Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 123065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
Later, the people celebrate victory with loud shouts and cries.
He watches in the shadows while they kiss their wives and hug their children.
Ra doesn’t celebrate, he just watches, sadness etched on his shadowed face.
He has no partner. No children. He has nothing but himself, always looking down, while we look up.
He lowers his head and returns to the mountains of Olympus. They don’t worship him. They merely acknowledge his win. They don’t appreciate what he’s done for their very power, for their families, for the world. They expected it and when any being has expectations that are met, they simply…forget the sacrifice made. Expectation can easily be confused with chaos itself.
I expect you to do the dishes—why would I celebrate your accomplishment?
I expect you to do your job---why give you an award?
Some might even say expectation is worse than evil. Evil at least manifests itself. Expectation simply stares, nods, and forgets why you had such a strong purpose in the first place.
I break away from our kiss.
“What was that?” I ask, gasping.
“The past.” His eyes are still black, but I’m not as afraid as I was. He’s being gentle with me when he could kill me with a flick of his finger. “Humans can be so off putting, patting themselves on the back when the battle wasn’t even won by them, but by assistance from the gods, and because of our benevolence, when they went to drink, we went to each sinking ship and sent off their warriors so they would be celebrated. And what do they do? They ignore us!” He grits his teeth. “So now you see why we’re owed a sacrifice. We. Are. Owed!” He jerks back. “Thousands of years of cleaning up messes, and all we ask is for this one small thing. All I ask.” He chokes. “And yet I can’t anymore. I. Can’t. Ask.”
His hair starts burning with a low orange and blue flame.
I reach up and pull him back down, only a little surprised that he comes willingly. “Tell me about Daggon.”
He relaxes against my chest, his head so big that it nearly covers both breasts.
He sighs and then sighs again like he’s tired of existing, tired of talking, just tired. “Wine and dine him, he would be easy, Cleo. So very easy to seduce.”
“And you?”
His eyes dart away. Confidence suddenly gone, sadness replacing what was once there. “Nobody has accomplished it.”
“I guess I need to work on my kissing skills.”
“It’s not that,” he says softly. “My heart, while still dead inside, is trying to beat for you. How sad, to have the realization that if I had made another choice, things would be different, but I don’t think I would survive it.”
“Survive what?”
“Killing you. If I didn’t stop myself.”
I take a deep breath. “And you’re so sure your heart is frozen right now?”
“Halfway, at least, unless you keep forcing me to talk to you and humanize you.”
I can’t help the smile that forms on my face. For an ancient immortal, he’s kind of clueless about what he protects. “It’s kind of what humans do.”
He laughs; it’s mocking. “I’m aware. I am, after all, one of their gods.”
“What do you do for fun?” I ask.
He’s quiet for at least four or five minutes and then answers stiffly, “I don’t really know.”
“Do you like to run? Play board games? I mean you’ve at least played Monopoly, right?”
He tenses and stares out at the sea. “I play with the world, with the gods, my creations, I don’t play board games.”
“You should.” I grip his shoulder. “Tell you what, if you play checkers with me, I promise I’ll write another three hundred names tonight.”
He does a double take, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “Three hundred?”
“You have to sacrifice soon, right? So the sooner the better? Just play checkers with me.”
He snaps his fingers into the air, Dag appears inside the cave. “Yes?”
“Get a game of checkers for us.”
Dag’s eyes go between us briefly before he frowns. “Um, but why? You don’t like games and---”
“---Do not question me!” Cyrus yells.
“But—” He looks at me.
I shake my head.
I can’t tell if his stare is more judgmental or concerned that Cyrus has finally become unhinged. “Right away.”
By the time he’s back, Cyrus’s been quizzing me on ways to win, competitive god that he is.
And by the time the checkerboard is there he just picks up the pieces and goes. “I’ll be red.”
“Shocker.”
I set up the board, and he stares down at it, tears gone, and smiles.
CHAPTER 31
CYRUS
“One should not ask more than would be thought fitting.” – Króka-Refs Saga, ch.10
Checkers. How basic and simple. She teaches me the rules while I try to ignore the pulsing in my chest. She’s so pretty, I want to hate her.
And again, unafraid even though her death literally looms over her like a dark stormy cloud.