Athena would not take kindly to my words. In truth, she had not been “little” for centuries, but everyone was young when you were as old as the Earth itself. If there had been anyone I had let close to me before Lyannìa, it would have been Athena. Even as a child she had been bold, relentless. There had been no challenge too great that she did not meet head on and attempt to obliterate. Her clever battle tactics and ruthless determination to win had quickly earned her my favor—or at least spared her the worst of my temper.
“Thaina is the proud mother to a new batch of hatchlings. We feasted in honor of the new little dragons but a few months ago,” the servant responded.
I gestured to Fiamouria. “It is good to see the dragons are breeding strong stock. I will have to offer my congratulations on the new hatchlings.”
The servant bowed deeply. “Thank you, my king. I will take—”
“Father, look!” Nikomedes shouted.
I turned to find my son perched on the back of the dragon. His small fingers rubbed along the dragon’s neck until it was a purring mass of contentment in his hands. My son, the dragon tamer. “I see you have made a new friend, son. The beast’s name is Fiamouria. She is but a baby. Just a few years old.” I walked closer and gestured to the bumps along the fold of her wing. “See here how her talons have not yet come in.”
“She is glorious! Father, can I keep her?” He turned big pleading eyes to me. As if the dragon understood, it also looked at me. The intelligence and longing in that gaze was something I had never known the beasts capable of.
I laughed at the pair of trouble that I knew would soon be terrorizing the island. “She belongs to Athena. We will speak to her of your request.”
“Did you hear that, Fiamouria? Father is going to make you mine. We will be the best of friends.” He lay his head on her neck, and the dragon stroked his hair with a leathery wingtip. Lyannìa had urged the boy to make friends instead of training all of the time. I doubted a baby dragon was what she had in mind.
4
When we returned to the palace I left the stable master to deal with Nikomedes’s new friend and sent my son off with a servant for a bath. I strode quickly along the stone path lined with red and white flowers that led to the castle entrance. Children chased each other amongst the bases of the six statues of the Order of Chaos that served as columns spanning the two stories at the palace entrance. Every person I passed immediately dipped into a low bow, murmuring greetings to their king. Irritation started to build at the delay as I was forced to navigate around all of the bent forms and acknowledge each one.
I passed through the open arches of the entrance and came to a stop at the sight of all the people bustling about the courtyard. Like the ripples in the pool where more children were playing, the bowing started to spread. If I didn’t move quickly, the entire courtyard would come to a halt. With all of the preparations going on for tonight’s feast, I decided to spare us both the delay and teleported across the oval-shaped courtyard.
I had crafted this palace from the bedrock of the island itself, molding it to fit my needs. The stark square stone structure of my bachelor days had been transformed as a wedding gift to Lyannìa. Instead of a palace fit for royalty, she had asked that our home be a representation of the peace our people had gained since we had instated the Order. I gave her both.
Six towers tipped with black tiled roofs spiraled into the air to brush the clouds. Black sun symbols with six points gleamed from each roof peak. The tall oval walls of the palace gleamed in the mid-day sun, black marble lines branching across their surface like blood vessels. Massive wooden doors carved with the symbols we had adopted to represent our seat of power sat at the base of each tower. Behind each of those arched doorways lay rooms that housed my brothers and sisters when the Order was called into session.
Each member of the Order also had their own homes on the section of land that they controlled. The palaces operated as our seats of power and the home for any descendants of our line. The landscape was ruled as much by the preferences of their creator as each palace was. Here at the northern point, dense forests where a young boy could stage many adventures surrounded my palace. To the west, Eros ruled from his cliff-top meadow close to the sun he favored. Gaia ruled the east, where humid forests and deep rivers housed animals of all variety. Erebus, Tartarus, and Nyx shared the south. There you would find lands from the hottest deserts to the most frozen tundra.
