Prophecy of the Most Beautiful

by Jones, Diantha

  So he had left Ireland, and now, looking at her, he realized that had been a mistake––a dangerous mistake. He shouldn't be here, but here he was, standing over the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, all jittery and anxious as hell. Intimidated, one might even have the guts to say and he was tempted to just clear out. But a true demigod didn't run away from anything. They welcomed the good, the bad, and the piss-in-pants terrifying with open arms and a bouquet of flowers.

  Ha! That was one paradox that made him want to laugh out loud.

  "Get up," he said again, his hands fisted tight in the pockets of his hoodie.

  Chloe finally peeked out from under her lids, shifted around, then her eyes flew open as she sat up so fast that he was sure her brain shifted into jell-o mode.

  "Strafford," She breathed.

  Ahh, yes, he liked the way she said his name, with sleep still heavy on her voice. And that look in her eye…had she been dreaming about him? It was possible, right?

  Don't be thick, Law. She's only lookin' at you like tha' 'cause you startled her out of her sleep.

  But a moment later, he realized he was wrong. She wasn't staring because she had been caught in the middle of dreaming about him. She wasn't ogling with those pretty blue eyes because she had just been jolted awake. Nope.

  She was flat out, unabashedly admiring him.

  He bit his lip hard to keep from smiling.

  He let her get her fill and take her time doing it. Hell, he even fought the urge to do a little spin for her. Everyone thought he was handsome, but he knew it. Shame hadn't consumed his entire ego. From his black hoodie that zipped together to spell out G-U-C-C-I in white letters, to his distressed Kenneth Cole jeans and black leather Prada boots, he knew he looked good. His coal black hair looked liked some wan had been running her fingers through it, and his gray eyes…well, no wan could resist those. But he wasn't worried about others…only the beautiful wan in front of him right then.

  She ogled him for a long time––far too long for his comfort, so he frowned. Blah, it was the only thing he could think to do. True, he liked to be admired, but now that the admirer was Chloe, he was feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious all of a sudden. Not a cool thing to have going on at the moment. Not a cool thing to have going on ever.

  She dropped her eyes, saving him, and fussed with wrinkles in the sheet. He almost smiled. At least he was making her more uncomfortable than she was making him.

  "I mean, good morning, Your Royal Highness," She mumbled, her eyes still downcast.

  He swallowed a laugh. Who in the bloody hell had told her to call him that? Probably Hector, that wanker. "It's okay to call me Strafford," he said.

  She looked up and a small smile graced the lips he was dying to get his 'good morning kiss' on with. "Okay, Strafford."

  "Brilliant," He replied, "Now, today is an important day and we have things we need to do. So get movin'."

  "What's today?"

  "Wednesday." It was a total avoidance of the real question, but he couldn't very well tell her today was the day she would sign her life away.

  She rolled her pretty blue eyes at his vague response, but didn't push it. "What time is it?"

  "Six."

  She sighed. "The perfect time of day. I'm such a morning person."

  He almost said "I know", and that he had watched her jog around her neighborhood almost every morning for weeks and knew that she loved the early hours more than any other time. But he didn't think coming off as a stalker would help his cause with her in the least.

  "I can't sleep after sunrise," He said instead, "Or before sunset."

  Her eyebrows raised. "Really?"

  He nodded slowly, watching her. "My physical clock is connected to the sun and where it is in the sky. In the mornin', when the sun is low, I'm more like this, calm, chill. By midday, with the sun at its highest, I'm more riled up, battle-ready, a true demigod." He paused. "But after the sun sets, I become…different."

  Translation: I become a flirt like you've never seen before. You should beware. In fact, just avoid me all together.

  Ace would argue he was always in flirt mode and he couldn't deny it. But what could anyone expect of him? He was the highest born son of Apollo and closely related to Zeus––two legendary seducers. It was in his essence, especially as a royal.

  The red head did not know who she was dealing with.

