Styxx (DH #33) (10 page)

“Then you don’t know if you’ve distracted her or not, do you? Do you!”

Styxx would throw his head back in exasperation, but he didn’t want his father jumping all over him for disregarding her pain. Besides, Ryssa’s hysterical tantrum was enough for anyone to deal with.

“You’ve probably destroyed my sandals, too. You’d love for all of them to laugh at me tonight, admit it.” She stomped her foot at him.

“I don’t want anyone to laugh at you, lamb-head. I just don’t care.” Styxx turned to walk away.

But Ryssa wouldn’t let it go. She grabbed his arm and jerked him around to face her. “Why can’t you ever learn to be happy for someone else? Huh?”

Honestly, I’d be thrilled if I could just learn to be happy for myself.
“Unlike you, Ryssa, I don’t waste my time worrying about other people.”

“Exactly my point. You’re so selfish and cold, it’s disgusting.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, but she was already gone. He started to fling his hands out in an obscene gesture then caught his father’s angry glare and disturbing thoughts over the fact Styxx wasn’t giving his sister due respect.

Instead, Styxx held his hands up in helpless surrender while Ryssa cornered their father with her complaints against her brother who could do nothing to please her.

Except die.

“You see, Father! You see how he treats people with such blatant disregard of their feelings? How can someone so cold and heartless be king? Zeus help us all with him on your throne.”

I know. I’m not fit to breathe your precious air and I should be killed where I stand.

He was surprised she didn’t come after him with a knife like his mother had.
Gods save me from hysterical bitches.

Styxx started to turn away, but just as he moved, a fierce, unbelievable pain went through his tongue. It was so bad that he couldn’t breathe for it, and it sent him straight to his knees as his head reeled.

What in the name of Hades?

He felt like he was choking on blood, and instead of easing, it worsened. Unable to stand it, he cried out in utter agony.

Oh gods, Acheron … what are they doing to you now?

It was the only rational explanation. Over the years, he’d learned to hide the phantom pains that came when he wasn’t expecting them. Most he understood. They were canings or beatings. Hair-pulling. Burns. Hunger pangs even though he’d just eaten … But others, like this, he didn’t comprehend what caused them. All he knew was how bad it hurt.

“Styxx?”

He heard his father’s voice, yet he couldn’t respond. His tongue was too swollen. While he didn’t often show the physical traces of Acheron’s injuries, he would at times have peculiar handprints or swollen places on his body. But never had anything like this happened before.

Arching his back, he tried to focus on something else. Yet it was impossible. Tears streamed down his face as his vision swam.

“He’s faking.” Ryssa snarled, kicking at his legs. “He’s jealous that I’m getting all the attention and he can’t stand it.”

His father’s senior advisor knelt on the floor beside him so that he could inspect Styxx’s damaged mouth and swollen tongue. “Majesty, it’s the
bakkheia
.” A type of insanity caused by Dionysus that was said to infect those who had offended the god of wine. “I think he’s possessed.”

No!
Styxx tried his best to say the word.

Nothing came out.

His father knelt down on his other side. “What do we do?”

“We must get him to the Dionysion and let the priests tend him.”

Styxx shook his head, trying to stop them. While working at the temples, he’d heard too many stories about what befell those deemed mad. Or anyone who was believed to have offended a god.

But no one listened. They couldn’t understand him. Nor did they try.

Before he could stop them, his father called for his guards and had him carried to the Dionysian temple in the middle of the city.

Helpless against his inexplicable pain, Styxx listened as his father explained to the high priest how he’d been stricken for no reason. How he had a history of headaches, vomiting, and “imagined” ailments. That he seldom slept. And that his mother had gone mad shortly after his birth, and succumbed to her cups, that in a fit of rage last year, she’d stabbed Styxx and then tried to kill herself in front of him.

“It’s a good thing you brought him here, Majesty. You are right. He is possessed and we can definitely make him better for you.”

Styxx shook his head as terror held him tight to her bosom. “F-f-f-fa-fer?”

“Shh, boy. The priests will help you.”

