Acheron (Dark-Hunter #15)(14)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

"But," she said thoughtfully, "If you can come by right at dawn, there’s seldom anyone around. We’re cleaning up from the night and all our clients are gone. I could let you in to see him then."

Relieved, I smiled. "Thank you. I’ll see you at dawn."

May 18, 9529 BC

The morning was cold as if it were as afraid as I was. Alone, I snuck from the palace and crept silently through the city, following Catera’s directions until I found her stew.

As she predicted, there was no one around.

She let me inside through her back door, then led me quietly through the house to a room in the far back. I kept my head and face well covered and did my best not to look at the poor souls we passed.

She opened a door.

I stepped inside hesitantly, expecting to see Acheron. He wasn’t there. Instead, I heard water splashing in the room set off to the side and knew he must be bathing.

The musty scent of sex hung heavy in the room and I tried not to look at the freshly made bed. I closed my eyes as I thought of Styxx and the way he lived his life in comfort and peace while Acheron was forced to this.

I couldn’t imagine the degradation that Acheron must suffer every day. The pain.

He entered the room completely nak*d, toweling his hair dry. He pulled up short as he caught sight of me standing just inside the threshold.

"Forgive me, my lady," he said in that sultry, smooth voice of his that held just a hint of an Atlantean accent. I was grateful that at least the balls were no longer lining his tongue. "I thought I was through for the night."

I lowered my cowl.

Recognizing me instantly, he narrowed his gaze. "Well, if it isn’t Sister Ryssa. Tell me, are you here to save me or to f**k me? Oh wait, I forgot. When you save me, you do f**k me, don’t you?"

Tears pricked my eyes at his hostile disdain. But then who could blame him for it? "You don’t have to be so crude."

"You’ll excuse me if my manners are lacking. Being a whore, I’m not very well versed in how decent people speak. The only time any of them converse with me is to give me instruction on how to better screw them." He dropped the towel on the bed and moved to a chair by the window.

Ignoring me, he sat down and opened a box on the table. I watched in silence as he placed several strange weeds and flowers in a flagon. He lit them, then closed the lid. Picking up a small clay bowl, he held it to his face, covering his mouth and nose, and inhaled it.

"What are you doing?"

He took several breaths before he pulled the clay bowl away from his mouth. "I’m using Xechnobia." At my frown, he explained it to me. "It’s a drug, Ryssa."

"Are you sick?"

He laughed at that, then inhaled more of it. "That’s a matter of opinion," he said after a small pause. A tic started in his jaw as he watched me closely. "I use it so that I can forget how many pairs of hands I’ve had on me in one day. It allows me to sleep in peace."

I’d heard of such things, but in my world they didn’t exist. No doubt it was Estes who’d shown him the drug. I wanted to weep at what had become of the Acheron who used to bake bread and play games with Maia.

"So why are you here, Princess?" he asked.

"I wanted to see you."

"Why?"

"I was worried about you. I saw you today in the market and wanted to see how you were doing."

Acheron added more herbs to the pot, then blew on them to stir the embers around them. "I’m well. Now you can go home and sleep in wealth and good conscience." The mocking sarcasm of his tone stung me soul-deep.

I shook my head as tears gathered in my eyes. "How can you do this to yourself?"

He arched a mocking brow. "I’m a trained dog, Ryssa. I’m only doing what I was well taught to do."

"This is so demeaning. How could you have gone back to this?"

His eyes stormy, I saw the rage he bore me. "Gone back to this? Why, big sister, you speak as if this is a bad thing. For me it’s paradise. I only have to f**k ten to twelve people a night, generally only one at a time. I’m finally allowed to eat at a table, not off the floor or someone’s lap. No one makes me beg for food or punishes me the few days a year when I’m sick and can’t screw. If anyone hurts or beats me, Catera bans them from her stew. She even pays me for my work and I get a day off once a week. Best of all, when I go to sleep, I go to bed alone. I’ve never had it so good."

I wanted to scream at the horror he described. The fact that I knew it was the truth only hurt me more. "And so you’re content to live like this?"

He set the clay pot down on the table and pierced me with his mercurial gaze. "What do you honestly think, Princess?"

"I think you’re worth more than this."

"Well, aren’t you special to be able to see me as something more than a whore? Let me educate you on what the rest of the world sees. I left Atlantis and was sick for weeks from the drugs Estes had forced down my throat."

I remembered well how ill he’d been when I had rescued him.

"I had nothing but the himation you gave me. No money, no clothes. Nothing."

"So you went back to whoring?"

"What choice did I have? I traveled far and wide, while trying to find work doing anything else, but no one would hire me to work. When people see me, they only want one thing from me and I happen to be very good at it. Tell me, Princess, if Father threw you out tomorrow, nak*d on the streets, what would you do? What do you know how to do?"

I lifted my chin. "I could find something."

"I defy you to try it, Princess." He gestured toward the door behind me. "Go ahead. I don’t even know how to sweep a floor. All I know how to do is use my body to please others. I was sick and alone with no references, friends, family or money. I was so weak from hunger that even a beggar stole your himation from me while I lay on the ground, wanting to die and unable to stop him from taking it. So don’t come here now with your disdainful eyes and look at me like I’m beneath you. I don’t need your charity and I don’t need your pity. I know exactly what you see when you look at me."

"Do you really?"

He stood up and spread his arms wide, showing me his perfect nak*d body. "I see it clearly on your face. What you see is the pathetic little boy who kissed his father’s feet and begged him not to send him back to whoring. You see the whore who pleasured a prince and was then thrown from his home."