I passed the Temple of Chaos as I neared my family’s rooms. The building was as tall as the palace walls. Atop its square base, a giant black statue of the God of Chaos stood with his naked body dusted with starlight and his white eyes glowing. Between his hands was a crystal-clear ball representing the Earth. Gleaming from within its center was the black sun symbol we had adopted to represent the Order.
My steps faltered when I saw the large black doors thrown open to reveal the vastness of space beyond. Stars glimmered, and galaxies spun in a kaleidoscope of colors. A lone worshiper knelt upon the cliff edge before the cosmos. Her head bent low to the ground as flowers burst from the rocky soil beneath her touch. I tried to push past the knot of resentment that Gaia was once again talking to my father.
Gaia was the most devout of us all. Her constant belief and worship of my father made me feel uncomfortable. How long had it been since I had visited here? Hesitantly I sent a mental message out into the void. “Father?”
Silence was the only response.
I watched as Gaia raised her head and a warm smile spread across her lips. There was a time when the God of Chaos spoke to me just as freely. These last few years he came to me less and less. Now he no longer even answered my calls.
Her affection for our maker and ease in speaking with him caused a burning sensation inside me that I refused to name. Was it that my father, who had never felt love, shunned me now that I had found it for myself? Was I, his only son, no longer worthy of his attention? My hands balled into fists at the urge to pick up my sword and charge into battle. I needed to expel these rampant emotions or it wouldn’t just be the nursemaid cowering in fear of me today.
My father had not answered, and I would never beg Gaia for the scraps she might throw my way. There were times, like now, that I wished for the numbness of my youth. I turned my back on him and sought out the one person who could ease the ache.
I mounted the steps and passed under the colonnaded walkway that surrounded the courtyard. Walking along the wall toward the doors to my family’s rooms, I ran my finger along the vein of black marble that swirled through the rock wall. A pulse of power seeped from my fingertip into the marble and went in search of my target.
I had barely made it through the doorway into the vestibule when my harried-looking advisor called out to me. Turning away, I sent him a telepathic message. “Deal with the Olympians. I have other things to attend to.”
“B-but, my king. Poseidon’s men have taken over the bathhouse. Zeus has summoned an offering of virgins. Hera . . .”
I mentally shut the door on the conversation and teleported ahead to avoid what was likely a long list of the Olympians’ demands. The winter solstice was a time to celebrate our unity as a people, but I was already looking forward to having my house back to normal. The Olympians lived like gods upon their mountain and thought to be given the same treatment here. But this was my island and my people would not curry to their every whim. I would just as soon toss them in the Aegean and be done with the lot of them. Chaos curse those arrogant, demanding . . .
My rant trailed off as I focused on following the pulse of my power once more and came to a stop at our room for entertaining guests. Tall couches lined the walls of the room, red and yellow pillows stacked against their one raised side. The footstools used to climb up to the couches sat at the ready to receive our guests. The short round bronze tables had been pulled from beneath the couches, and bowls of olives topped each one.
There were no separate entertainment rooms for men and women in Atlantaionia
like in the Greek homes. We Chaonians believed in equality between the sexes. After all, some of my greatest warriors were women. Although this room bore her touch, the woman I sought was nowhere to be found. My power beckoned me on, and I strode farther down the long hall.
I paused by the kitchen. It swarmed with activity as Cook yelled at his helpers preparing the evening meal for our guests. A flute player sat in the corner playing a lively tune to keep up the pace of the work. A line of women at a table kneaded bread dough with their air powers. Men turned the body of a pig on a spit as another coaxed the dancing flames of the fire in the hearth to rise with the twirl of his fingers. Other men brought bubbles of water filled with their catch into the kitchen. The water bubbles hovered over a table where women burst them and sent down a rain of fish and oysters. The leftover water was whisked back out the door by the same men who brought it in. Other women filled decorated vases of all shapes and sizes with olive oil, readying them for the food that would be cooked.
