เรื่องสั้นแนว Feel-Good Story Mythology และนิยาย Bias ในฉาก Face Slapping

I was the most beloved youngest daughter of the Sun Palace. When my father, Apollo, began arranging my wedding, my three brothers were certain the bride promised to Hephaestus, the Fire God of the Northern Realm, was Daphne, a mortal girl he had adopted from the human world. They took my wedding gown, my red-gold crown, even the Sunset Cloud Sea, and used them all for Daphne's wedding. I told them I was the bride. My eldest brother Orion scoffed, "Father spoils you enough to pluck the stars for you. Why would he ever let you marry a crippled Fire God with a shattered divine core?" My second brother Pyron looked at me with disappointment. "Daphne is about to get married. Are you really going to take her one and only wedding away from her?" My third brother Zephyros stepped in front of her. "You have everything. All she has is us. If you keep fighting for attention, we'll make sure you can't even set foot in the wedding hall." They thought I was just fighting for attention, and they believed that no matter how unfairly they treated me, I would always stay at the Sun Palace. That certainty lasted until the wedding day, when Hephaestus descended from his molten-gold chariot and reached out his hand to me before all the gods. "Helias, I've come to marry you."

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.

It’s been three years since my union ceremony with Cassia, the goddess of war. But she has refused to complete our final Soul-Binding before the Moirai eighteen times. Eighteen. The first time, it was for a mortal servant she’d taken in, a boy named Lycus. His fragile mortal blood needed purifying. I waited for her all day in a freezing hailstorm, right in front of Hestia’s eternal flame. The second time, she heard the mortal’s cry for help through a communication stone. She wheeled her chariot around and left me standing on the temple steps. After that, every time we were supposed to take our vows, something would happen. Some new problem with that fragile mortal. My heart turned to ash. I was done. But when I stepped onto the ferry to the Isle of Oblivion—the gods' forbidden land—she chased me. Like a madwoman. Begging me to forgive her.