The Death King

by Jovee Winters

  And worse yet… who was I?

  At that final thought, I felt myself scream through a form that had no mouth, no body, no flesh. But I screamed and screamed and screamed as I sank into the madness of despair.

  Many moons later

  * * *

  I began to have memories.

  Thoughts.

  Nothing cohesive.

  But in the darkness of my waters, I started to remember things, little things, like skin as dark as the night and hair as electric blue as sea coral. Those memories made me smile sometimes, but there was one memory that made me burn. Made me rage and froth and despair.

  A deeply accented voice and dark, haunted eyes.

  Eyes that could peer into my soul.

  Eyes that could reform me, reshape me. I’d felt those same eyes upon my waters. I felt compelled to learn who it was and I would kill it.

  More time passes

  * * *

  I accomplished a miracle. I remembered shape. Form. I remembered how to become the body that I’d desperately wanted to have. It was like a lightning strike in my head. I woke up, and suddenly, it was all just there—how to reshape myself. Now I had flesh. I had limbs. I had a face. And I had teeth.

  Slowly, I’d begun to fashion a home of sorts for myself down in the wet, empty waves. The first thing I’d done was create life.

  But the life I created was dark and deadly and menacing, predators that were ravenous beasts, with fins full of deadly spikes and mouths filled with pointed fangs. Always hungry, the beasts attacked one another with a vengeance and violence that turned my dark waters red with their blood.

  I sat upon a throne of their bones and wondered why I still felt so empty. I was more than this. Somehow, I knew that. My lot wasn’t simply to wither away in the bottom of the unknown and be nothing to no one. I was more. I was so, so much more. I clenched my hands. and my nails—now as long and thick as claws—punctured the flesh of my palms, and wherever my blood flowed, life was created.

  I grinned.

  What are you doing?

  That voice that I was coming to loathe with every fiber of my soul echoed like a lament in my mind, making me angry, making me feel… shame. But she did not speak to me again, and I was grateful for it. Somehow, someway, I would find her, and I would destroy her completely.

  I could not say how long it had been since my birth, but I knew one thing—I was a god. I was the god. I had seen the powers that lived within me. And each day that I remained in the darkness, in the below, I grew more and more impatient to begin.

  Though, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to begin, only that I did.

  All I knew was that there was a journey awaiting me, and that journey was my destiny. So I rose to the surface for the first time since I opened my eyes. I rose and I looked around at a world both foreign and somehow strangely familiar.

  I saw things I never knew existed, or maybe I had known and simply forgotten. But I saw gods among us. Gods of the air and of the fields. They were all over, and they were not relegated to black waters where none knew of them. Only me. Only ever me.

  And I thought that maybe, just maybe, I should come out of the darkness too. Maybe it was my turn. Maybe I would show them who I really was.

  I frowned as a memory suddenly wiggled itself loose.

  My name.

  It was a strong name.

  A powerful name.

  Calypso, that damnable voice echoed deep inside of me, and I ached so fiercely that the waters around me began to boil.

  “No,” I snapped at the ghostly creature trapped within me. “Never. I am not that. I will never be that. I am Thalassa, and the world will burn at my feet!”

  No, that is not you. That is not us.

  And for just a second, my soul clenched so fiercely that it brought heat to my eyes and a heaviness to my body that felt as if it would break me in two. But I was angry at the leech that continued to invade my spirit, and I screamed to the air around me.

  “Go back to the bowels of the underworld where you belong, demon!”

  I trembled, shaking so hard, waiting for her to say something more to me. But she didn’t. She was silent. She was blessedly gone, and my tremors soon faded away. I felt as though I would beat this beast who dared to challenge my might.

  A slow-moving smile rolled over my face, and with a shout of triumph, I lifted my hands. The waters, not just my own but the waters in all of creation, reached out to me. I felt the fires of that power slam into me. It tingled. It was wonderful. And I didn’t feel so alone. I would rule them all. I would reclaim my throne. I would never be alone again.

