Acheron

Don't say it…

But he couldn't help it. The drugs wouldn't let him hold his tongue. "I don't feel human here."

She scowled. "What?"

Acheron stepped away from her in indecision. Part of him didn't want to tell her the truth, but the other was sick of hiding it from her. "Being here makes me feel like a pet dog. It's like living in my uncle's home in Atlantis. I'm not allowed to leave your bedroom unless you're with me. I can't go outside without your permission. It's demeaning."

"Demeaning?" She narrowed her eyes on him. "You are in the temple of a goddess on Olympus. How in the name of Zeus could you be demeaned by that?"

You. Whore. Given her tone, the words were interchangeable. They struck him like a knife through his heart. "Forgive me, akra. It's not my place to make requests of you."

She curled her lip. "Oh, stop with that sniveling tone. I hate it when you do that. Just get out."

He was immediately thrown back into his room. He looked around the plain furnishings and the dark shadows.

"I'm so sick of this."

Desperate for something to change, he grabbed his cloak and headed out of the palace, into the city. He didn't pause until he reached Merus and Eleni's home. The firelight flickered behind the closed shutters and he imagined the two of them inside, laughing and teasing.

Family.

He knew the word, but he didn't really understand it. What it would be like to be welcomed home. To know that out there was one person who would die for him.

You will never find that here.

Acheron looked around the vacant street and remembered the day his father had thrown him out of Estes's home. He'd wandered for months trying to find someplace to rest. Trying to find work. Everyone refused to hire him. At least for anything other than whoring.

You're such a pretty thing… Let's put that body to good use…

He cringed at the bitter memories that always haunted him. I want out.

And he'd tried to find that out. He'd gone to city after city, town after town and they'd all been the same. There was nowhere to go and no one who wanted him for a moment longer than it took for them to screw him. The only reason he'd returned here had been the memory of his sister and the one summer when he'd felt like a person and not an object.

Sick to his stomach, he looked up the hill to where the palace twinkled like a magical star.

And still those Atlantean voices whispered to him.

Come to us, Apostolos. Come home…

Acheron laughed bitterly. "Why? So you can fuck me like everyone else?"

There was nowhere for him to go. No escape from this torment. The only reason he had to live was for the two people in this world who didn't judge him.

Ryssa and Apollodorus. May the gods have mercy on him if he were to lose them. He would never be able to go on should they leave this world without him.

February 18, 9527 BC

"I don't know what it is about you and that baby, but you are the most amazing nurse ever born."

Acheron laughed at Ryssa's comment as she took Apollodorus from his arms. Neither of them could understand why Acheron's presence calmed his nephew, but there was no denying that anytime Apollodorus was fussy, he calmed down immediately for Acheron. In fact, Ryssa had begun bringing the babe to him virtually every night so that she could sleep.

"You know you can leave him with me any time at all. I think we get along so well because we both function on the same level." Acheron ruffled the soft hair on his nephew's head.

Smiling, Ryssa wrapped the blanket around Apollodorus. "Thank the gods I have you. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't here to help out with him."

An instant later the doors to Acheron's room crashed open. Six guards stormed in to tackle him to the floor.

"What is this?" Ryssa demanded.

They didn't respond. Acheron fought them, but in the end they shackled him while the baby screamed in protest.

"He's done nothing!" Ryssa shouted as she followed them out of the room and down the hallway.

They didn't stop until they'd taken him to the throne room and forced him to his knees in front of his father and Styxx who sat smugly on their thrones while they stared at him in disdain.

Acheron glared at them. "Why am I here?"

His father came off his throne with a bellow of rage. "You do not ask questions of me, traitor!"

Stu

"Father!" Ryssa snapped. "Have you lost your reason?"

His answer was to backhand Acheron. "Where were you last night?"

Acheron panted at the pain that exploded through his cheek and eye. He'd been with Artemis, but he didn't dare tell his father that. "I was in my room."

His father struck him again. "Liar. I have witnesses who saw you in a stew, plotting my murder."

Stu

His father hit him again before turned to the guards. "Torture him until he decides to tell us the truth."

Acheron cried out a denial as he fought the guards holding him.

"Father, no!" Ryssa moved forward.

The king turned on her with a feral snarl. "You're not going to save him this time. He's committed treason and I will not allow that to go unanswered."

His breathing ragged, Acheron who was being restrained by the guards, met and held Styxx's gaze. How could his brother plot the death of a man who worshiped the ground he walked on? He would sell his soul to have just a portion of the love Styxx spurned.

But there was no need to ask for clemency. His father had already made up his mind. Only the bastard Acheron could be the traitor. Never Styxx. The only person who could exonerate him was Artemis. And she'd rather die than openly admit he'd been with her in her temple last night.

Acheron was hauled out of the throne room and taken to the prison below.

Even though he fought the guards every step of the way, it wasn't enough to prevent them from stripping his clothes off his body and then chaining him down on the interrogation block. The granite stone chilled him to his bones. There were blood stains permanently dried in the stone and there was no doubt that his own blood would soon mix with that of the others who'd been tortured and killed before him.

Closing his eyes, Acheron tried to think of something, anything to protect himself from what was about to happen. But as the interrogator came forward, he knew there was nothing he could do.

Nothing could save him from this.

"The king wants the names of everyone you met with."

Acheron winced in fear of what would come when he told the truth. "I didn't meet with anyone."

He brought a hot steel whip down across Acheron's chest.

Acheron screamed out as he realized just how impossible this was going to be.

Ryssa was terrified as she returned to her room and handed her crying son over to his nurse. What was she going to do?

Unlike her father, she knew who the real traitor had to be. If witnesses saw someone tall, blond and looking like Acheron, it was Styxx. Acheron would have nothing to gain by killing the king, other than vengeance and he wasn't the kind of person to go seeking that.

Not to mention Acheron would never have been in public uncovered, especially not a stew. Had he done so, he'd still be there, beating people off him.

"What have you done, Styxx?" she whispered through the tight lump in her throat.

Why would he plot against his own father? But then she knew, the history of mankind was written by sons wanting more and willing to do anything to get it. Even so, she'd thought Styxx above such scheming. Who could have poisoned his mind?