Styxx clutched at his father’s palla, desperate to go home, but his father pried his hands off his clothes while the priests came forward and put chains on him.

The last words he heard from his father before they dragged him away sickened him the most.

“I grant you and your priests full immunity. Do whatever you must to heal him.”

June 21, 9535 BC

Styxx choked as the priests forced a gag into his mouth. They’d already stripped him naked and hung him in the center of the temple so that they could begin “treating” him.

One of the priests drew symbols in lamb’s blood over his body while another brought out a pair of shears and a ceremonial dagger. They lit incense and candles while they chanted for the god’s forgiveness for whatever sin Styxx had committed against him. Then to his complete horror, they started cutting off pieces of his hair and then burning the locks in a gold bowl.

Screaming around the gag, he tried to stop them, but with his arms spread out and chained, there was nothing he could do.

“Don’t fight us, Highness. We’re not the ones possessing you, and causing you this trouble and agony. We’re only trying to help you.”

The oldest priest nodded as he painfully sawed off a handful of Styxx’s hair. “We have to make you less appealing for the demons who inhabit your body. They have no need for an ugly host and they will flee you once you no longer attract them.”

Dear gods … what are you planning to do to me?

Piece by piece, they removed all the hair from his head then shaved his scalp before painting more symbols there. The scent of burning hair made him ill.

Look on the bright side.… You won’t have to worry about your father pulling at your hair now.

Or any more women coming on to him.

“Should we bleed him first?”

Styxx tried to shrink away from the priest who asked that question.

“No. His case is too extreme. Light the rods. We’ll have to scorch the demons from him.”

Scorch? What the Hades was that?

Two massively huge priests unlocked his hands. Styxx fought against them, doing everything he could to break free. But they held him fast and dragged him to a smaller room where he was placed on a cold stone table. His hands were stretched out and chained so that he couldn’t move them at all. Next they locked cuffs around his ankles then spread his legs so wide that it felt as if they were breaking his hipbones.

The oldest priest came forward and placed a hand to Styxx’s head. “Shh, Highness. Stop fighting us. Accept what’s being done. This is for your own good, after all.”

Styxx’s eyes widened as he saw them wheel in a cauldron of coals that had a dozen pokers in it.
Please gods, no!
He didn’t even want to know where they intended to put those.

A younger priest stepped forward with a long piece of white cloth.

“Bind him tight,” the oldest priest said. “We don’t want to geld him by accident.”

Geld? Geld!

“While the king has given us immunity to treat him, he is our prince, we can’t leave any marks that will show when he’s dressed.”

“If we leave no visible marks, how will that keep the demons from possessing him again?”

“They see all marks. Even with them hidden beneath clothing, the demons won’t want a scarred host.”

In spite of the fact that it made his head pound more, Styxx screamed for them to stop this insanity. But the gag and his swollen tongue kept his words from being intelligible, which only made the priests believe all the more that evil daemons had control of him.

Please! I’m not possessed.
It was Acheron’s pain he’d felt. And it hurt bad enough. He didn’t need this added to it.

They paid him no attention as the young priest used his cloth to tie Styxx’s cock flush to his body.

“There,” the old priest said, moving the younger one aside. “We need access to the tenderest parts of his body, where it’ll hurt most. Demons hate pain.”

Well, there you go then.…
He had enough that no demon should ever bother him.

The priest went to the cauldron and pulled a thick leather glove onto his left hand. He stirred the coals with the tip of a poker before bringing it over. Whispering a prayer, the priest placed his hand against Styxx’s scrotum, moving it aside before he laid the rod down on the uppermost inner part of Styxx’s thigh.

Styxx screamed so hard from the pain that it caused a vocal fold hemorrhage. Tears streamed down his face as the searing burn drove all other pain from his attention. It was the most excruciating thing he’d ever felt. The smell of his burning flesh made him heave as the priest pulled the poker off his leg.

“That’s it. Fetch me another rod.”

Styxx tried to fight, but it was no use. All he could do was lie here and take whatever they did. And with every poker placed on him, he hated his father. But most of all, he hated the gods who had done this to him.

