The Gates of Tartarus | I ✓

42. Galeria's One Stage Of Grief: Rage

So everything is starting to make sense... hopefully?

Edit: When I say this chapter is ridiculously long, I mean it's RIDICULOUSLY long. It's literally double my normal chapters, capping at just over 4k words, but I feel like every part of it is really important and can't be cut.

One more chapter to go!

Parva soror.

My hands were shaking for some reason, my eyes threatening to blur with tears. Even though he had spoken in Latin, some part of me knew what he had said.

Little sister.

I wrapped my arms around him too.

When he pulled away, tears were gathering in his reddened, puffy eyes, but he was smiling with such joy that it made me smile too. "It's been so long. I've waited so long. I had begun to lose hope I would ever see you again."

How did he look so familiar yet so foreign at the same time? I found myself studying him, wanting, for some reason, to ingrain his dark hair and bright blue eyes in my memory forever. He must've been Roman, judging from the Latin, but there was something... off. His eyes were so bright they looked almost neon in the sunlight, and his skin was flawless—too flawless. His perfections made him imperfect, disorienting to look at.

"My name is Adonis," he continued gently, clearly seeing my hesitation, "and yours is Galeria."

Galeria. I recalled my dreams, and then a wave of nausea hit me. That seemed to be quite common recently. That name... I had heard that name in the dream where I had allowed Caesar to die.

That had been me.

I wished I could burn memories.

"Adonis," I said. "A Greek name. But Galeria is Roman, isn't it?"

"Rome always had a habit of naming their children the same. Claudius had always despised being named after his father. How could his achievements be credited to him? Thus, when I was born, he gave me a name no other could've thought of having: Adonis. I suppose the Greek origin never occurred to him."

"Claudius?"

"Our father." He spat the word bitterly, eyes darkening.

I wondered what Claudius had done to him.

Adonis changed tracks quickly. "Do you know what happened as Galeria?" Before I could open my mouth, he answered himself. "No, you do not, because nobody knows. Nobody but the family. They all say you had become cruel and wicked, and I love you enough to admit to you that was the case, but their deduction of causation is all wrong. They all thought it was because you had seen too many battles, but they were wrong. A thousand reasons marked your bloody reign, but four were bloodier than them all." He held out his hand. "Shall we witness the first?"

I stared at it. Did I want to? Did I want to see how horrible I became? Did I want to see the monster that the others had been hinting at, the one the primordial deities had warned me that the gods had hated? The one Athena and Apollo had hated?

Soundlessly, I took his hand, and when we turned, we stood not on the ancient battlefield but the most luxurious room I had ever seen—one that could outcompete even modern houses.

It was huge—painstakingly carved from glittering marble that gleamed in a way that shouldn't have been physically possible, much of the room gilded with gold. Above us was no roof but instead a sprawling glass panel that allowed sunlight to stream in on the two figures on the couch.

One was an older woman, perhaps in her late twenties, if even that, her hair carefully braided, her sea-glass eyes the same as the girl who sat within her embrace, humming a song for who I suspected was her daughter as she taught her how to sew.