ALSO BY EMILY R. KING
The Evermore Chronicles
Before the Broken Star
Into the Hourglass
Everafter Song
The Hundredth Queen Series
The Hundredth Queen
The Fire Queen
The Rogue Queen
The Warrior Queen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2021 by Emily R. King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542023733
ISBN-10: 1542023734
Cover design by Ed Bettison
For Mom.
You wouldn’t like me getting a tattoo with your name on it, so you get this instead:
MY MOM IS A BADASS.
Love you!
(You might want to skip Chapter 16.)
CONTENTS
START READING
TITAN HOUSEHOLDS
MAP
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A tale is told that only women know.
For when the men of the Golden Age passed down Their stories of victory and sacrifice, They did not think to ask the women theirs.
TITAN HOUSEHOLDS
FIRST HOUSE
Cronus & Rhea
Aeon Palace, Mount Othrys
SECOND HOUSE
Coeus & Phoebe
Sage Tower, Pillar of the North
THIRD HOUSE
Crius & Eurybia
Blue Moon Fortress, Pillar of the South
FOURTH HOUSE
Hyperion & Theia
Coral Mansion, Pillar of the East
FIFTH HOUSE
Iapetus & Clymene
Dimmet Stronghold, Pillar of the West
SIXTH HOUSE
Oceanus & Tethys
Fort Admiral, Location Unknown
PROLOGUE
My mother told me that men would speak about the Golden Age as a time of peace and happiness for all. Passed-down stories would boast of an era of general ease when the lives of men were blissful, full of abundance, and blessed with spontaneous growth, each man unconstrained in heart and soul. However, the women of our age would tell a very different story.
I thought of my mother’s words while the pounding grew louder at the front gates. The vestals hurried into the courtyard, their panic starkly evident in the torchlight.
“They’ve come for her,” said Matron Prosymna.
“What about the children?” asked a vestal.
The matron beckoned us to leave the kitchen, where my two older sisters and I had just finished setting the table for the evening meal.
“Follow me, girls. Quickly.” The matron shooed us across the courtyard to the toolshed as though an ox-horned river god were chasing us. “All of you inside. Cleora, keep your sisters out of sight.”
“Yes, High Matron,” my sister replied.
Cleora, Bronte, and I climbed into the narrow shed and crouched together, me in the middle. At eleven, I was three years younger than Cleora and two years younger than Bronte. The cupboard accommodated us with little room to spare.
The pounding at the gates grew more urgent.
“By order of the First House, open up!” a soldier boomed.
Matron Prosymna shut the shed door, narrowing my view to a slim gap, and strode to the gates. Her vestals formed a line behind her and stood as still as the stone statue of Gaea cradling the world in her full womb, which graced the center of the courtyard. The vestals’ white chitons flowed airily to their ankles. Each one’s hair was sheared close to her scalp and layered in feathery wisps. The matron’s laurel crown, an emblem of her lofty station, was nested in her short gray tresses.
“Veil yourselves,” she said.
Each vestal donned her velo. Constructed of stiffened linen painted gold, the modesty masks depicted various beasts and creatures. The velos had no hole for the mouth, just for the eyes; the beak on the matron’s peacock mask hid her lips as she spoke.
“We represent Gaea, the Protogenos of the earth, acting in her boundless name with loyalty, virtue, and re—” The banging at the gate interrupted the matron. “Restraint.”
My sisters and I tugged down our velos. Like all girls age six or older, we carried our modesty masks with us at all times. We had not taken them off since our mama came home last night from serving in the Aeon Palace and told us to flee our city to the Mother Temple.
The matron squared her shoulders. “Let them in.”
Two vestals slid back the iron bar from across the double doors. The gates burst open. Liege men filed in, their shiny breastplates gleaming over knee-length chitons in the torchlight. I moved my head to peer through the gap as nine men spread out to search the courtyard, kitchen, and stables.
I squirmed against my sisters to see better.
“Althea,” Cleora hissed. “For once in your life, be still!”
Sitting still was very difficult, but I tried to do as she said.
Matron Prosymna clasped her hands in front of her. “Divine day, General. How may we help you?”
The brutish general, identifiable by his scarlet cloak, slid his gaze from her to the other women. “Where is the handmaid Stavra?”
“She isn’t here,” the matron replied. “Only us vestals.”
“Stavra Lambros!” the general bellowed, his voice echoing off the temple walls. A pair of soldiers returned from the stables and reported to him. He reeled on the matron. “You say Stavra isn’t here? Then why is her horse in your stables?”
Matron Prosymna unclasped her hands and gripped them tighter. “Sometimes travelers board their horses—”
The general pushed her into the line of vestals behind her and drew his sword. “Speak the truth, woman. We come in the name of the Almighty, the God of Gods.”
The matron trembled, shaken by the reference to our ruler.
“One last chance,” the general threatened. “Where is Stavra?”
Matron Prosymna held his stare. The general raised his blade to her chest. Still, she did not speak. He reared his sword back to strike her.