  Crazy, it had only taken seeing her picture once––the picture Apollo had sent him of the girl he would become the guardian of––and he had known. He had known that he wanted her. He wanted to protect her, wanted her to need him. He had known he would do anything to keep her safe. He'd known that she would be the one to bring light back into his sunless existence.

  This was fate.

  The whole situation was so poetic and sweet it made him sick to his stomach.

  "Different how?" Chloe asked, obviously curious.

  He paused for dramatic effect and bit his lip. "Jus'…different." He let the word linger in the air like a fragrance and hoped she'd inhaled.

  "What's your tattoo of?" She gestured at his arm.

  "You wanna see it?"

  "Sure. If that's okay with you…"

  He was already unzipping his hoodie. He peeled it off and tossed it onto one of the Greek lounges. "It's a dragon," He said, approaching her and pushing up the sleeve of his black elephant skull tee so she could see the full beast…the dragon and him.

  She sat up a little straighter. Her eyes followed the tat up as it wrapped around his muscular arm––the head resting on his shoulder, the tip of its' tail ending at his middle finger. "Wow. Did it hurt?"

  Like hell. I was eight. "It wasn' so bad. You, uh, like it?"

  "Like it? It's awesome. Totally badass."

  He bit his lip. "You have any ink, wan?"

  "Me? Yeah right. My mom would lose her mind…" She frowned, like she'd just thought of something that bothered her. "Where's Ace at?"

  He almost, almost, growled. It made his blood boil that she would even notice Ace was gone with him standing right there. But come on, Ace had spent every night in her room on his orders. He had wanted to keep guard himself, but he hadn't thought it would be wise for him to spend night after night in her room…without a chaperone. Or a concrete wall between them.

  "My brother has other things he has to do. You'll be spendin' the mornin' with me." He paused, trying not to sound snarky and failing. "Tha' won't be a problem for you, now will it?"

  Eyes wide, she shook her head like she couldn't imagine that ever being a problem. "No. I want to go with you." She blushed and quickly amended, "I mean, I have to see the book, right? The one that's in the library? That's why you're here." She looked kind of surprised at her own knowledge.

  "It's your Oracle's Intuition," He answered her before she could start in with the questions, "You'll have a sense abou' things now. You'll be able to feel when things are right…or when they're wrong. You'll have a sense abou' different places and certain people. A lot of things you'll jus'…know now."

  She nodded her understanding. "So there is a book?"

  "Aye."

  Still surprised at her own knowing, she asked, "A book about being the Oracle?"

  "Aye."

  She nodded after contemplating this. "Okay. I want to see it. Just let me get dressed first."

  He agreed with a curt nod. "Sure." He dropped down on a lounge and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. His eyes watched her with controlled amusement as she zipped across the room and shut herself in the closet.

  She took a long time getting dressed for someone who wore jeans and t-shirts every day of her life. But from what Mystic had told him, she still had a pretty good eye for fashion. He smiled to himself. So she was picking out the perfect outfit for him to see her in. Nice. He wouldn't tell her that it was unnecessary to try and impress him, that she already had him, and that he couldn't even comprehend how he had let it happen.

  Gods, he was such a p
ansy.

  She emerged after several more minutes. "I'm ready," and his eyes came up to meet her.

  Bollocks, he was in trouble. She looked sooooo hot.

  She loved boots, he had noticed, and she wore a pair of short, gray leather ones with a pirate's cuff at the ankle. Hm, a black frilly blouse. Now that was something he hadn't expected, but he liked it. Black was very becoming on her and it was his favorite color. But it was the jeans that drove him mad. Her long legs were meant to wear the slim, gray-wash denim pants, and when she moved over to straighten her bed, which he failed to tell her she didn’t have to do, he bit his tongue––hard.

  How dare those pants have studded patches right on her rear end? Bloody hell. Now he would never stop looking at her ass.

  Cursing the pants and his aching tongue, he stood. "Two choices, Red," He said before he could let any of the curses slip. Or tell her how bloody delicious her hips looked in those jeans.

