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)
Of course, without the gods there would be no me. I am not some mere human-animal hybrid. That sounds horrifying. I have the blood of gods in me. It’s dilute, but it’s there. There is no other way to make a royal beast.
The king did a genealogy study on me that first year I was in Vinca and my study came back with traces of Saturn, of course. I was a direct descendant of him, though I was not made with the same pure essence as Pie was. But it also came back with Fatum far, far back in the line. Fatum, from my understanding, anyway, was a primordial who had power over decisions. The unalterable will of the gods. Ironically, or perhaps fatefully, this will didn’t come from the god himself, but from the mouth of his prophet. Both were destroyed in the Glory War.
Two gods in my blood then.
This must’ve satisfied the old king because he kept me. But not only that, he accepted me. He could’ve rejected me and forced the House of Fire to make a real replacement. A lioness with the bloodline of every god and goddess in the room that day, just like Pie. But the king was sickly and he didn’t have seven years to wait for the genuine article, so he took me in her place.
He started prepping me for the throne immediately. Assigning me tutors who taught me the ways of the royal beasts at court. Tarq was commanding alchemists at that time. And he would tell me bits of this and that when we were alone at night.
This is when I became obsessed with Pie’s magic words.
Four girls, a room, some gifts and thrones. Four gods each know their place at home. A mother gives a book of words, locked up tight in the beaks of birds.
That was the riddle Pie spat at me when she came out of the throne room after she had received her final gift from her sponsor god, which was Ptah, not our house father, Saturn. It was a bag of magic rings that would open doors to other realms. Something far, far too powerful and not agreed upon by the other gods in the throne room.
Pie was telling me about how she was from the future, and something about ditching school and hungry nights. Not to mention the invisible birds and banishing Saturn. Who was our father. So that was shocking.
But then… then her little six-year-old mouth started saying things that didn’t make sense, but could’ve made sense—if she had been, for instance, a grown-up, or an alchemist, or a person from the future.
Things about stealing wood nymphs, and magic rings that open magic doors that lead to other places. And then the one thing that really caught my attention was her threat. To me! From her! My adorable, innocent, beautiful, royal beast of a baby sister.
I put you in debtors’ prison for killing my Pia.
I had no idea what she was going on about. I thought she had gone insane. I even called out for the Mistress Ryella, who was the ceremony chaperone, insisting that Pie had gone ill.
But it was too late to do anything about that because the ceremony had already started.
Of course, I did kill her Pia. But it was nearly twenty years later.
It was so confusing and the pandemonium afterward was life-altering for me.
I was obsessed with the memory of what happened. And those words Pie said to me. All of them, not just the part about magic rings, and doors, and debtors’ prison. All of it.
It took my life that day. Because once the old king died and Tarq and I took our places on the throne, I went… mad, I think. Not mad, like I did in the Bottoms prison. But mad with thoughts of the future.
How to prevent it from coming true, mostly.
Which didn’t help at all.
Maybe it’s not even possible to change the future?
Maybe it’s all just fate?
When I come out of the bathroom—my velvety fur still slightly wet—I see that Eros is wet as well. He’s shirtless, of course. Showing off that tree tattoo. His pedigree, he said.
I bet the Glory Rome alchemists would give anything to study that pedigree. It would be like a map for them. A direct route to genetics that were used to make the god called Eros.
Or Erotes. He didn’t explain that very well. But I’m guessing that it means he was one of many… experiments, I guess. The last one standing, apparently.
It’s so odd, all this history. Our history. And while I find it interesting, I can’t really make much sense of it. So I go back to thinking about Eros—the god in front of me right now, not the one from the past. His hair is darker when it’s wet. Not blond, but the light streaks running through it are still visible, so just looking at him you know he is golden in that respect.