Her touch lingered in the air, but the person I sought had moved on. Quickly I turned down another long hall before anyone saw me. I sent a stronger pulse of my power out, and when it found my target, I smiled in triumph. I knew exactly where she was.
5
Sunlight stung my eyes as I stepped from the dim interior out into the gardens. The smell of jasmine floated through the air. Doves cooed from their golden cages set under twin rotunda on either side of the stone pathway. I walked along the path past more square beds of red and white flowers, then stepped on the air and glided over a long set of steps to land gently at the opening of a low hedge maze. A stone bridge of colonnaded arches bisected a large rectangular pool in the center of the maze. There at the center of the bridge stood a brown-haired beauty coaxing vines of jasmine to wind around each column. Her white tunic brushed across the floor, stirring loose petals into a mini tornado around her ankles as she swayed to a rhythm only she could hear.
The petals drifted higher surrounding their mistress like a cyclone of snowflakes. The goddess before me laughed and spun in the fragrant circle of her favorite flower. The tinkling sound shot straight to my loins, and I hardened in an instant, just as I had the first night I heard that laugh. Spurred on by the drumming need in my veins, I leaped into the air at least twenty feet and wrapped myself in shadow mid-air. Seconds later I slid my hands around my wife’s rounded stomach and pulled her against me.
“Husband. You are happy to see me?” Lyannìa smiled, leaning her head back against my chest.
“Wife, I am always happy to see you. Your beauty captivated me from the moment we met.” My lips pressed against the pulse in her neck and she shuddered in my arms.
“Mmm. My memory of our first meeting disagrees. I believe you saw only a new conquest.” My hand stroked her stomach once more before cupping her full breasts.
Her moan vibrated against my lips as my teeth scraped against her delicate neck. “You danced naked in the moonlight, not a stone’s throw from my door. What man or God could resist you?”
“Yet you accused me of using my powers to seduce you.” Her hands delved into my long black hair and tugged my head up. She turned in my arms and ran her hands up my chest. My muscles bunched beneath her touch and I wanted to rip my tunic from my body to feel those hands upon my bare skin.
I dipped down to capture her plump lips. The taste of her upon my tongue was like waiting for Zeus’s lightning to strike. Her flavor set my skin tingling in anticipation. I reluctantly pulled my lips from hers and cupped her face. “You laughed at me. When my anger shook the ground, you refused to cower like so many others. You smiled at me and offered to teach me to dance. You said that I needed to find peace.”
She smiled up at me. “You were the ferocious beast that everyone warned would gobble me up if I were not good. All I saw was a lost and tired man. You claim to have had no feelings before I loved you, but I sensed your longing for a different life. The destruction you wrought—the lives you had taken—weighed on you even then. You are meant to bring balance to this world just as your father was made to balance the heavens. You drifted too long in the dark and needed to find a way back.”
She cupped my large hands; hers felt tiny and delicate in comparison. My lips curled in amusement as I remembered that night. “We danced all the night until the sun touched the horizon. Still, you refused me.”
Her brown eyes sparkled up at me. “I could not give in so easily to the man who brought different women to his bed every night. You could have commanded me. I would have been forced to lie with you. Yet you let me go.”
“I felt peace for the first time in my existence. To command you to my bed would have shattered that peace for both of us. I saw that night a life that could be, if I but bided my time. Patience is a virtue in a warrior. Mine had been honed over eons. I did what I had never before attempted and wooed you into my arms.”
That tinkling laughter filled the air once more. “Wooing, was it? You stole me from my home. Then ordered me to dance with you every night.”
Yes, I had, and I didn’t regret it. Mine had been repeating in my head every time I thought of her, and I was determined to make her just that. I had planned my siege on Lyannìa just as I would any fortress. She had been angry at first, but with her cheerful nature, I had been forgiven within a week. We bargained for the remainder of her stay. She would spend the month with me attending every meal and dancing every night. I would not force her to my bed, and I would let her have mental contact with her family to assure them she was safe.