  She cocked her head. "Two choices?"

  "Aye. Breakfast or the library."

  "Breakfast or the library?" She shifted her weight to one leg and jutted out her hip. He almost growled.

  "Aye. We can eat first or we can go to the library first. The book is there." His words came out in a snarl. But it was either snarl or end up with his tongue in her mouth. "So wha's it gonna be? Your choice, Red."

  "How about both?"

  He raised an eyebrow. "Wha'?"

  She shrugged. "How about we have breakfast in the library?"

  He shook his head. "No. Apollo would go completely off his nut if we took food around his bloody precious books and artifacts. Gods forbid tha' we actually ruin somethin'. Besides, I'd really like to see Apollo less, not more. So let's not do anythin' tha' might give him a reason to make an appearance, aye?"

  She looked surprised. "You call your dad Apollo?"

  "Tha's his name."

  "But he's your father…"

  "Irrelevant." He was not going to explain why either. Not today and surely, not to her. "Choose, Red."

  "I did. Breakfast in the library."

  He gave her a hard look. "Are you being difficult on purpose? I jus' said we couldn' do tha'."

  "But L.A. isn't here. How will he know?"

  He tried not to roll his eyes at the fact that she had just referred to Apollo by his stupid alias. "In the matter of a normal, human parent, this might make sense, but Apollo is neither normal nor human. He's a god, Red. He'll know."

  A mischievous grin inched onto her face. "Are you scared?"

  His eyes narrowed. It was way too early in the day for him to feel so primal, but an outright challenge always brought out the coveted savage in him. A straight-up challenge from his red head? This demigod's dream come true.

  "Never challenge me, Red. You'll lose." He winked.

  He couldn't believe it when she rolled her eyes. "So I take it my eggs and bacon will be served in the library then?"

  He gave into her like the sucker he was. "Wha' the hell, sure. But if Apollo shows, I will absolutely blame the whole idea on you."

  A chuckle fell from her lips. "Deal. Lead the way then. I tried to find the library on my own the other day, but it was impossible. Ace and Swindle gave me a tour of the palace, but I will never learn how to navigate my way around this place. It's a labyrinth!"

  Strafford felt his chest tighten. "No," he bit out, "it's nothin' like the Labyrinth. Nothin' like it at all."

  Chloe looked almost startled. "Okay," she replied in a small voice. She downturned her eyes and studied her boots.

  He wanted to kick himself. He hadn't meant to snap. But hearing that word––labyrinth––always got to him. He hated the word, hated everything it was, hated the ancient inventor Daedalus for building it, simply…hated...

  "Follow me." He slipped out of the door before he offered any words of comfort or tried to kiss away the pout on her lips.

  He felt her silent presence behind him the entire way and it was torture for him. He could not bring himself to turn and look at her, not even once. If he did, he might have stopped right there, forced her up against the wall and used his lips to apologize.

  But he didn't. He stayed the course as he did in everything. Keeping his focus had saved his life many times over. With the way he was feeling, if he looked at her now, he'd fold like a deck of cards and his self-control would become a bloodied, beaten corpse. He just couldn't let that happen…even if it was killing him not to.

  The Chateau might have seemed like a maze of a palace to Chloe, but to him, it was more like a jail. Reminders of things he had tried to forget were carved into the "prison" walls and he swore that as soon as he could, he was going to tunnel his way out of there even if he had to dig with a spoon. He had to get away from the things this place tried to remind him of.

  He had grown up there. After he had been born twenty-two years before, Apollo had taken him from his mother to be raised as he thought the Sun Prince should be––in the service of his divinely immortal father. Strafford had to admit, growing up at the Chateau had been a blast. He had enjoyed exploring the palace as a child and had been enchanted by its ever-changing properties: How the rooms appeared and disappeared like magic, how almost every year the palace grew larger, creating new places to explore, and how twice a year, the Chateau transported itself to a new location in the heavens. He had reveled in finding private places within it where he could be himself, where he could wind down, where he could play and make believe he was sleighing pretend dragons before he was offered the chance to kill real ones, where he could be a normal kid and not a demigod, where he could forget he was the Sun Prince and therefore, one of the most lethal demigods alive. Aye, there had been a time in his life where he had loved the home of Apollo.

