“I don’t belong here.”
“Where do you belong?” she asked.
He touched the names on his arm and thought about his wife and son. “I belong with my family.”
Her eyes were tinged by sadness as she regarded him. “They have all been reborn. The only family you have left now is the brother you hate.”
Reborn? Pain tore him apart. He’d never see his precious Bethany again. Never hear her or hold her …
Why can’t I just die already?
But no. The one person he was left with was one who’d done nothing but hurt and humiliate him all his life. A man who would never even acknowledge him. The injustice of it made him want to slice open his own throat.
“He is not my brother. He was
never
my brother.”
She cocked her head as if listening to something far away from them. “Strange. Acheron never felt that way about you. No matter the times you were cruel to him, he never hated you.”
Bullshit! How could a goddess be so blind?
Or worse … if she was right and Acheron had done all he had without hating him then Acheron was exactly the monster their father had said he was.
But at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. “I don’t care what he feels.”
“True,” she said as if she knew his innermost thoughts, as if she knew him better than he knew himself.
“Honestly, I don’t understand you, Styxx. For centuries, you were given the Vanishing Isle as your home. You had friends and every luxury known. It was as peaceful and beautiful there as the Elysian Fields, and yet all you did was plot more vengeance against Acheron. I gave you memories of your beautiful home and family, of your peaceful and happy childhood to comfort you, and instead of gaining pleasure from them, you used them to fuel your hatred.”
He gaped. Friends? What friends? The stupid dolphins he talked to out of desperation? His brother’s wooden horse? And it wasn’t like she’d put him on the Vanishing Isle with the Dream-Hunters. No … his had been completely deserted.
Oh gee, bitch, thanks.
As for his memories, they had been the worst sort of hell, because they’d reminded him of the brother he’d lost. Of Bethany and Galen, and the life they’d planned and never had.
Those had been a dagger in his heart.
But most of all, those memories had shown him the father who despised him, the mother who tried to kill him, his sister whose heart had only been big enough to love Acheron, and all the people who had mocked and debased him because of his brother.
No, not his brother.
Apollymi’s bastard seed!
“Do you blame me? Acheron stole everything from me. Everything I ever hoped for or loved. Because of him, my family is dead, my kingdom gone. Even my life ended because of him.”
But for Acheron keeping him that day, he would have been in Egypt to protect Bethany when Apollymi came for her.
“No,” she said softly. “You can lie to yourself, Styxx, but not to me. It was you who betrayed your brother. You and your father. You let your fear of him blind you. It was your own actions that condemned not only him, but yourself as well.”
What fear? Never, ever once in his life had he feared Acheron!
Memories of Atlantis tore through him. He saw Acheron smirking as he secured Styxx’s limbs to the bed so that Estes could violate him instead of Acheron.
“How can you do this to me? I came here to save you!”
“You are saving me, Styxx. Tonight I’m not the one getting fucked in my ass. You are. Just remember not to clench. It hurts a lot less when you stop fighting them.”
He could still see the mocking gleam in his brother’s eye as Acheron oiled and “prepared” Styxx’s naked body for Estes and the others.
Yes, his brother had been beaten down and drugged to the point he’d possessed no mind of his own. Even so, Styxx couldn’t understand how Acheron could have done such a thing to him.
The betrayal burned deep in his heart.
“What do you know of it? Acheron is evil. Unclean. He defiles everything he touches.”
She danced her fingers through the lamp’s flame, making it flicker eerily in the darkness of the small cell. All the while her eyes burned him with their intensity. “That is the beauty of memory, isn’t it? Our reality is always clouded by our perceptions of truth. You remember events one way and so you judge your brother without knowledge of how things were to him.”
Mnimi placed a hand on his shoulder. The heat of it seared his skin and when she spoke, her low tone sounded evil, insidious. “I am about to give you the most precious of gifts, Styxx. At long last, you will have understanding.”
Styxx tried to run, but couldn’t.
Mnimi’s fiery touch held him immobile.
His head spun as he rushed back in time to the last place he wanted to go. He saw his beautiful mother lying on her gilded bed, her body covered in sweat, her face ashen as an attendant brushed her damp, blond hair from her pale blue eyes. He’d never known his mother to appear more joy-filled than she did that day.
Dear gods, she was even sober.