  I twisted, suddenly aware of another presence surrounding me—in the sky, in my waters, upon the lands. It watched me. I hissed, turned, and looked, soul pounding fiercely inside of me, and I wondered at the strange emotion that rolled through me.

  Almost like hope and despair.

  I roared because I wished the eyes to know that I was a beast, a powerful female. But the eyes did not leave me, and I felt things that caused me to suffer.

  I did not recognize the emotion, only that it hurt. It hurt so badly I thought I might actually die from it. So I dove into my waters, swimming furiously for the deepest trenches, desperate to get away, to hide.

  And only once I was down there did I forget that I was a powerful goddess. I curled up into myself. Water leaked from my eyes, and I could not control it. Wherever that water touched, it killed all the life that I’d made.

  What was wrong with me?

  I did not know how long I had hidden, but I felt angry at myself for that unforgiveable show of weakness. Whoever those eyes belonged to, they could just go hang themselves. They would never run me off again. Not ever.

  I was Thalassa, and I was the goddess.

  I rose to the surface again, kicking my feet and reaching for the sky with my long arms. My body was strong, my movements sure.

  Last night, in the cave of wonders I’d built for myself as a home, I’d started to suffer with flashes of images so vivid that they’d felt as real as the breaths I took.

  A man. And a woman who had looked much like me.

  That man, with his olive-toned flesh and strong, wickedly handsome features, had dared to touch me. And when he had touched me shame had gripped my virgin soul, for I’d loved it, moaned for it, begged for more.

  I broke through the surface, taking in deep breaths of salt-tinged air, and snarled as I looked around, feeling empty and aching fiercely inside. I hated it. I hated him, whoever he was, for daring to imagine he could touch me in that way. Make me want him in that way.

  Whoever that man was, he and I were enemies.

  This I knew.

  This I understood.

  Because when I saw him in my mind’s eye, all I felt was an aching emptiness that made me feel sick and violent and so damned alone. And though I could not remember what he’d done to me, I knew he’d done something. Feelings like these didn’t just happen for no reason. My body remembered the trauma my brain could not.

  I snarled and shoved myself onto a rocky outcropping in my waters. I did as I’d done every morning since coming to the surface. I watched the lesser gods, watched them laugh and revel and play with one another and with mortals. They accepted the mortals’ praises and adulations as if it were their due. As if they deserved it.

  I watched as Apollo teased and made sport of the pretty men and women surrounding his throne of fire. I watched as he simpered and pandered to the plebs with his silly words and vain-filled smiles.

  I watched as Zeus played with woman after woman, promising them the whole world—until he got what he wanted from them. Then, he’d toss them out of Olympus without so much as a fare-the-well, his lusts sated and his promises long forgotten.

  I watched as Hera, in her pettiness against Zeus, took her vengeance out on those very same mortals, turning them into twisted amalgamations of both man and beast.

  I watched as they all lied, cheated, and stole ove
r and over again. The party never ended for them. Their lusts and desires were a bottomless pit that could never be sated.

  And the resentment in my heart grew. It festered.

  I hated them all.

  Every last one of them.

  Because if any praises were due, then surely they were due to life. Surely, they were due to me.

  The waters around me began to boil.

  You are wrong, Thalassa. You are so very wrong.

  I hissed at the voice to shut up, and it did.

  I shot up, still trapped in the memories, the nightmarish visions of what the man with the dark eyes had done to me. I looked around at the darkness of my home, trying to make sense of what I’d seen. I’d not been sleeping, but somehow I’d been entranced.

  And the moment I thought it, I saw the golden dust of Hypnos’s sleeping power flicker by on a current. “Stay out of my realm, Sleep,” I hissed. “This is the only warning you’ll get from me.”

  I felt the absence of Hypnos immediately. He’d left without so much as a word of parting. The bloody, self-righteous lesser god had tried to trick me. But I would be on guard to his wily ways from now on. I curled my lips in disgust.

