Cursed [malexmale]

Chapter One

Chapter One

My eyes flew open at the sound of inhuman wail that sent my heart leaping into my throat and my fists snatching at the sheets, a gasp flying past my lips. Cold sweat prickled my goose-bumped flesh, and tremors wracking me so hard that I finally found the strength to sit up, but it was slow, as if I was weighed in syrup. It was a thick, sluggish sensation that made my skin sizzle and my blood burn in my veins.

I blinked widely, staring around the bedroom.

The cream curtains framing the ceiling to floor windows that made up the left side of the room billowed softly under a midnight summer's breeze, carrying with it the sweet scent of flowers from the garden outside and pine from the forests beyond, mingled with the scent of smoke from other temples. I scanned the eerie shadows made by the large ancient wardrobe in one corner, the vanity that sparkled under the moonlight, the work desk coated in a layer of dust. The bathroom door was opened a crack, but it was dark inside.

My eyes flitted to the warm body on the bed beside me, and my heart caught in my throat for a split second as I swore, swore, there was a mop of wavy gold hair and lean muscles rippling as a low moan escaped perfectly shaped lips and he rolled onto his back. My fear and my hope shattered for the millionth time as the moonlight cut across the bed, across the man's face revealing no shapely masculine features of innocent and boyish charm, no thick golden blonde hair that had occupied my hands for hours on end, no shiny blue eyes dancing up at me impishly with delight.

Instead, a god lay beside me in an overly large canopy bed. A god with wavy auburn hair streaked with an occasional strand of brown and rust, deep ocean blue eyes closed with a thick line of lashes laid against sun-kissed skin, stretched tight over muscles that bulged and danced with every breath he took through pouty lips. A sun tattoo spread across his navel over his belly button, and not far from that, a scar ran the length from hip to armpit, a jagged ugly scar that had once wrung my heart with pity, now glared at me as a warning that the god who made it would harm even his own son.

A deep sigh left me as I scanned the room, still slightly panicked.

The air seemed calm, tame, yet there was an underlying pulse that told me something was near, something dangerous and powerful. For a split second, my mind went to the day the Source had come to me with the offer to imprison the Atlantean pantheon. Everything around me had been destroyed and I found myself standing on the shoreline one second, and the next, I was thrown violently into the ocean in the mortal realm, flailing and choking. A second later, Xenon had appeared behind me, making the most pitiful sobs and screams of pain.

It'd taken me hours to drag him to the Greek shoreline, to force him to calm him down, and even when he'd stopped screaming, he had turned on me with a venom that still stung even today.

"I hate you," Xenon had snarled, white eyes snapping fire at me, and his words cut me, carved out the last piece of kindness I had left, "I fucking hate you! You killed them! You killed all of them and I hate you for it! I wish the Source had taken you with them, you traitor!" I hadn't bothered to defend myself. Xenon was grieving, and hard. My heart broke for him as he sank to the sand and wept until his heart was black. He'd gone silent for hours while I tried to find us a safe place, and a safe place for the strange cubic key the Source had snuck into my pocket. Somehow, I knew what it was, what I had to do with it. And I knew that I could never tell Xenon about the key, for fear of him resurrecting a pantheon that deserved to stay hidden.

Unfortunately, I'd woken up the next day and Xenon had vanished.

It wasn't until a century later that I had discovered what happened to him, what the Source had given him in return for letting him survive. I had tried to get a hold of coin after coin to try and contact Xenon, but each time he appeared to me, he would spit at me, curse at me, and then leave. He refused to associate with me and I had lost contact after the second coin I'd managed to find. It wasn't until a couple decades ago that I had found a chance to retrieve another coin from one of the Sons of Hades, which I used to once again try and make contact, but Xenon, even after centuries of silence, refused to speak to me.