Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Not to punish me. I’m really not worth his thoughts of punishment. I’m really not worth any of this.
But Eros didn’t leave me. He got into bed.
And when I turn and snuggle into him—desperate for… well, everything—affection, validation, friendship, warmth, tenderness—he doesn’t push me away when I reach for him.
This is the saddest thing and makes me cry harder. Because I’m not getting any of those things I crave. He’s not offering affection, or validation, or friendship, or warmth, or tenderness.
He’s merely putting up with me.
And my life is so miserable, and my ego so destroyed, and my sense of self-worth so diminished that his indifference is enough.
I let out a sigh of relief.
I am pacified.
Which makes this the most pathetic moment of my entire life.
Eros clears his throat. “Ya know… I didn’t really understand what I did to Pie that day.”
I blink. Making the water pooling in my eyes slide down my cheeks. Then I run these words back in my head.
What is he doing? It this a confession? I tilt my chin up and look up at him. He’s not looking down now, though. His eyes are on the ceiling. But I’m sure he can feel my gaze.
“I was wrong. To do that, ya know. I mean, it didn’t even pan out. If I had gotten her little bag of magic doorway rings, at least I could justify it. I could make excuses. But the rings were gone. They were just gone. And I knew, the moment I realized they were missing, I knew I would never get my hands on those rings. It’s even possible that Ostanes, that bitch, put that little birdie curse on Pie to steal her magic just so I would never get it. Like she knew. Like she had an oracle, or something.”
“Hmm.” This sound actually gets past my lips. Eros goes still when I make this noise. Like I am some small fawn in the forest and might spook if he moves too fast. Like I might have more to say about this than some small ‘hmm.’
But I don’t. So after a few moments, he continues. “‘Hmm’ is right. I only know of one oracle and her name is Pressia.”
Pressia was made and raised in Vinca until the age of seven. She was destined to marry Pell, the godling who was raised in the palace of Ptah and made by the hand of Ostanes, just like I was.
But not like me at all.
The marriage was called off because Pie disappeared.
And then, the way the scribes tell it, everyone started disappearing.
Pressia disappeared from her quarters in Ptah’s royal palace where she was waiting to be married to Pell. But with Pie gone, Pell was to be a sacrifice to get his magic and use it on some future endeavor.
His disappearance is still a mystery to me. No one bothered to fill me in because on my side of things it was all about Pie.
I had never thought much about Pressia, but clearly she is an integral part of Eros’s past.
People were still talking about her disappearance when I arrived at the Vinca Palace with Tarq and the king.
Though I did not know she was an oracle. Her alchemist—the royal alchemist, Lyrica—was also my alchemist once I became princess. Lyrica was very angry and bitter after losing her prize creation right out from under her nose. She fumed about it for years. I don’t think she ever got over that, actually.
“Pressia is an interesting woman,” Eros continues. “She looks human. Almost nymph-like in her beauty. But she is neither nymph nor human. She is a cross between a goddess and chaosius.”
I’ve never heard that last term.
He must know this somehow, because he elaborates. “It’s a… an ancient sort of chimera. One of the first, actually. From the primordial days of Chaos, who is, in a technical way, my father.”
Well. I didn’t know that. I admit, I have not spent much time thinking about the origin of Eros. I was brought up being told that he was god of nothing. At one time, he controlled love, but he was banished into the Fadeaways long before I was born.
Eros keeps talking. “There are many ways to make breeding chimera. But using a chaosius is the easiest. These offspring will always be fertile. The catch is, there is no way to predict what they will look like, or how smart they will be, or what kind of power they will have. It was done a lot in the beginning of time. That’s why there are so many different species of animals in the realms. Everything comes from a chaosius. Little Pressia was the first offspring from this genetic line to be born in thousands of years. Since the first gods were made, in fact. She is very special. And powerful. And pretty. If she and Pell had a child it would’ve been something spectacular.