I shook my head in denial. "No, Acheron. What I see is the little boy who used to run up to me and ask why his parents didn’t love him. The same little golden-haired cherub who chased sunbeams in my room and laughed when they filled his palm. You are my brother and I will never see anything bad about you."

The anger on his face intensified to the point I actually thought he might strike me. "Get out."

Covering my head, I turned and left.

I waited for him to stop me. He didn’t.

And with every step I took, I cried harder for what I’d found this morning. My precious Acheron was gone and in his place was a man who wanted nothing to do with me.

The worst part was, I couldn’t even blame him for it. This was all so unfair. He should be in his royal apartments with servants at his beck and call.

Instead he was locked into a nightmare that neither of us could release him from. Surely this wouldn’t be his life. Surely Acheron was meant for more than this.

Yet how could I deny what I saw? He was right. People only wanted one thing from him. And unless Father was willing to protect him, Catera was better than nothing.

My little brother was a whore. It was time that I realized the truth.

August 23, 9529 BC

The day had dawned with the most wretched of meetings. I’d been told that my father and his senators had decided to try and placate the god Apollo with a human sacrifice.

Me.

Ever since war had broken out between Greece and Atlantis, the Greek kings had been trying to think of some way to stave it off. But the Apollites who ruled Atlantis hated us and were determined to make the whole of Greece nothing more than an Atlantean province.

Chapter 7

Afraid of being slaves to the superior technology of the Atlanteans, the Greek city-states had been fighting with everything we had.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be enough. Apollo favored the Atlanteans and the Apollites he’d created who shared Atlantis with them. So much so that as long as they fought during the light of day, they were invincible.

The Greek kings were at their end. So the priests and oracles had gathered to see what, if anything, could return Apollo’s favor to the people who’d originally worshiped him.

"The god can only be distracted and tamed by the most beautiful of all princesses," the oracle of Delphi had proclaimed to them all.

Some lunatic had then named me as said princess.

That man, I could kill.

"Father, please," I begged, following in the wake of him and Styxx. They were headed toward the Senate room and had no time for me. Not that that was unusual.

"Enough, Ryssa," he said sternly. "The decision is made. You are to be offered to Apollo. We need him on our side if we’re to win this war against the Atlanteans. So long as he continues to favor and aid them, we will never stand a chance. If you are his lover, he will look more kindly toward our people and might be swayed to our cause."

It stuck in my craw that I was to be bartered and sold without so much as . . .

I stumbled as I thought of Acheron. I finally understood exactly how he felt. Understood what it was like to have no say in what was done to my body.

It was an awfully sick feeling. No wonder he’d thrown me out of his room. No doubt in my innocence I’d seemed quite sanctimonious about something I had no understanding of.

However, I wasn’t through with them. Determined, I followed Father and Styxx into the back corridor.

As we approached the main hall, the sound of a small group of senators conversing out in the atrium stopped me dead in my tracks.

"He looks just like Styxx."

My father and Styxx paused as they heard them, too.

"What say you?" another voice asked.

"It’s true," the first senator said. "They couldn’t look more alike had they been born twins. The only difference is their eye color."

"His eyes are eerie," a third senator interrupted. "You can tell he’s the son of some god, but he won’t say which one."

"And he’s in a stew you say?"

"Yes," the second man said. "I’m telling you, Krontes, you have to visit him. Pretending he’s Styxx has helped me immensely in dealing with the royal prick. Spend an hour with Acheron on his knees and the next time you see Styxx, you’ll have a whole new perspective."

They laughed.

I felt the blood drain from my face as Father and Styxx’s turned red with fury.

"You should have been at our banquet last night," the first man said. "We dressed him in royal robes and passed him around like a bitch in heat."

I felt suddenly sick.

Father charged into the group, calling for his guards to arrest them for defaming Styxx in such a way.

Styxx defamed.

Hysterical laughter welled up inside me as I doubled over in pain. Zeus forbid Styxx ever be insulted. It didn’t matter that it was Acheron who was being degraded and made to serve them.

Acheron never mattered.

At least not to anyone but me.

June 23, 9529 BC

It was dawn when I left the palace alone. It was a foolish quest I was about, but I couldn’t stop myself. Today Acheron turned nineteen.

In my heart I knew no one had ever given him a present for the anniversary of his birth. I wondered if he even knew the exact day when he’d come into this world. And I thought about the celebration I had planned that our father had ruined by returning him to Atlantis.

I clutched his gift under my himation as I walked through the abandoned streets to the stew I had gone to before.

I knocked on the back door and asked for Catera. After a brief wait, she appeared with a frown.

"My lady? Why are you here?"

I smiled gently at her. "I wanted to see Acheron again. Just for a few minutes."

Sadness darkened her eyes. "I wish I could help you, my lady, but he’s no longer here."

Cold dread seized my heart. "What? Where did he go?"

"I know not where he was taken."

"Taken?" I whispered the word cautiously, hoping she didn’t mean what I thought she did.

Unfortunately, she did. "He was arrested several months ago. The king’s guards came in early one afternoon. They broke through the front door and demanded to be shown the royal imposter. Acheron was pulled from his bed while he still slept and bound into chains, then they dragged him out of here and I haven’t heard anything since."

My fingers numb, I felt my gift fall to the floor as I stood there too stunned to move.

My father had taken him?

Of course he had. I should have realized that myself. No doubt he’d sent his men the same day he’d overheard the senators talking. What kind of fool was I not to check on that?

But then I’d been too busy thinking about my impending doom with Apollo. Shame on me for not putting Acheron first. There was no telling what they had done to him.

My only comfort was the knowledge that father couldn’t kill him. Not without killing Styxx too.