  But now, the Chateau was nothing more than a prison.

  His sentence? Remembering.

  They reached the library within minutes and he moved the great stone door with the Grecian command for "open", and they entered Apollo's vast hall of literature. Mystic, who was wearing a loud purple tutu, was already inside finishing setting up a table with a gold-embroidered table cloth and matching napkins, golden-etched silverware and jeweled goblets of nectar juice, and gold plates of food covered with gold dome covers. A royal feast for two. Correction: A romantic royal feast for two. The sneaky wan had lit a couple of candles as well.

  "Good morning, Strafford, Oracle," She said as he glared her down into a curtsy.

  "Nice setup you got here," He huffed. Mystic didn't shy away. He'd known her all his life and their lifelong friendship had made her bold. He couldn't intimidate her if he tried.

  "I thought you might want to have your breakfast in the library this morning. I know that you have work you must do here." Oh, okay. He knew her game. Mystic always knew everything that was going on at any particular time in the Chateau and most of the time, in his head. It was quite the annoying gift she possessed. Especially since it meant she knew he already had a thing for Chloe.

  "Thanks, Mystic," Chloe said, "Nice tutu." Mystic curtsied her thanks. "Are you eating with us?"

  Mystic smiled as she exchanged a look with him. He and Mystic both knew that servants and Princes didn't dine together. Even servants like Mystic. "Oh no, Oracle. There are many things that must be tended to in the palace and I must keep my sisters on task. They are so easily distracted, especially Haley." She giggled. "Besides, you left your closet in such a disarray this morning. No worries though. We will have it put back together in no time." She hugged and kissed Chloe on the cheek, did some fluffing thing to her hair, curtsied to him, and practically danced out of the library.

  Chloe was blushing like mad. She no doubt wondered how Mystic had found the mess in her closet so fast. "There's just so much stuff in there," She said, "It's hard to keep it all together…"

  Sure, he thought, knowing the truth but sparing her the embarrassment of revealing it.

  "Want to have a look around?" He asked, "I know you've been in here before, but there
's a lot you probably haven' seen yet." She looked relieved.

  "Show me all of it," She said with a smile.

  Even though Apollo was a prophetic god that could see into the future, he had a devout fascination with the past. Strafford was positive it was only because Apollo had been there for all of it.

  He had never considered it strange that Apollo was three thousand years old. In his world, everyone had a parent around that age. In Apollo's library, there were books and artifacts just as ancient, if not, more so. He knew history had been Chloe's favorite subject in school and was almost sure that she would be fascinated with the bits and pieces of Grecian history that Apollo had collected and stored there––like rubble from the ruin of the great Colosseum and relics from the Parthenon in Athens. She would love the authentic Egyptian mummy showcased in the back and the crown pieces of many legendary mortal kings and queens like William the Conquerer or Queen Isabella of Spain. She couldn't miss the ancient Mayan sundials or the American Civil War cannon. She would see the crumpled remains of a British WWI bomber, one of Abraham Lincoln's top hats, a piece of the Great Wall of China, and a rare hand-written manuscript by Jane Austen. He wasn't sure how she would react to the sword that had beheaded the doomed queen Anne Boleyn or to one of the infamous dresses of Marilyn Monroe, which Strafford was sure Apollo had taken right off of her himself.

  To his satisfaction, everything seemed to fascinate Chloe and that made him happy. He wanted to see a smile on her pretty face as much as possible.

  "Is that it?" She asked. He followed the path of her pointing finger and nodded.

  "Aye, tha's the Great Tome of the Oracle."

  There it sat, on its shiny, golden pedestal all dusty and aged. Its yellowed pages were delicate and crisp, and its brown, leather binding was barely holding on. It was a book many centuries old.