The room was crowded with court officials and his father, who stood to the side of the bed with his head of state. The long windows were open, letting the fresh sea air offer relief from the heat of the summer day.
“It is another beautiful boy,” the midwife happily proclaimed, wrapping the newborn infant in a blanket.
“By sweet Artemis’s hand, Aara, you’ve done me proud!” his father said as a loud jubilant shout ran through the room’s occupants. “Twin boys to rule over our twin isles!”
Laughing, his mother watched as the midwife cleaned the firstborn.
It was then Styxx learned the true horror of Acheron’s birth, learned the dark secret his father had hidden from him the whole of his life.
Acheron was the firstborn son.
Styxx, who was now in Acheron’s infant body, struggled to breathe through his newborn lungs. He had finally taken a deep, clear breath when he heard a cry of alarm.
“Zeus have mercy, the eldest is malformed, Majesties.”
His mother looked up, her brow creased by worry. “How so?”
The midwife carried him over to his mother, who held the second-born babe to her breast.
Scared, the baby wanted comfort away from the fear he sensed and the unfamiliar loud noises. He reached for the brother who had shared the womb with him. If he could just touch his brother, all would be right. He knew it.
Instead, his mother pulled his brother away, out of his sight and reach. “It cannot be,” his mother sobbed. “He is blind.”
“Not blind, Majesty,” the eldest wise woman said as she stepped forward, through the crowd. Her white robes were heavily embroidered with gold threads, and she wore an ornate gold wreath over her faded gray hair. “He was sent to you by the gods.”
Xerxes narrowed his eyes angrily at the queen. “You were unfaithful?”
“Nay, never.”
“Then how is it he came from your loins? All of us here witnessed it.”
The room as a whole looked to the wise woman who stared blankly at the tiny, helpless baby that cried out for someone to hold him and offer him solace. Warmth.
“He will be a destroyer, this child,” she said, her ancient voice loud and ringing so that all could hear her proclamation. “His touch will bring death to many. Not even the gods themselves will be safe from his wrath.”
“Then kill him now.” Xerxes ordered his guard to draw his sword and slay the baby.
“Nay!” The wise woman halted the guard before he could carry out the king’s will. “Kill this infant and your son dies as well, Majesty. Their life forces are combined. ’Tis the will of the gods that you should raise him to manhood.”
The baby sobbed, not understanding the fear he sensed from those around him. All he wanted was to be held as his brother was. For someone to cuddle him and tell him that all would be fine.
Xerxes was emphatic. “I will not raise a monster.”
“You have no choice.” The wise woman took the baby from the midwife who’d delivered him and offered it to the queen. “He was born of your body, Majesty. He is your son.”
The baby squalled even louder, reaching again for his mother. She cringed away from him, clutching her second-born even tighter than before. “I will not suckle it. I will not touch it. Get it away from my sight.”
The wise woman walked the child to his father. “And what of you, Majesty? Will you not acknowledge him?”
“Never. That child is no son of mine.”
The wise woman took a deep breath and presented the infant to the room. Her grip was loose, with no love or compassion evident in her touch.
“Then he will be called Acheron for the river of woe. Like the river of the Underworld, his journey shall be dark, long, and enduring. He will be able to give life and to take it. He will walk through his life alone and abandoned—ever seeking kindness and ever finding cruelty.”
The wise woman looked down at the infant in her hands and uttered the simple truth that would haunt both twins for the rest of their existence. “May the gods have mercy on you, little one. No one else ever will.”
December 1, 2007
Acheron stopped at a doorway that was covered with an iridescent slime. It shimmered like a rainbow oil slick in the dim light. To his surprise, there was no sound coming from inside. No movement. It was as if the occupant was dead.
But unlike the others who lived in Tartarus, this particular person couldn’t die.
At least not until Ash did, and since he was a god …
He used his powers to open the door without touching it.
It was completely black inside the small, dingy room. Horrifying images of his human past slammed into him at the sight. Long-buried emotions ripped at him with daggers of pain that lacerated his heart.
Acheron wanted to run from this place.
He knew he couldn’t.
Grinding his teeth, Ash forced himself to take the six steps that separated him from the man who was curled into a ball in one corner. An identical replica of himself, the man had long blond hair that was gnarled from the time he’d spent here and hadn’t brushed it or bathed.