  I’d never say it out loud, but the trance had done me good. I felt more centered and rested somehow, less manic. And I could recall in sharp detail every nuance of what had been shown me.

  I recalled not just my dream lover’s elicit touch, which had made me burn with shameful, depraved desires, but also his words, softly spoken, but strongly worded.

  “You are mine, Calypso, as surely as my dark heart will always be yours.”

  That name was no longer my own, and yet it had once been connected to me. And if it belonged to me, then it also meant that the dark-eyed man would come for me. I covered my chest with my hand and pressed, knowing I would not feel the one thing I needed to be whole again, the one thing I would need before I could enact my plan—my heart, the final piece of me that the dark-eyed man had stolen.

  I had no proof of that, but my mind was showing me all that I’d forgotten. It was telling me exactly where to go—into the underworld, toward a lesser god they called Hades. He was the dark-eyed man, and he was my true enemy.

  I grinned as my anger rolled like fine whiskey all the way through me. Finally, I understood all that I was seeing. Finally, I got it.

  He had to die so that I could finally, truly live.

  And then, once I was done with him, I would turn my sights on the shining, golden ones of Mount Olympus and burn them all down.

  Pathetic lesser gods. They thought all that praise was theirs, but I knew better. They were vengeful, spiteful children who did not deserve their pedestal. The worshippers deserved a better god.

  And I would be that for them. It was my praise the Olympians stole. My worship.

  I planted my hand on my chest and pressed hard, echoing with the same emptiness that stretched inside of me.

  I knew once I claimed my rightful place, I would heal again. I would be made whole again.

  I would be… happy.

  The voice that was always with me did not speak, but my body burned with her emotion—hate. Violent, twisted, warped hate, and it wasn’t directed at the loathsome gods of Olympus, but at me.

  She was my enemy now.

  I snarled.

  Aphrodite

  * * *

  I stood in my bedroom, staring at the diamonds encrusted on the walls and the floors made of polished ivory. Ribbons of sunlight streamed through the open French doors. My home sat on the second highest peek of Mount Olympus, a gift from Zeus for being so lovely, he’d said. In truth, he’d merely wished to keep me close that he might one day bed me, make me his conquest as he’d done to so many others.

  But it had never worked because another had come before him, one who’d made my entire body burn and my skin tingle with deepest lust and desire. Hephaestus, the god of the forge and Zeus’ personal lightning maker. His body was a thing of deformed beauty and steely, rippling muscles.

  His legs were crippled, his feet utterly useless. He walked with the help of a machine he’d crafted with his own hands. All the gods mocked him, ridiculed him for being less than perfect. But I was the pinnacle of perfection, and perfection bored me. Hephaestus had been utterly fascinating for me—gruff, surly, powerful. A lot like Hades.

  And once upon a time, in another life, he’d been all mine. Yes, I’d had many affairs, but only because I’d been young, and as the goddess of Love and Lust, it wasn’t easy to turn off the thing that made me me. But Hephy had understood my insatiable thirst for more, and he’d never stood in my way.

  It wasn’t until centuries later that I realized I’d stopped bedding others. It hadn’t been a conscious choice, but rather a subconscious one. The fact was that none had satisfied me quite as he had.

  I’d fallen completely mad for my twisted male, and finally, we’d spoken of children, of building a life together, just us. Clutching the sheet in my hand, I collapsed on the bed, which was made up of nothing but silks and furs, and hung my head as I sobbed.

  The words on the parchment were long and slashing, angrily written in his hand. Hephy had left me. For good, he’d said. Called me unfaithful, the Scarlet Woman, Jezebel. I cried.

  The curse had taken so much away from us all. I was cursed to remember everything—remember his heated caresses, the way he made my blood sing and my flesh cry out for more and more of him, the way he’d cover me with his massive body and own me so completely, obliterate all other men or women from my mind and make me see, feel, and taste only him. Only ever him.

