Gods Feel-Good Story の短編小説 & 小説

Esther, my adopted sister, drugged me to steal my position as the Divine Envoy. My skin erupted in rotting blisters, forcing me to miss the trials. She took my place, exactly as she planned. But she didn't know the Envoy was fated to marry Hades, the King of the Underworld, rumored to be a cruel, hideous monster incapable of siring an heir. That very night, his messenger brought the marriage pact, demanding the Envoy as his Queen. Esther refused. To save her, my fiancé, Samuel, slept with her. Stripped of her purity, she was no longer eligible to marry the God of the Dead. Swaying her hips, Esther proudly flaunted the hickeys mottling her neck. "Your fiancé is mine now. What are you going to do, sister? You turn twenty-five in three days. Unmarried, by law, you’ll be locked away in a convent to rot as an old maid forever." Samuel tilted his head in mock pity. "Don't worry. I won't let you fall that far. You can hide out at my estate, as a maid." They were wrong. I had another choice. I could take Esther's place and marry Hades. But after the wedding, I realized the Lord of the Underworld was nothing like the cruel, hideous monster the rumors made him out to be.

There were two famous good-for-nothings the gods loved to gossip about. One was me, Vera, the little princess of the Star Court, with most of my twin starblood ruined, good for nothing but eating, drinking, and playing. The other was my twin brother Orson. His life-fire was broken, and he was unable to stand being anywhere with too many people. But our eldest brother, Theron, was the next King of the Gods. Our second brother, Drake, was the Dragon Sovereign, who held every gold vein of the dragon clan in his hand. Our elder sister, Sylvia, was the heir to the Sacred Spring, the one art that could rekindle a dying life-fire. Our mother was the last High Priestess of the Court of Chaos, born able to carry different bloodlines of the gods. The day the star sea collapsed, Orson and I gave up most of our twin starblood to mend our siblings' fates. They lived. They became the three strongest elders the gods had ever known. And Orson and I became two cripples. Our days were simple: mooch meals off our eldest brother, spend our second brother's gold, and wait for our sister to feed us. That was until my sweet tooth carried me to a banquet thrown for Circe, the woman everyone said would become our eldest brother's bride. At that banquet, Circe, the daughter of House Siren, held up one blurry memory echo and insisted it was me who had climbed into Lord Theron's carriage the night before, stealing her betrothal to the Divine Court. I explained patiently, "You've got the wrong person. That was my brother. And this is my brother too." Circe exploded on the spot. She used her power to cripple me all over again, and nearly killed Orson. "One shameless slut, one useless idiot. A match made in heaven." It wasn't until my brother and I lay barely breathing that my three siblings tore House Siren's wards to shreds, and the whole realm of the gods shook.

I was a mortal priestess. In my previous life, I was the bearer of an ancient, sacred Divine Core—a rare spiritual mark that could elevate any deity's power tenfold. Zeus offered me the choice of a husband from among his deities. I chose Kael, son of Poseidon, the deity I adored the most. For ten years, Kael kept me isolated, claiming his ocean divinity was too volatile to touch a fragile mortal. I spent a decade enduring cold neglect. We would dine and sleep separately. Never once did he touch me in the past ten years. One night I dared to use Aphrodite’s perfume in my chamber and invited him– only to seduce him to my bed. But the plan backfired. He became agitated. On the spot, he called dozens of water monsters . While I cried and begged, he smirked, “You think your mortal self is worthy of me, son of Poseidon? If it was not because of your divine core quietly increasing my powers enough to challenge the God of War itself, I wouldn’t have tolerated you this far.” That was when he revealed why he took me as his wife in the first place. It was only because he wanted to use my divine core to challenge the person who had wed his true love. “Aphrodite?” I murmured. “It has always been her!” He spoke like a loyal lover. In the end, I died in agony. But, for some reason, I was reborn to the same day I was invited to Mount Olympus. Zeus stood before me, waiting for my answer. I shot a glance over at Kael, who looked disgusted just by my mortal presence in the divine court. I sighed and then looked back at Zeus, “I choose Malar, the cursed son of Hades! Please grant him my husband, Allfather.” A heavy silence fell over the court. “There are hundreds of heaven’s deities, strong and handsome, and you are choosing an underworld prince… who is cursed to rot?” The Allfather asked, “Are you sure, Laena?” I immediately knelt before him. “In this life or another, I will take only Malar as my husband, Allfather. Please let me have him.”

