Plot Twists Mythology Short Stories & Face Slapping Novels

On Mount Olympus, one law is ironclad: a god must never fall in love with a mortal. But Aresios, the God of War and heir to the King of the Gods, bound his very soul to mine. For me, he endured ninety-nine bolts of divine lightning and knelt before the Olympian altar for three days and three nights. Ichor soaked his armor, yet he smiled and kissed my lips. "Elara, don't be afraid. I want only you." The gods finally relented, on one condition: he had to leave behind a pure-blooded divine heir. After that, the words I heard most from Aresios were, "Just wait a little longer." The first time, it was to wait while he bedded another goddess. He and Cassia, the Goddess of Fate, lay together for thirty nights, until his golden ichor quickened in her womb. The second time, he told me to wait. Their first child was a girl, unable to inherit his divine mantle. The gods demanded a son. So he lay with Cassia for another ninety-nine nights, until she once again conceived a divine child. Just when I thought the ordeal was over, their newborn daughter was struck by Hydra's venom. The entire divine realm was convinced I had done it. As I was thrown into a cold bronze cage by the river Cocytus, Aresios stood outside the door, his eyes crimson. "You know what Hydra's venom does to an infant god. Why would you harm our daughter?" That one word. Our daughter. I was too numb to feel the pain. When the bronze cage door opened again, I unclenched my blood-drenched fists. This time, I would not wait.

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.”

Our city-state is a thousand miles from Mount Olympus. But we have a custom. One that can never be broken. Every girl about to be married… her fiancé must enter the Temple of Hera. Led by her father. To ask for the goddess’s blessing. If he walks out unharmed, it means the gods approve. A lifetime of happiness. At twenty, my two younger sisters wore their bridal crowns. They married the knights of their dreams. But I'm thirty. And still unmarried. Because every fiancé who enters that temple… breaks our engagement the moment he comes out. They even draw their swords. They try to kill me. My newest fiancé was a noble knight from the capital. He scoffed at the superstitions of our remote city. He insisted on going in. My father, the High Priest, led him into the temple. But when he walked out… his eyes were completely gone. He tackled me. His hands crushed my throat. I don't understand. What is hidden inside the sacred Temple of Hera? What could corrupt a noble soul in an instant? My father knows. He knows every man who goes in will want me dead. So why does he keep leading them into that temple?

My wife, Cassia, was a wood nymph. A cursed one. Forbidden to love mortals. But she fell for me anyway. Every time her heart fluttered for me, the gods struck her down with agony. She willingly endured that torture ninety-nine times just for a chance to be with me. Then, demons dragged me to Tartarus. Hellfire and whips became my sun and moon. Right as I was about to break, I remembered a prayer Cassia taught me—a desperate whisper to the gods. It finally worked. But instead of help, I heard Cassia talking to her patron goddess, Hecate. "Cassia, how could you bargain with the Furies? You let them drag Aiden to Tartarus!" Cassia's voice choked with desperate tears. "Adonis was supposed to suffer this fate. But he's a fragile mortal. This would destroy his soul! I had no choice if I wanted to save him." "Aiden is a child of prophecy. His soul is strong. The Fates watch over him. He'll survive." "Once I save Adonis, I can stay in the mortal realm forever. Then, I'll use my eternal life and all my love to repay the hell he's enduring for me." My heart shattered. As the monsters closed in on me, I stopped fighting. I gave up.

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."

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.”

That night at the Holy Banquet, the Arrow of Desire struck both the divine prince Cassius, a descendant of Zeus, and his father, Theron. If they didn’t mate before the moon set, their divine power would implode, shattering their very essence. In my past life, I had secretly loved Cassius for ten whole years. So, when he grabbed me, his body burning up, I didn't say no. After one wild night, I was carrying his thunder-blooded child and successfully married into the divine palace. But after the wedding, he was ice-cold to me. He was convinced I had stolen the Arrow of Desire, all for the sake of marrying into divinity. Even after I gave him children, he never claimed me as his wife before the gods. He saved all his tenderness for his one true love—the holy maiden Lyra, who was forced to marry into the Sea Realm and eventually died in a storm. Later, I was branded as "jealous and wicked," scorned by all of divine kind. So when my children’s overwhelming lightning magic went out of control, no one came to help. My babies and I were consumed by that arcane tempest. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the night he was shot. The young divine prince Cassius, burning with heat, reached out to me with desperate hunger. But high up on the throne... His father, Theron—the beautiful, ruthless God King who had ruled for centuries—was also losing the battle against his own searing desire. Everyone expected me to throw myself into Cassius’s arms. But this time, I gathered my skirts, strode past him, and sat right on the God King’s lap.

After the War of the Gods, Olympus forged a new pact with the last of the Titans. From then on, the mortal realm was ruled by demigods. Those who carried the blood of the gods within them. Once a century, Olympus held the Sacred Marriage. The twelve ruling gods would choose mortal noblewomen as brides. Their goal: to sire heirs with divine cores. The rule was simple: whoever birthed a demigod first would see her husband crowned the next High Councilor of the Gods. In my past life, I married Deimos, the son of Ares, a man renowned for his fierce devotion. Soon after, I gave him a son—a demigod brimming with raw power. A prophecy declared our boy would one day rule Olympus, and Deimos rode that promise to absolute power. Meanwhile, my sister Evadne, blinded by the beauty of the Sun clan, insisted on marrying Lucian, Apollo's playboy heir. But Lucian's philandering left her with more than a broken heart. He gave her a divine blight, a curse that left her barren. She blamed me for it. She hated me with every fiber of her being. On the very night I was crowned Queen of the Gods, she set the holy temple ablaze, burning me and my son alive. Then I opened my eyes. I was back on the day of the Sacred Marriage. Evadne had already broken into the temple and climbed into Deimos's bed. I knew it right then. She had been reborn, too. But she didn't know the truth. The blood of the War God is violent. Deimos wasn't a prize to be won. He was a monster in disguise.

On their wedding day, my father, Cassian Varen, swore by the River Styx, "I will cherish my wife and ensure that her bloodline flourishes under my protection." Yet my mother, Thea Theron, miscarried five times in a row. And I was the unlucky soul who had tried to be born all five times. In the Asphodel Meadows, I lay in my swaddling clothes and wailed. My cries rang through the Underworld for seven days and seven nights. At last, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, couldn't take it anymore. He rubbed his brow and told the goddess Hecate, "Make sure she's born safely on her sixth try." So Hecate created a soul-link between my mother and me. I thought I'd finally make it this time! But when I opened my eyes, my father was carrying another baby toward my mother. "Darling, meet our first son." Meanwhile, I lay in a wicker basket, about to be carried away and thrown out. Frantic, I screamed in my head. Mom! Another woman had that baby! Your real daughter is right here. Save me! My mother was just starting to smile when her whole body went rigid.

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.

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.