“Decimus!”
Mother stood at the other end of the courtyard. A tall, broad-shouldered woman thwarting propriety by not wearing her velo, Stavra Lambros’s charming beauty drew attention everywhere she went. She had warned us Decimus might pursue our family. We had often encountered the general—a bearish, ill-tempered lout with ruddy cheeks that drooped into jowls—while waiting outside the palace gates for Mother to finish her servant duties.
“Seize her,” he said.
Two liege men rushed her. Mother pulled a dagger from the folds of her sk
irt. Decimus waved for his men to stay back.
“This is Gaea’s house,” Mother said. “My family has sought sanctuary with the Mother of All Gods.”
“The elder gods bow to the Titans,” Decimus countered. He stepped forward, then again, and again, pausing just outside of her striking range. “You’ve been summoned by the Almighty. Come with us or forfeit your life.”
Mother held her stance of attack, her eyes as bright as licking fire. Decimus snatched her wrist and wrenched her arm over her head. She cried out and released her weapon, and he yanked her against him and lifted his sword to the delicate tendon along her throat. She tilted her chin up and spit. His head reared back, saliva dripping from his lashes.
“Brazen bitch.”
He swung down, whacking her over the head with the hilt of his sword. Mother’s eyes rolled back as she sagged in his arms.
I gasped softly. Cleora covered my mouth with her hand, pressing my quivering lips. The cupboard stank of urine. Bronte must have wet herself. Matron Prosymna sank to her knees before the general. “Spare her,” she begged. “For her children’s sake.”
Decimus passed Mother’s limp body to a liege man. “Put her on my horse.”
His subordinate carried my mother out through the gates.
The other liege men harassed the vestals, plucking at their masks and skirts to make them squeal, and stripping three women of their velos. One soldier forcibly kissed a woman while Decimus watched indifferently.
A flame of fury hit me. The God of Gods gave and he took, both in unbridled abundance. As a Titan, and ruler of the First House, he had the whole of the world as his inheritance. But my mama was no one’s possession.
I wrenched from Cleora’s hold and pushed out of the shed. Bronte shrunk away from the open door while Cleora grabbed for me. I slipped from her grasp and picked up the dagger. The general caught sight of me as I charged him.
My blade grazed his right forearm. He sucked in a cavernous breath, drinking in the whole night sky. Matron Prosymna ran forward to grab me, but Decimus moved faster, and he struck me so hard, I flew into the statue of Gaea and tumbled to her feet.
I landed on my side, short-winded, my velo knocked off. I reached for it, but Decimus stomped down, crushing the stiff linen and pinning my hand to the ground. He pressed his foot harder, unrelenting despite my moan.
“You’re Stavra’s youngest daughter, Althea.”
“Let my mama go.”
“You plead for her while I crush your fingers?” He stepped off my hand and inspected me hungrily. “With your dark hair and golden skin, and those lovely wide eyes, your beauty will outmatch your mother’s.” He raised his voice to the matron. “Has Althea been tagged?”
“Pardon, General?”
“Has another man spoken for her?” he enunciated impatiently.
“Not yet, but—”
“I’ll return for her when she’s ripened. Don’t try to hide her or pull her into your zealot’s fold, or I will see that the Almighty learns that you do not display his alpha and omega insignia on your front gate, and he will dismantle this ‘temple’ brick by brick.” Decimus wiped at the cut on his arm, smearing blood onto his finger, then drove his bloody fingertip between my lips. “I’ll return for you, kitten.”
As he stalked out of the gates, his company marching after him, I scrubbed at my lips and spit in the dirt. Matron Prosymna scurried to my side.
“Althea, you foolish, foolish girl.” She glared at my sisters. “You were supposed to watch her!”
“I tried,” Cleora replied.
“You failed,” the matron snapped.
Bronte’s soft weeping rang out from the shed. Cleora comforted our sister despite her own tears. Neither one looked at me.
I pushed to my feet and hobbled to the gates. The liege men retreated into the twilight with our mama slung over Decimus’s horse like nothing more than a sack of grain.
Ten months had passed when a pair of soldiers entered my sisters’ and my bedchamber in a chorus of heavy breaths and shuffling feet. Their brass uniforms, marked across the chest with the alpha and omega symbols of the First House, glinted in the waxing moonlight. Though the men were both too slender to be Decimus, I tensed.
Bronte and Cleora slept across the chamber on the bed they shared. Since we had no other family to speak of, the vestals had taken us in. Matron Prosymna was a harsh matriarch who allowed little time for anything other than chores. I hadn’t danced—my favorite communal activity—since our arrival. Lying nearest to the door on my own smaller cot, I pretended to sleep as the men set a woman down beside me on the thinly stuffed mattress. I couldn’t see much except her frail body, then the soldiers shifted back, and a moonbeam grazed her face.
Mama.
The men left in a parade of rushed footsteps. I waited for my mother to speak or move. Very carefully, so as not to startle her, I touched her hand.
