Lightning crackled in my eyes and jumped around my fists. ❝Zeus is fallen. I am Hercules. I stand in his place.❞
The giantess snorted, leering down at me, yellow teeth like bricks. ❝Another dead hero.❞
❝Yes. But not today.❞
...
"Hey! Hey! Can you hear me?" An angel spoke from the white. "You're in my truck. I'm so sorry, I'm taking you to a hospital--"
"No. No hospitals." I could hardly breathe. My lungs felt stuffed in a collapsing box, my body was on fire, each limb dully throbbing. Slumped in the passenger's seat of a bouncing cabin, I was groggy and full of pain.
"Shit...I-I don't know where to go! I don't know what to do!"
"Take me with you," I said, smiling as I sank back into the void.
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On the pristine beaches of Nafplio, I watched with the court one starless night as Hera and her graceful sklávoi ushered the new season. Flowers were bound in their hair and arm cuffs, their chitons gauzy and revealing. Bodies in sync, lithe men and women performed their erotic dance in the sand as the mother-goddess swayed in the center, hands raised. The orange light of a bonfire illuminated the ceremony, red flames licking navy skies. The more they danced the higher the flames rose.
Soon, summer rained over Greece in embers crimson as the flowers in Hera's pointed yellow crown. Body rolling like the waves, her golden locks streamed as she danced. Hera's forget-me-not gaze never left mine.
Across the bonfire, the dark-eyed Iphicles watched Hera too, sipping ambrosia from his flask...
"I see the summer is not all I have called to attention." Crown gleaming in her hair, Hera followed on hands and knees as I climbed backwards up the bed.
"This will be our undoing," I replied, tasting her lips when she offered. "We can't continue. Zeus may be occupied with his own affairs but my brother is smitten with you, and Erytheia with me. This will shatter them."
"Waste no concern on the weak and weak-minded." The greatest of teases, Hera lifted her chiton up her thighs, revealing inches of flawless amber skin. "One day you will be king of the gods. And we will fear nothing."
Hera kissed me into the pillows, my hands on her slender neck, fingertips admiring the shape and smoothness...
The world darkened. Thunder resounded in my ears and the memory transitioned, becoming a nightmare. My fingers squeezed in bitter instinct. Hera choked.
"Lies," I hissed between clenched teeth. Squeezing harder, I watched Hera sputter as the color drained from her face. "It was all lies. You took everything from me!"
"Not everything," she rasped. "Not yet." In disbelief at her callousness and cruelty, my fingers loosened. I fell into the echo of her darkness, her laughter caged in my ears...
Not everything. Not yet...
The darkness gave way to light.
My blurry vision cleared on an alarmingly beautiful girl frozen above me in fear. Realizing my hands were at her throat, and what I had nearly done, I let go at once.
