Page 1 of For the Love of the Gods

Chapter 1

Dominic

There are no consequences for the gods.

Lying. Killing. Cheating. Whatever the indiscretion, there is no accountability for the divine. Public perception, maybe, but at the end of the day, it was a god’s life source that kept the world spinning.

Without a spare to absorb the responsibility, that is.

Other gods, however, could seek revenge. Retribution for crimes committed, but only between themselves. It was rare that someone ever crossed those lines. When it did happen, and revenge was sought, no one stood in your way.

It was why I was standing here, lingering in the shadows of a goddess’s home, watching her brush her hair.

I walked into her house at midnight without a single question. Two guards simply nodded at me as I stepped through the onyx fireplace in her living room. They were sitting on a simple couch, relaxed with their feet kicked up on a cedar table.

They saw me enter, but sat still as I walked through her sitting room and turned towards the bedrooms. I would have bristled at their clear lack of care for her protection if it didn’t make my life easier.

I'd been here countless times, but not once in over five years. It was almost eerily unchanged, with art and sculptures in the same place, even though she had ruled this place for years. I walked down the expansive hallway and focused on quieting my footsteps and preparing to avoid any staff who might stop me. I was in no rush, and stalking prey was always better than a quick snatch.

I made it to the end of the hallway and was about to turn left towards the grand suite when I heard it. The soft sound of music coming from the opposite end, from the right side of a new corridor.

It was a room I couldn’t place from my memories, but she was in there. I could almost feel her presence on the other side of the wall.

The door was open, and I stepped through to find the lights off, save for the slight glow of a candle from what had to be the bathroom. I inched forwards, keeping to the shadows and settled myself next to a curtain. She was sitting at a vanity, raking a brush that looked like it was made of solid gold through her hair.

I almost stepped out of the shadows then, but stopped. I stood back for a moment and just watched her.

I didn’t enjoy destroying beautiful things, found no joy in crushing flowers under my feet or marring a perfect painting. But her sculpted face, resting in a soft expression while she worked, wouldn’t deter me.

Her movements were methodical, and her eyes were slightly glazed over with focus.

Another moment passed, and then she stopped brushing, her hand freezing in place so fast it practically reverberated. Her eyes snatched onto mine, cutting through the darkness with an uncanny precision. Her stare was piercing, holding onto me with such force it felt like she was in front of me, inches apart, instead of separated by a mirror.

She held on tight, until I clocked movement elsewhere in the mirror.

Her lips had parted slightly, in the way that they do right before speaking. I waited, curious what her reaction would be. Her norm was to contort her face into a bitter, hateful expression.

They twitched again, closing. She picked back up the hairbrush and returned to her task in cold dismissal, grabbing another strand of dark brown hair, a sweeping mass of strands that looked like ribbons of caramel in the candlelight.

I stood still, watching her eyes follow the brush.

She looked peaceful, without a care in the world that someone had all but broken into her home. A home that she was clearly alone in, with nothing but two guards and minimal staff to watch over her.

At least she was going to make this easy on me, but the thought passed through my body annoyance rather than triumph.

You would think that she would be a little more vigilant with her safety. I'd given her fair warning that this was coming, that the days she had left with a beating heart were few.

But here she was, her expression looking as peaceful as a lamb unaware that their shepherd was about to drag a knife across their throat. The muscles in her face were deceptively relaxed, because her back was stick straight, a robe that looked far too thin for the weather draped off her shoulders.

It was a chilly night, the windows open and letting a stiff breeze into the room and picking up a few strands of hair hanging down her back. The weather couldn’t touch her though, not when her attention seemed glued to the last section of hair on the right side of her face.

I was content with letting her take her time. She would be dead by the end of the hour. Whether that was in two minutes or twenty, it didn’t matter to me.

She dragged the brush down the bottom of her hair, adjusting the strands with her fingertips until they laid perfectly over her chest. The brush was next. She set it down slowly, steadily on the deep mahogany desk.

Her eyes drifted up, finding mine again, slicing through the shadows like a bright green knife.

“Are you here to kill me?”

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