“Mama?”
Her breaths deepened and lengthened, and her chest burst with tears. Since her capture, we had prayed morning and night to Gaea for her return. Most women taken by the Almighty were never seen again. A bag of two hundred silver pieces would arrive on their kin’s doorstep as though the worth of a soul could be weighed in silver. A mortal soul, that was. The Titans were legions of their own self-worship. Though monsters, they esteemed themselves above the stars.
Mother slid her hand into mine and squeezed. I rolled over to hug her, draping my arm across her waist, and gaped at her swollen belly.
“Mama?” I whispered again, scared now.
“The babe is strong,” she rasped. “I cannot hold it much longer. I’ll try to stay with you and your sisters. I’ll try, but . . .”
But her mortal womb wasn’t meant to birth a Titan.
On occasion, women impregnated by the Almighty staggered into the temple for aid. Couplings between a god and mortal always led to procreation. Childbirth came, and with it, tragedy.
Mother grasped her belly, her cheeks puffing as she spoke. “Listen closely, Althea, my shooting star. Gaea gave women many talents. We are strong—stronger than any monster. Weak Titans fear us and try to control that power, but a woman’s love is her wings. We can soar high, higher than the gods.”
Her belly bunched up, the skin and muscle hardening. She clenched her teeth to quiet the pain, but it found a pathway out of her in an agonizing groan.
Vestals rushed into the chamber with extra blankets and a pail of hot water. At their exclamations of alarm, Bronte and Cleora roused and blinked in astonishment. One of the vestals urged them to get up and began ushering all three of us out.
“Althea stays,” Mother said, clinging to my hand.
I exchanged wide-eyed glances with my older sisters, then they were pushed into the corridor.
Mother screamed, a feral release of agony. Matron Prosymna and the cook, Acraea, ran in, and I backed away so they could work.
“The babe is coming fast,” Acraea said.
“Then we will work faster,” replied the matron.
Bearing down, Mother screamed again. I had heard it told that Titan babies entered the world in the same way they lived—with the rage of thunder—but I had never been present for a delivery. In truth, I had never seen any of the monsters up close.
Mama cried out again. I pressed my shoulder blades against the wall, unable to remember the last time I was so still. The chamber smelled of musty sweat and something older, more primal. Mother pushed, but her body worked just as hard against her.
The seconds built to minutes.
Long, long minutes.
The vestals urged her to bear down again, despite the blood . . . and more blood. Mother gave her mightiest scream yet, legs trembling, face scrunched up in torment. Her next was drowned out by a high-pitched wail.
She sank back, her tears of pain dissolving into gentle sobs of relief. The matron cleaned up the babe and lifted it for all to see.
“A girl,” she announced.
The baby
didn’t appear as though she had been sired by a monster. Titans could grow to twenty-five feet tall. The Almighty was the biggest at fifty. Yet Titans were still more human than Gaea’s first creations, the Cyclopes or Hecatoncheires—fiends with fifty heads and a hundred hands each. The babe was the same size as a mortal newborn, with all her fingers, toes, and eyes in the correct places. Her only oddity was her thick, curly black hair, which made it look as if she wore a wool hairpiece.
Perhaps she didn’t resemble a monster because she was only half of one.
My mama whimpered, and her sweaty face drained of color. The stench of fresh blood trickled into something darker, a sort of decay, flooding my nostrils. The infant let loose another cry. Matron Prosymna passed the babe to Acraea, then she and the other vestals worked on my mama. They spoke nary a word, their lips pinched white.
Mother extended her hand to me. I went to her slowly. Usually, I walked slightly forward on my toes as though I were always one leap away from taking flight, but now my feet dragged across the floor.
My mother gripped my hand with remarkable strength. “Althea, you’re not yet grown, but soon you’ll be a woman, and with that comes tremendous blessings and burdens.”
I could hardly hear her above the wailing infant, so I merely nodded.
“The guild will watch over you. Heed the matron and hearken to the goddess. Don’t forget your worth as a woman, Althea. You and your sisters need each other. Vow to me that you will protect them.”
“Me, Mama? Shouldn’t Cleora or Bronte—?”
“Your destiny is to guide and protect your sisters. Family doesn’t abandon family. Do you swear you will watch over them?”
“I swear.”
“Good, my shooting star.” She patted my hand and let go. “Remember your wings.”
Acraea laid the swaddled infant beside my mother and tucked a blanket around them. Mother rested her forehead against the rosy babe’s, as she often did with my sisters and me. She said she did so to memorize our smell, our touch, and the shapes of our souls.
Mother hummed her favorite lullaby, a morose melody about Gaea’s grief over her monstrous children, trapped in the underworld. The infant suckled at Mama’s breast while the matron worked to stem the blood dripping to the floor. Mother finished the lullaby, then laid her head back and shut her eyes. The newborn drifted off in her arms, and they both fell silent.
Wings of Fury Page 1
