“I don’t care if I die. I am not afraid of dying. Just don’t leave me living like this.”
On the mountain the howl of the wind rose, and the color of my soul bends with the untouched snow. In the chapel I brought his face down to mine. “Please,” I begged, letting him see the desire of my heart in my eyes. “Please, Drake, let me be with you... let me be with you, even if it’s only for thirteen more days.”
“I can’t do it,” he groaned, but I felt it in my bones, and knew it in my heart the second he caved. On the mountain I saw Arias gasp, then sigh as if she knew what was coming. In the chapel Drake went to his knees and pulled me with him. Suddenly, it felt like he pushed a giant shard of glass in my brain. I shook in his arms. Our foreheads were pressed together, and light started to gather in between us, blue streamers of effervescence, that made a music I could never describe.
On the mountain, Drake holds my dead body, his cheek against mine.
I hear a wheezing pop and feel Drake flinch. He turns, frowns when he sees the arrowhead buried in his shoulder. He rips it out of his flesh, blood splashes my cold, grey body. He kisses my forehead, then turns to face Ares, who rushes toward us. No peasant garb for this god now—his armor blazes like supernova.
“What have you done?” shouts Ares. Crimson light shoots from the sword in his hand, and his ringing voice quakes the banks of ice. He looks at Aphrodite in astonishment, then a dull, dawning horror darkens his eyes. Ares leaps from Atheon’s flaming back. Where he lands, the ground splits, jets of water break free of the shifting cracks, and spray the sky.
“It is not what I have done!” shouts Drake.
In the chapel Drake knocked Legux to the floor and laid me on the stone table. I tugged at the hem of his black, cotton t-shirt, he whipped the material over his head, and threw it to the ground. Blue light spilling from the sword touched his skin and made him a creature of fantasy. My fantasy—my world. I felt his hand hot on my naked thigh. The glow growing between us intensified.
On the mountain, rage twists Ares’s handsome face. He walks to his goddess on shaking legs. The second he reaches out his hand to touch her lips, I realize boy-Draken had been dead right. Androsia never had a chance at this god’s heart. “You have killed her,” whispers Ares. On his cheeks I see the silver sheen of tears.
“I have not killed her,” Drake spits out each word. “She is sleeping. I pray she never wakes.”
Ares moves to my dead body. He reaches out a hand to touch a lock of my hair, deep sorrow in his eyes, sorrow I think for both of us. Drake screams the scream of a man gone mad. Blindly he swings Legux, I see the tip of the blade nick Ares’s on his neck—this cut is deeper than the last, and the cut does not close. It bleeds like a severed vein. Ares stares down at his blood, eyes wide, jaw dropped. I wonder if he is fascinated by the blood, or just that someone would dare to draw it. “You cannot mean to fight me, Draken?” I hear the pain and shock in Ares’s voice. “We are brothers,” he gasps. “I don’t want to fight you, I won’t. I never meant for it to come to this. Walk away. You are stepping in the middle of an endless war.”
“You took her! I saw you give her to Aphrodite,” spat Drake, and I saw death in his eyes. “You killed her!”
“I was not under my own power,” pleads Ares. I know he is not lying. I remember Limbo and all it told me. In the chapel we breathed to the rhythm of the throbbing lights.
Drake’s mouth was on my waist, I gasped when I felt his teeth graze my hip bone. Shivers tightened my skin. My pesky nightgown was in the way, I sighed when he lifted it over my head. The blue lights wrapping us in ribbons of moving particles were warm, and glistening. I looked down at my naked body, my hands flew up to cover my breast—a sudden wash of shyness taking control of my limbs. When he kissed my fingers, and said my name, I knew it was the sound of all his prayers.