And deep in his heart, he hated Acheron. If not for his brother, none of this would be happening. It was Acheron’s silver eyes that betrayed their origins. Acheron who couldn’t hide among people.

Acheron’s pain that had made him fall today.

Banging his head against the stone, Styxx wished himself dead. Why hadn’t his mother killed him last year? Why?

But no matter how hard he prayed, the gods refused to take mercy on him. Prince or not, his sole purpose in this life was to suffer and to bleed.

And he was sick of it.

Please, gods … please someone help me!

June 22, 9535 BC

“Apollo?” Dionysus popped into his brother’s open golden temple on Olympus to stand in front of him. “I know how much you love things of great beauty so I
must
show you this.” He flashed out of the room.

Sighing in deep aggravation, Apollo set aside the lyre he’d been strumming when his half brother Dionysus had decided to annoy him. “Where are you, Dion? I have no intention of playing this game.”

With short dark brown hair, Dionysus returned to stand in front of him. “Don’t take that tone with me, brother. Trust me. You
want
to see what I have in my Didymosian temple.”

This time, Apollo followed, and drew up short as he saw the beautiful young man someone had thoughtfully chained to the wall. Even with his hair sheared off, the boy had features that appeared to have been chiseled by the gods themselves. Never had he seen such handsomeness in the mortal realm.

“Is he part god?”

Dionysus shook his head. “Purely human. But look at those amazing eyes. Couldn’t you stare at them forever?”

Truly. They were a perfect, riveting blue. The same intense blue of the Aegean that Apollo had always favored.

The young man’s condition, however, was deplorable. “Why is he tied and bleeding?”

Dionysus took a deep drink of his wine then passed the kylix over to Apollo. “The idiots think I’ve possessed him.”

“Have you?”

“No, but I was thinking
you
might want to.” Dionysus gave him a lecherous grin.

Smiling, Apollo swallowed his drink before he returned the cup and approached the human male. It was quite true that he was attracted to any beautiful human, male or female. They each had their advantages and fun.

And even scarred by the priests, this one was still well beyond the beauty of any Apollo had seen in a long time.

Dionysus moved to stand next to him. “I know he’s still a bit young, but—”

“He’s the age of Ganymede.” Like this one, Ganymede had been born a human mortal. A prince of Troy. His flawless beauty had attracted Zeus, who’d brought him to Olympus to serve as their cupbearer … among other things. Yet Ganymede was nowhere near as handsome as this boy. Even bleeding and in need of a bath, he made Apollo’s mouth water for a taste of that golden skin. And those lips … Full and perfect, they’d been made for kissing.

Dionysus moved to the opposite side of the boy. “He’s the prince and heir to Didymos. I figured if nothing else, we could tag him for later use.”

Apollo snorted. “Tag him? Dear brother, I want to nail him.”

Dionysus slid his gaze down the prince’s body. “He does have the nicest ass you’ll ever see, and the priests were kind enough to secure his important parts from harm.” He drained his kylix. “And you’ll be happy to know he’s hung like a god.… Should I leave you two alone?”

“Unless you wish to watch.”

Dionysus arched a curious brow. “Will you share?”

*   *   *

S
tyxx scowled as
the air around him stirred. One second he was alone. In the next, there were two men in the room with him. Tall and dark-haired, they were clean-shaven and dressed as noblemen and not priests.

“Do you know who we are, prince?” the one on his right asked.

Unable to speak past his raw and sore throat, Styxx shook his head.

“You should. You’ve been summoning us for quite some time now.”

Gods? Styxx tried to say the word, but nothing came out.

The one on his right leaned in to whisper intimately. “Have you a name?”

It took him several heartbeats to muster a sound. “Styxx.” It came out as a hoarse croak.

“So, Styxx,” the other one said, leaning in on his left side. He ran his hand down Styxx’s chest, raising chills all over him. “You’ve been calling out to all the gods on Olympus for rescue.… Would you like us to free you?”

Desperate to be away from the torture, he nodded.