King of the Gods’ Regret After Abandoning Me

Aetheon didn't show the slightest trace of guilt. His voice stayed calm.

"Last time, when you couldn't take the trials of Olympus and got hurt badly—when you called me on the speaking stone—I was flying her through the clouds."

"That kind of little-girl game stopped being fun a long time ago. But she clung to my arm and squealed, and I felt… sorry for her, somehow."

I stared blankly at the man in front of me. My mind slipped back a month.

I was just an ordinary mortal. To become his queen, I had to pass the trials of Olympus.

The trials were brutal. The three-headed hounds tore me open. I bled everywhere.

But to stand beside him properly, as his wife, I gritted my teeth and held on.

At the brink of death, I opened the speaking stone.

His side was loud with wind. He said he was busy putting down monsters from the Abyss.

So that he could focus, I swallowed the blood in my mouth and told him to be careful.

Now he was pulling the wound open without flinching.

"I heard you cough up blood, actually."

"I meant to come back. But that girl said she was afraid of the wind at that height, and she wouldn't let go of me. So I stayed."

I went silent, hollowed out, while Aetheon continued in that same even tone.

"If you really want to leave me, all five of the rich cities along the Aegean coast are yours."

He had the air of a king dispensing alms. "I can't give you the power of the thunder. But the wealth of the gods is endless—spend it however you like. Or, if you'd rather go through with the ceremony, the queen's throne stays yours. Forever."

Just moments ago—the omens lighting up the sky, the gods bowing, the gentle way he had placed the laurel crown on my head with his own hands.

I had honestly believed I was the luckiest woman alive.

Hot tears spilled down my face. My voice broke. "Why tell me at the ceremony? Why now?"

Aetheon stepped closer, reaching out to wipe the tears from the corner of my eye.

"I meant to keep it from you forever. But she said it wasn't fair to you."

"Elara, a god lives without end. Only ever facing one woman, for that long—it gets dull."

I slapped his hand away and lost it. I knocked the lilies off the altar, smashed the goblets meant to symbolize purity.

"Don't touch me!"

A shard of glass cut my palm. His brow furrowed and he grabbed my bleeding wrist.

"Was all this really necessary? I've already given you a way out. I'm not forcing you into the ceremony."

I twisted away from him. Cold dread crawled over my whole body.

"Let go of me!"

"I want to be alone."

He ran out of patience. He let go all at once and dissolved into a streak of lightning that tore out of the temple.

"Suit yourself. Come find me when you've thought it through."

I crumpled to the floor. My dress hem was shredded by the thorns scattered across the ground.

The reflecting pool showed me my own face—paper-white, wrecked.

I couldn't even remember how I got back to my own palace.

I drank cup after cup of strong wine until I passed out.

In my dreams, I went back ten years—to when the Fates first prophesied that Aetheon would kill his own father.

The old king of the gods, Cronus, flew into a rage and ordered his death. Aetheon's powers were sealed. He barely escaped to the mortal world.

To protect him, I drew the killers away from his trail.

The gods chasing him laughed cruelly behind us.

"A mortal trying to save a god? Sure. Why don't the two of you fight your way back up Olympus, then?"

Aetheon was covered in blood. He gripped my hand hard. His eyes burned with something that wouldn't break.

"Even if I have to climb back up Olympus and kill my own father, I'm going to keep Elara safe."

After that, I stayed with him through everything—running from the assassins, gathering the scattered fragments of his thunder, walking the edge of death again and again.

He was bleeding from a hundred wounds, but what little power he had left, he spent healing mine.

The night we finally fought our way back to the top of Olympus, he and Cronus had a battle that almost ended him. He came out half dead.

And the first thing he did—before anything else—was come find me. To ask if I would be his queen.

I cried and nodded yes. He held me tight against his chest.

"Elara. I'll be good to you. Always."

The dream was too lovely to last. I woke to the sound of furious gods pounding at my doors, demanding answers.

It turned out that to please that girl, Aetheon had issued a divine decree on his own—he'd lifted her dead pet hound into the night sky and made it a constellation. The stars themselves had shifted out of alignment.

When the gods pressed him about it, he didn't apologize. He waved them off.

"It's a small mess. Go bother Elara about it."

The full weight of the gods' anger came down at my door.