32. No More
Kheos
Kheos watched as Theos and Haera’s tender embrace stretched on and on. He seethed, blue eyes flaming outward with the warped energy he was absorbing from around him. Olympus groaned under the weight of his anger, pillars creaking ominously. His grip on the obsidian balustrade tightened until his knuckles threatened to break.
It was embarrassing that it affected him so – that he was so far removed from the core of his uncaring, unaffected role in the godhead. It shouldn’t carve a hole in his heart the way it did. He shouldn’t be able to hear the fibres of his control tearing the way he could. The worst of it was still yet to come. Listen. Theos didn’t ever listen .
Kheos watched his brother cradle his little mate in his arms and leap into the air, taking them through the phantaron and back to her small, warm cottage in Aegon. He lowered her to the bed, and she curled into a ball around herself as exhaustion wound through her. Exhaustion that was only just now registering in her mortal body. Exhaustion that Kheos had been bearing for her. That he was still bearing. Frustrated tears spilled over his lashes and onto his cheeks, burning his skin as the shame of jealousy burned a path into his soul.
Theos stepped back from the bed, sighing contentedly as he looked down at his sleeping mate. Then, what Kheos was waiting for. His older brother stepped backwards, into the phantaron, and manifested in the castle. Stuffing the tears and jealous burn deep below the raging surface of his other emotions, he locked it away in a place from which it could never ever be released.
He turned on his heel, and stormed down the hallway, shoulder checking everyone he passed until he flung the doors open and stormed into the throne room unannounced .
“You are a disgrace to the godhead, and you blaspheme everything I stand for. I should have you eviscerated.” Kheos growled.
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Kheos & Theos
Theos’ anger ignited right away, light bursting out of him towards Kheos. Without bothering to raise his hand, Kheos blocked the wave of light, reaching his intentions into it and corrupting it at its core so that it broke away from Theos and turned into a weapon of his own design. Wielding the distorted energy like a whip, he cracked it, winding it around Theos’ neck in one move and hauling him forward. The shock in Theos’ eyes wasn’t enough. The burn of his distorted energy into his brother’s skin wasn’t enough. Reaching forward, he grabbed Theos by the collar and hauled him towards him.
“You have tortured me enough,” he growled. “And I am tired of straining under the weight of your ignorance. The Fates grow tired of holding back the consequences to your inaction that are constantly on the cusp of the next moment your mate draws breath.”
Theos’ eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about? If you don’t let me go I’ll –”
“You’ll what?” Kheos snarled. “You’ll kill me? You can’t .” His eyes grew maddeningly bright as his anger grew. “The dahy you begged me for your mate was the dahy you unseat the balance of this trinity. The option to get rid of me is no longer at your disposal. If I go, she goes.” He growled. “We’ll go down together .”
Theos’ eyes widened, wild fear flooding his body so that he could not speak. Kheos barrelled on, the horror in his brothers’ features not nearly satisfying the pain in his heart. The horrid, throbbing ache that was driving him to the edge of his sanity. Sanity that he had spent the eons building, fortifying – it was crumbling into dust at the first challenge in his plans.
“You have put your unconsummated bond under worlds of pressure and for what ? To boast ?” His voice was rising, his shouts straining the Corinthian pillars around them. Cracks raced through them. Olympus groaned all around them. “Do you so much as begin to comprehend the worlds of pain that I have endured to stave off her demise? Absorbing all your rage and violent creation so that precious little mate of yours did not collapse under the strain of the full manifestation of the godhead and fall to the seas, claimed by death and our younger brother who would have never let you claim her body from his territory?”
Kheos’ eyes were pits of burning despair, the blue flames in them erupting around his body and engulfing Theos, who immediately tensed under the strain.
“Do you understand the universe of torture I have borne at your hands to save her? Or do you still think me incapable of emotion, brother ?” His yelling was hoarse, endlessly affected by the emotions he was still trying to withhold. Pain bled into his every syllable. “Do you still think that I am determined only to undermine you?”
Fine dust was raining down onto the glass floors all around them. Kheos’ eyes burned with unshed tears. All he could hear inside his mind were Theos’ condescending demands.
“Do you remember how I destroyed you until you conceded that I am King over everything that exists?”
“Do you think that this is fair somehow? That I am cursed to spend my dahys bearing the consequences of the bond in your chest? Aching and screaming out to me to carry its burden so that it does not die? Is it fair that I am forced to feel the very emotions I will never call my own? Haven’t I given enough?”
Theos’ lips parted to speak, but Kheos growled darkly, forcing him backwards so that he fell and rolled over. He turned to stalk from the room as Theos righted himself and balled his fists. A single tear fell from Kheos’ eyes, and the shame of it burned his cheeks as it fell.
“The Fates will no longer withhold your fates. No more.”