Styxx (Dark-Hunter 22)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Styxx didn't even react. He didn't care. The only thing he loved was gone and he had no way of finding her.

Tears pricked the back of his eyes as he pushed open his bedroom door and saw Apollo in his receiving room. Ah, beautiful. Could his day be any better?

Apollo raked him with a sneer. "Where have you been?"

Styxx sighed. "I didn't know you were looking for me."

The god materialized at his back and grabbed his jaw in one powerful fist. He snatched Styxx's head back until he could see Apollo's angry glare. "Are you breaching our agreement?"

Hopeless despair filled him. What difference did anything make now? He felt as if his entire life force had been ripped out of his body. He was nothing more than an empty shell. "No."

Apollo nuzzled his neck, scraping his skin with his fangs. Then he punched Styxx in the back with his fist, knocking him forward. "Bathe yourself and return to me. I've had my fill of your mewling sister and her whiny voice. And don't be long. If I have to come get you, you won't be happy about it."

As if any of this made him happy?

Styxx resisted the urge to pass an obscene gesture at the god. The last thing he wanted to do was have the bastard think it was an invitation.

Without a word, he went to bathe and tried his best not to think about what would happen once he finished.

Styxx paused in his bathing pool as he heard Acheron and Ryssa laughing together in her room. The two of them had always done that. When he'd been a boy, he used to try and join them, but Ryssa had never allowed it.

You have other people to play with. Leave us alone, you little brat.

But his tutors had never allowed him to play and other children had been too afraid. So he'd wander off to make up friends.

He dunked his head under the water and tried his best to ignore his siblings. Yet their laughter and conversation continued to stab his heart. He understood his father doubting his blood relationship, but Ryssa knew he was as related to her as Acheron was.

And with Acheron ...

They were full-blooded brothers.

And still they ignored him at best, rebuffed him at worst. All he'd ever wanted in his life was to feel like he belonged somewhere.

That he belonged to someone.

No one would have him. Except for the brief time when he'd found happiness with Bethany. Tears filled his eyes as he looked down at her necklace on his wrist. Please don't leave me here alone, Beth. I can't survive this without you.

What if she really was gone from him?

Forever?

"Styxx!" Apollo's snarl cut through his thoughts as he made the mark on Styxx's back burn.

With a ragged breath, Styxx wiped away the tears with the heels of his hands and left the water to do what he did best.

Endure hell.

January 27, 9528 BC

"What is wrong with you?" Styxx snarled as he found Acheron drunk and naked on the floor of Acheron's room.

Sneering at him, Acheron grabbed the wineskin he'd been cradling under his body and drank from it. "Go away, you quim! I hate you! I wish we were dead...." His voice broke off into sobs.

Acheron's pain reached out to him, making him feel bad that he'd yelled at him.

Styxx knelt beside his twin and took the wineskin away. "Acheron ... listen to me. I know you haven't eaten in at least two days." Their shared hunger pangs attested to it. He took the bread that Hestia had left earlier for his brother and held it out to Acheron. "You have to take some. Do you understand?"

"Fuck you ... you worthless whore!"

Flinching at the insult that cut to his bones, Styxx tried to put a piece of bread in Acheron's mouth, but he bit him so hard, he bled.

Styxx cursed and snatched his hand away. He glared at his twin, wanting to kill him. "Father is going to have you beaten or restrained and force-fed again. Is that what you want?"

Tears welled in Acheron's swirling silver eyes. "No. My want has abandoned me. Slapped me." He glared at Styxx. "Beat me. Because I'm not you! If I were a prince and not a whore ... But you're both. You are. I know you are. You aren't that, but you are. I saw it. They saw ... you. It..."

Acheron was so drunk, he was incoherent. Even his thoughts made no sense whatsoever.

Styxx pressed the heel of his hand to his eye as he tried to sort through Acheron's mad ramblings. They were so fast and nonsensical, they set his brain to aching.

Sobbing hard, Acheron curled into a ball on the floor.

Styxx's throat tightened at the sight of his brother's agony, and at his own need to join him there. Like him, his brother was in absolute misery over something that had happened. But what?

He knew he was the last person Acheron wanted to confide in. He'd go get Ryssa for him, but she was with Apollo.

I'm all he has.

Gods help us both.

"Adelphos," he whispered, placing his hand on Acheron's arm. "Please, I'm trying to help you."

Acheron punched at him. "Get off me!"

Break the whore in for the rest of us....

Pass him this way....

Styxx cringed as those phrases shouted at him from Acheron's scrambled mind. No wonder his brother was so upset. He had the same flashbacks and nightmares that haunted him, too. Worse, Acheron's memories were similar to what Xan had said to Estes after they'd raped Styxx the first time. No matter what he did, the jeers of those who'd violated him and then laughed and gloated about it would return to torture him.

He laid his head down on Acheron's shoulder and tried to comfort him. "Shh, brother. I know your pain."

"You know nothing of my pain! When has anyone ever spurned you, Highness?"

You and Ryssa both have. Constantly.

As had their father and mother.

And now his precious Bethany.

But this wasn't about his pain. He could drink himself stupid later, as he'd been doing for days. Right now, his brother needed him.

"Acheron-"

Faster than even Styxx could react, his brother spun on him and caught his throat in a fist so tight it was crushing. Acheron rolled with him and pinned him to the ground with a strength that was startling and unimaginable.