Every day during that month we learned more of each other, and my dead heart began to come alive. Lyannìa enjoyed life to the fullest. Her enthusiasm and pleasure in everything was contagious. I had been in her thrall and never wanted to leave it. We were married under the light of the full moon toward the end of that same month.
“I paid your mother well for taking one of her priestesses-in-training.”
Lyannìa laughed again. “You paid her one hundred head of cattle that ate all her amaranth flowers and destroyed her courtyard.”
I had tried to keep a struggling girl from revealing our location where we were wrapped in shadow hovering over the courtyard while teleporting in all of those cows. I may have dropped a few cows on the alarmed priestesses scrambling about the courtyard. There had been only a few injuries, and I got Lyannìa. It was a successful siege. One of Dionysus’s descendants had created a ballad about it that would likely be played at dinner.
“Artemis took her priestess training too seriously. I was but aiding her in finding her humor.”
“Mother has created a barrier over the temple now as well. Perhaps this year she will not moo every time she sees you.” She shifted uncomfortably against me as the baby kicked. “Your daughter is demanding attention. I fear she is already too much like her father.”
I bent low to press a kiss to my wife’s stomach. “Hello, little queen. We all await you. Until Chaos gives you leave to join us, sleep, and let your mother rest.”
The strain eased from Lyannìa’s body as the baby went to sleep. “I wish I had that power,” she mumbled.
I gathered her against me and gently kissed her lips. “You have done enough this day. Let me devote myself to easing every ache from your body.”
My fingers brushed across her erect nipple. She gasped. “Titan, we have guests!”
A wicked smile spread across my lips, and the cyclone of petals from before rose to create a wall around us.
I quickly released the belt below her breasts that gathered the yards of fabric and unhooked the brooches at each of her shoulders. Her tunic fell to the ground, and she stood before me in all of her glory.
“No one matters but us, my star.”
6
December 20th
* * *
I sat on my large black throne watching the Olympians as they paraded down the aisle and reluctantly bowed to the Order before taking their seats. The whole island served as a backdrop to my throne, perc
hed here as I was at the top of the tower directly above my family’s rooms. A few steps down, my brothers and sisters sat upon their thrones in the colors they had chosen to represent their seat of power. Another set of steps lead down to the floor where our people sat on stone benches. The early morning sun painted the sky in pinks and purples. The sound of waves upon the shore far below was the only noise that filled the tension-filled air.
“I regret my decision to make the island’s climate unchanged. A storm would be welcome at this moment,” I mused to my wife.
“You do not care for storms. They are Zeus’s chosen way to travel. You grew weary of them before we met.” Lyannìa smiled encouragingly at me from her seat in the front row. “The ceremony will be over soon enough.”
“Wife, these ceremonies are never over soon enough. Why can I not disembowel those who do not show their loyalty?” I grumbled.
Lyannìa pressed her fingers to her lips, and her rosy cheeks turned pale. “Titan, please do not mention the atrocities you indulged in before.”
My fingers tapped impatiently on the smooth black marble. Some days it was hard to forget eons of rule by an iron fist and remember I was now the peaceful ruler. The need to escape from this chair and give my muscles over to the thrill of battle rode me hard today. The growing unease at something lurking that I could not see felt like bindings twisting tighter about my body. I had spent the night walking the shore and attempting in vain to call my father. His silence added to the gnawing deep in my stomach that I had never before experienced. Just before I slipped into my rooms to change my tunic for the ceremony, I gave in to the need to name this feeling that plagued me.
Fear.
For the first time in my life, I felt the emotion that I had instilled in so many others. It left me feeling vulnerable, and that was something else I had never experienced before. I decided I would meet with Iasos, my supreme battle commander, this evening for combat training. It had been too long since I had fought with anything other than words, and I needed to feel in control of something again.
Dawning Chaos Page 3