After the college entrance exams ended, the class heartthrob suggested the whole class take a trip together. To save on costs, he rallied everyone to go sightseeing at my house instead. "Didn't Nico say his house was bigger than the Palace of Versailles, with more servants than anyone could count?" Everyone watched me like they were waiting for a show, eager to see me humiliated. I kindly warned them that once you set foot in my house, there was no leaving. Tyler Knight, the class heartthrob, laughed. "Doesn't matter. If your house is really that big, we'll stay for the rest of our lives. No, scratch that, we'll stay for the next eight hundred lifetimes. "Nico's really committed to the act. I want to see how he keeps bluffing once we actually show up at his place." Since everyone was dead set on going, I had no choice but to call my father, the King of Hell. "Dad, my classmates are coming over in a few days. Tell Agnes to make a few extra pots of her special soup."

The night I died, my family was busy celebrating my sister's accession to the Hall of Valhalla. We are Valkyries. My mother was a battle warrior, and when she gave birth to the twins, her excitement was above the nine clouds. The reason– my sister was born with golden wings. A very rare colour mentioned in the prophecy–Valkyrie with gold will lead the others to stop Ragnarok. My sister brought fame to our family. I thought we would be happier until I realised the harsh reality of my own parents. Because I was born with black wings, my own parents saw me as taboo and refused to introduce me to the universe as their own. And when the time came for my sister's accession, afraid that dark forces might try to hurt her, my parents made a horrific choice. They dragged me to the edge of the clan's cliffside courtyard, chained me down as bait to draw the monsters away, saying through the barred doors: "Your sister is destined for glory. You were born broken—the least you can do is buy her time to escape.” “Mom… What if they hurt me?” I choked out. “They won't!” My mother spat, her voice laced with disdain as she shot a glance over my wings, “The moment they see your wings, they will realise you aren't worth their time.” My sister, Freya, smirked at me, saying, “Goodbye, sister.” I watched her retreating figure, wondering what my parents would do after they found out they had been wrong about the prophecy since the very beginning. What will they do when they find out that Freya was never the chosen one as they assumed, that my dark wings they always disdain actually belong to Midnight Raven? Will they regret it then?

When my foster parents tried to sell me off to an ugly old nobleman, I finally snapped. I decided to climb Mount Olympus and confront the god I had prayed to all my life: Zeus. I wanted to know why he didn't care about his believers at all. After surviving a hellish climb, I finally laid eyes on him. He was tall, devastatingly handsome, and sat there looking entirely aloof and untouchable. But I didn't care about his divine majesty. I rushed forward, threw my arms around his leg, and started sobbing. Zeus fell silent for a moment, then let out a heavy sigh. "You came all this way... for this?" I glared up at him, fully justified. "Aren't you the most powerful god? Obviously, it's your job to take care of everyone!" Zeus was actually speechless. Eventually, he agreed to send down divine punishment, turning my greedy foster parents into literal fat pigs. But I still wasn't satisfied. "So, next time I get bullied, can I come find you again?" Zeus rubbed his temples in exasperation and handed me a necklace. "Say my name three times in your heart, and I will appear."

On my twentieth birthday, I had to choose a husband before all of Olympus. Everyone thought I would choose Apollo Olympion, the radiant heir of the sun god and the man I had loved for years. In my last life, I did. Because of me, he gained Zeus’s favor, sacred estates, and the right to rise above every divine heir. But after our marriage, he gave his sunlight to Celeste, the dying flower nymph my mother had taken in. When Demeter drove her away, Apollo blamed me. From then on, he hated me. He humiliated me, broke me, and finally let my sacred medicine become slow poison. I died carrying his child, on the night the spring inside me withered. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on my twentieth birthday. This time, I let them have each other. So before Zeus and every god in the Golden Hall, I chose Cassian Hadeion, the last blood of Hades. The cursed underworld prince everyone mocked. Apollo sneered. “Choosing him just to make me jealous?” I ignored him. Because in my last life, after I died, Cassian was the only one who avenged me. Then Apollo stepped closer and whispered, “Funny. That wasn’t who you chose last time.”

My father, Caelion, was the High King of the Three Realms, and my mother was Aurelia, goddess of the sun. As their only son, I was meant to inherit my father’s throne. But my sisters became so absurdly infatuated with Corvin, a lowly sparrow from the mortal world who had assumed human form, that they allowed him to pass himself off as me. Father held my coming-of-age feast at the Silvermere Palace. There, he presented me with the Atlas of Dominion. Corvin had snatched it from my hands and sneered. “I will take your place on the throne.” A murderous rage stirred inside me. In the original timeline, I had swallowed every insult for the sake of my family, only for them to join forces and murder me in the end. Since fate had sent me back to that fated day, I would not make the same mistake twice. I wrenched the Atlas of Dominion from Corvin’s grasp. As he stared at me in disbelief, I punched him. “This was Father’s gift to me. What makes a witless little bird like you think you are worthy of touching it? Guards!”