Chapter 3

The temple guards smelled the blood. They sent for Aetheon immediately.

He appeared at my side the next instant, frowning, pouring his power into me.

His own face grew paler as my wound closed and the poison left my body.

He let out a breath. "I admit I went too far these past few weeks."

"But I told you to choose, didn't I? If it's truly unbearable, you can leave Olympus on your own. I'll pay you whatever you want. I never wanted to push you this far."

My mind went back, without my permission, to the days when he was being hunted in the mortal world.

His power had been sealed. He was wounded everywhere. To keep me safe, to keep the gods off both of us, he had dragged himself, half dead, into the deepest pits to fight demons for coin.

For half a month he survived on bitter bark, and stuffed every scrap of stale bread he could beg into my mouth instead of his own.

Until one day he collapsed in his own blood.

I cried, running my hands over the torn flesh of his back, begging him to leave me behind and save himself.

That was the only time, ever, that he shouted at me.

"Elara. We've come this far together. I'd rather die with you than leave you behind."

The memory cut me. I clutched the front of my dress, lost.

"Aetheon… do you have no heart at all?"

His face went dark in an instant.

"Stop this. Stop saying mad things. This is torture for both of us. There's nothing in it."

The poisoned dagger bought me a few quiet days. He held back.

I spent them like a corpse, propped against the bed, staring at nothing.

But a poisoned dagger couldn't stop a god-king who couldn't keep it in his pants.

Soon enough, he brought home another mortal girl.

This one was different from the showy Goddess. She had honey skin, the kind the Aegean sun gives you, and she was a coward—she dropped to her knees the moment she saw me and started begging.

"My queen, please, I didn't know about you—I didn't know His Majesty was already with you, I'm sorry, please forgive me."

I stared at her face. There was something I recognized, but I couldn't catch it.

Aetheon had always let me chase off his old flings. But this time he stepped between us like he was facing down an enemy, pulling her behind him. Those dark gold eyes were full of warning.

"Lyra is an innocent mortal. I'm the one who brought her here. It was all me."

"Elara, I've put up with you smashing the temple before. But if you so much as touch a hair on her head today, every privilege I've given you is gone. Immediately."

That mortal Lyra got a kind of favor I had never seen.

Aetheon hated the lower beasts of the deep, the furred ones. He hated the Abyss we'd run through.

He said the Abyss reminded him of the days I'd suffered.

But to make her smile, he went down into the Abyss himself and brought back a hellhound pup, soft and small.

And on the day of her coming-of-age, the highest sovereign of the gods used his own power to raise a hanging garden into the sky for her.

When I heard about that, the strength went out of me. I bent forward over the pain.

I was eighteen that year.

Back then Aetheon had been a wreck. He'd dug through every torn pocket in his rags trying to find something nice enough to give me for my birthday.

I'd dragged him to a ruined, half-collapsed temple outside Athens, laughing, telling him this was more than enough.

We sat together on a crumbling, moss-grown wall, sharing a single sour wild fruit, and I'd smiled the whole time.

But he was looking at my dress hem, torn by thorns, and something in his eyes turned red.

On the way back, he gripped my wrist and swore to me.

He told me: one day, he would build me the most beautiful hanging garden the world had ever seen. He would lay every flower in existence at my feet.

Later he did become king of the gods.

I asked him, hopefully, when he might build it.

But he was always too busy ruling the disputes of the divine.

I felt the weight of what he carried, so over time I stopped asking.

Turns out he hadn't forgotten the promise at all. He'd only given the garden to another woman.

What finally broke me was the queen's crown he made for Lyra with his own hands.

He pulled down lightning from the sky himself, used the forge of the fire god, hammered the metal for days. The inside of the crown was engraved, in the language of the gods—Aetheon & Lyra.

When we ran together, he had promised that I would be the most honored queen in the world.

He hadn't had a coin to his name. The most he could afford for a betrothal token was a cheap brass ring from a roadside peddler.

And now—he had set that crown of light, the crown of a queen, on Lyra's head.

Aetheon's face, normally so cold, broke open with a real, devoted smile.

"I swear by the River Styx. I'll protect you for the rest of your life."

Lyra ducked her head shyly, and that lovely smile of hers came out.

In that moment I finally understood where the familiarity had come from. Her eyes were the same as mine had been at her age.

It was insane.

I rushed at him, desperate. "If you were sick of me, why did you have to find a copy of me to throw in my face?"

Aetheon threw an arm around Lyra and waved his other hand. I was flung backwards by his power and crashed to the ground.

"Elara's not in her right mind. Put her in the temple. Have the god of medicine see to her head," he ordered the guards, his voice cold.

In that instant, something inside me went dead.

I sat at the edge of my bed all night. I couldn't understand it. I couldn't accept it.

He had loved me, once. Truly. When had that turned into this?

I lost it completely. I knocked over the sacred flame by the bed and set the entire palace alight.