Warrior Queen - Karpov Kinrade Page 0,1

but my personality, my desires, my gender… that's all still solidly Lily Lemon. “His memories are still here, somewhere.”

Narrowing my eyes, I lift myself slowly on an elbow, the slight movement setting off stabs of pain. As I adjust on the bed to ease my aching side, I take a deeper note of my surroundings for the first time. I’m still in Prometheus’ dungeon room, the walls lined with shelves of scrolls and books, and his—my—skeleton is still slumped at the table. Someone lit the beeswax candles. Homer the Cyclops, probably. With glowing skin, Apollo is his own light source.

I relax back onto the pillows with a frown. How did I end up in bed? When did Apollo arrive? My last recollection is talking to Homer about how to fight back. I settled on a plan to free the gods from Clay’s attack.

Then, everything went black.

I refocus my attention on the god before me. Apollo truly is unreasonably beautiful. It's almost hard to look straight at him. And deep inside, I feel Prometheus’ memories stir. He respected Apollo. Loved him, even. Which makes my own rising emotions conflicting and confusing. My queendom, my people, are my highest priority, and the fact that these gods have been treating them like pawns in a chess game stirs a rage deep in my soul.

As Ladron’s last words replay in my mind, I clench my teeth and say, "You've got some explaining to do, Apollo. Ladron told me the details of your plan. You and Clay attacked my queendom and poisoned the gods, and now my people are dying, all because you wanted to break open these Dungeons to rule through chaos and fear.” Yeah, that isn’t going to happen. Not on my watch.

If a god can look repentant…Apollo almost gets there. I can't describe him as humble, simply self-aware. He's clearly struggling with what to say next, so I wait, giving him time to collect his words. My heart is skipping beats in my chest, but I know if he wanted to kill me, I'd already be dead.

Finally, he leans back in his chair and says, "Our world needed a change of leadership. Zeus has abused his power for far too long. Look what he has done to you, old friend." He nods at my skeleton by way of example. "Torturing you for helping the humans. Then throwing you in here to rot. And that's just one example of many, many lives he's destroyed over the millennia." He pauses, flinching. "Hermes, Mirk and Torak were meant to help, but they didn't like my methods."

“And they’re paying for it,” I say. I left them fighting for their lives. Again, I move to stand, but Apollo stops me with a hand.

“They’re alive,” Apollo cuts me short.

Relief courses through me. Sarcasm follows on its heels. "Yeah, well, I can't imagine just why they weren't okay with you releasing monsters into the world to kill innocent people," I say, watching him fiddle with his lyre in a gesture that’s defensive, guilty almost.

He draws a long breath in through his nose. "I meant to create temporary chaos so we could spare even more lives with a clean transfer of power,” he replies. “Sometimes you must sacrifice a few to save many."

“Not much comfort to the few,” I object.

Apollo sighs, reading my expression to know he’s never going to convince me. “Well, nothing went as expected. I sent the hellhounds to Earth to bring Epimetheus back, but that didn’t go well.”

“Besides bringing me along, too?” I ask. Technically, that had been Clay’s doing, shoving me in front of the hellhounds to save his own skeezy hide.

“Epimetheus used to be much easier to control.” Apollo shifts in his chair. “It seems his human years affected him more than I expected.”

The dull ache in my side sharpens and I feel suddenly raw. The Prometheus part of me knows nothing with Epimetheus is ever as expected. He’s never been one to pay attention to consequences. He demonstrated that even during his short human life as Clay. And now, he’s gone from shoving me into hellhounds to poisoning gods and who knows what else with my queendom. And as for Torak, Mirk, and Ladron… I’ve got to get moving, make some lemonade out of heads and all that, but not until I get Apollo out of the way.

“Just why are you here, Apollo?” I ask abruptly.

His shoulders sag. "Epimetheus has betrayed me.” His answer is stark, direct, and the light issuing from his