Selfish Gods - Complete!

27

Celeste had never been hit or hurt by anyone before. Her father had never so much as threatened to spank her and she had managed to glide through childhood and adolescence without getting into any serious physical altercations. Once, a girl had pushed her into the sand but she had not gotten hurt and the girl had burst into tears right after, overwhelmed by guilt.

The Prince's attack on her had been the first time in her life that someone had put their hands on her like that. It had broken something fundamental in her, some truth she had never uttered but which she had held close to her heart all the same: other people got hit, but not her. That kind of violence was something she read about, saw in a movie or listened to with sympathy, but it was not a thing that was meant to penetrate her reality.

The result was that she still could not fully believe that it had happened. Even as she raced away from the Prince, tearing down hallway after hallway and he gained on her, pursuing her as relentlessly as a starving predator after its next meal, it felt more surreal than anything that had happened so far.

She had started with a head start but she lost it quickly.

No matter how fast she pumped her legs, the Prince was faster and there came a point when it felt like she was running against a tide. Her legs were moving but she wasn't going anywhere.

In that last second before he grabbed her arm her heart sunk.

An image flashed through her mind: some kind of animal, a gazelle maybe, falling as it was felled by a lion.

He pulled her arm hard enough to nearly pull it out of its socket. She lost her balance. They crashed into the ground together and then he was on top of her, pinning her hands down, not hard, but hard enough to keep her in place.

Celeste squeezed her eyes shut without realizing she was doing it till she heard him laughing. It wasn't a malicious laugh but it was hard to tell just then what he meant by it. When she peeled her eyes open, he was smiling.

"Can we talk?" He asked, his tone flirtatious.

Celeste starred. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. 

"I'm sorry I hurt you," He said, his voice soft, like velvet. "I keep forgetting that you've lived your whole life as a mortal and that different rules apply, don't they?" He paused. "Violence has such dire consequences if you're mortal. But for us there are no real consequences. Suffering is always just an inconvenience. A means to an end." He paused again, searching her face with his beautiful amber eyes. "And I know, as a woman, you've been raised in a world where a man who did what I did would be an absolute terror. But you should know the gods operate differently. Power doesn't tend to be distributed by gender. You and I, we're equals in that sense."

Celeste's heart rate slowed as he talked.  His words were like warm sugar. Recent, terrible memories seemed to lose their shape and the pain attached to them. Perhaps it had all been a misunderstanding.

She found she preferred that interpretation.

A strand of dark hair had fallen out of place over his olive skin and she saw, for the first time, flecks of gold in his amber eyes. His was an impossible, magnetic beauty.

"I'm going to release you," He said, "But please don't run away again. We're at war and you're just beginning to realize your potential. I don't want anything bad to happen to you." He paused. "I'm going to let you go now."

She nodded and when he released her she sat up, pulling her knees to her chest and wiping at her nose with the back of her hand. His expression softened even more. 

"I had to do it," He said, gently, "When someone's blocked like that there really isn't any other way. They have to think it's real. It has to hurt." He put his hand on her knee, lightly, gently. "But I hope you know that that wasn't the real me. I would never actually hurt you." He raised his hand to her cheek, slowly, like he was afraid of startling her, and traced his finger tips from her jawline to her chin. "You're special to me, Celeste."