Run Riot (State of Grace #1)

Prologue

The ruins at Ephesus were oppressively silent at midnight.

Gone were the human tourists who visited this place during the day to admire the achievements of civilization and architecture this site represented, though there weren’t so many this time of year anyway — it was cold.

I shivered in my wool coat, hands scrunched into fists inside the pockets, wishing I’d worn gloves.

There were no other agathos or daimons here now.

Sometimes they would secretly visit these ruins, disguised as human tourists, to make a pilgrimage to their respective goddesses, the mothers of creation.

It was never a pilgrimage I intended to make, even though many agathos did.

I’d always felt too twisted inside, too tainted to contemplate visiting such a sacred place.

Only the very desperate would be at this place at this time of night.

And yet here I was, by invitation of the divine, to visit one goddess that I served, whose image I’d been made in, and one I was supposed to hate, but couldn’t. One who’d given me life, but the other who’d given me purpose .

I was standing on a precipice from which I couldn’t return, and I wasn’t alone. I would never be alone again.

Maybe I’d walk out of this as the first agathos to fall from the light, or maybe I’d already fallen.

Perhaps I might be the first daimon to be made, not born .

As I looked between the four men standing stoically at my side, ready to face off against the divine without an ounce of fear, I wondered if that would really be so bad.

I was born to serve the light, but the dark had brought them to me. My friends. My lovers. My soulmates. The dark had given me life and hope and meaning when I’d had none.

Once upon a time, their kind had been my enemy. Now, it was my own people I had to fear.