  I also remembered my friends, my only true friends in this whole godsforsaken land—Calypso and Hades. My memories of them from the other time always brought me to tears, happy ones, but sad ones now, too, because of all we’d lost.

  It would be so easy to turn my back on them. After all, it was my obsession with reaching out to Hades that had caused my Hephy of this time to sever all ties with me. He thought I wanted the god of death. After all, I spent all my time in the Underworld, trying to make Hades remember, trying to draw out the memories of her the only way I could, using the only powers I had at my disposal—that of the heart, of the soul.

  Hephy had smelled the release of my Lust and had confused it with something else. He did not believe in me in this time. He did not know me because the past he remembered was one that had never happened to me, to the real me. He knew only of Aphrodite from this alternate and twisted time. The slut. The whore. The one who bedded men and women and refused his touch because he was a deformed and misshapen god who could never truly satisfy me.

  My reputation on Olympus was as bad as it had ever been. There’d been a time in the previous world before the curse when I had been that woman. But my friendship with Calypso and witnessing the deep and abiding love that she and Hades had had for one another had opened my eyes to the truth I had buried in my heart all along. I’d simply not been equipped to understand it until then.

  And now my Hephy, my truest love, had abandoned me completely. I swallowed hard, shuddering violently as I stared at the home that was lovelier than any other, dripping with rare gems and ostentatious luxury. But I felt nothing at all for it.

  I felt dead inside. Empty. Without him to fill my bed, all of this was just stuff. Inconsequential nothings that would never make me happy. A part of me wished I’d never started down the road I had or made the choices I’d made. And yet, I suspected that the outcome might well have been the same if I’d remained here on Olympus with Hephy.

  Either way, I’d been doomed to this fate, and deep down, I think I’d always known it.

  I’d tried for weeks to unlock Hades’ heart, but no matter how much I prodded at his mind, nothing seemed to work. I’d sacrificed any time I could have had with my own mate to try fixing what had been broken between my friends. And not just because I’d missed them, but because they were the key to unlocking the happily ever afters in Kingdom. It was more than jus
t fixing Caly and Hades. It was literally the fate of everyone else too.

  But not only had I not succeeded, I’d further widened the gap between Hephy and I and cemented for him that I was no longer worth the wait. Whatever the Dite of his timeline had done to him must have hurt him deeply, so deeply that he was unwilling to even give me, give us, another chance. Hephaestus had always loved me more than he probably should have, especially in my younger years, but he’d been kind and ever patient with me, giving me the space and time to grow up so that I could finally see the man, the wonderful male, that he truly was. I’d done a lot to him in my time, a lot that should have severed his regard for me then. But it hadn’t. So whatever I’d done to him in this time, I couldn’t even begin to fathom how deeply the hurt went, and though I’d had nothing to do with it, I couldn’t help but feel shame for it too. Whatever this version of me had done to him, it had to have been truly heinous to make him abandon me this way.

  I’d lost everything. My lover. My joy. My friends.

  If only I could have made Hephy see that I’d never wanted Hades at all. Yes, the dark god was a thing of preternatural beauty and allure, but his heart, body, and soul had only ever belonged to Calypso. I was the most beautiful in all the lands, but not even I could have swayed his heart from hers. Calypso understood Hades’s darkness in a way I never could or would. Not even Persephone had been enough to force the most secretive of all the gods to open up. Only Calypso, the quirkiest, oldest, and most powerful among us, could have done that.

  I shook my head, dropping my hand to the bed and releasing the grip I had on the divorce decree. Hephaestus had publically declared his severance from me on Olympus. I was no longer Aphrodite mate, of the mighty Hephaestus. Now I was simply Aphrodite… nobody at all. I swallowed hard, feeling sick to my stomach, and clutched at the decree with nerveless fingers.

  Hephy and I had never officially married, but we’d been together many lifetimes and had been an acknowledged pair amongst the gods, to the point that even Zeus had stopped pestering me for a liaison, knowing full well that I would never betray my forge king.