Echidna had been Sovereign of the Sky Serpents, appropriately dubbed “Sss,” the sound an opponent heard just before he died bloodily. She’d been an aberration among her tribe. Kind, sweet and endearingly shy—with everyone except Typhon. She’d hated him with every fiber of her being. He’d abducted her, continually raped her, and kept her from her only child.
Typhon had hated her right back, but he’d refused to let her go, his sick desire for her overpowering all else.
He’d gotten his in the end, though. Every time he’d neared her, a small portion of his flesh had crystalized. Eventually the crystallization spread to muscles and joints, limiting his range of motion, slowing and weakening him.
Hera the Cuckoldress, queen of the Greeks, had despised Typhon for reasons Lazarus had never learned. When she’d discovered his poor condition, she’d struck at him through his wife, hacking Echidna to pieces as a helpless Typhon was only able to watch.
Young Lazarus had been there, too. Despite his best efforts, he had failed to save his mother. Then Hera had vanished with Typhon and the warrior hadn’t been seen since.
Lazarus curled his fingers around the hilt of the kris. The only dagger he refused to sheathe with leather, preferring to cover the blade with the blood of his enemies. Small barbs lined both sides; after piercing a body, they expanded into hooks, making it impossible to extract the weapon without removing a few organs, too.
One day, Hera would become intimately acquainted with the kris.
Soon after her crimes, she’d been locked inside Tartarus, the immortal prison. One day she would be free, and she would be killed, and she would end up in a spirit realm.
I will find her. His father, too. No longer a child awed by a parent, Lazarus reviled the male. Typhon had committed many crimes against his mother, but rape was a line no one should ever cross.
The pair would join the Garden of Perpetual Horror.
One of the forest nymphs leaned forward to rake her nails down Lazarus’s chest. “Word has spread throughout the kingdom, you seek a bride. Is this true?”
“Very.” He’d found his μονομανία, yes, but soon afterward he’d lost her. Desire for her still boiled in his blood and blistered his bones, and yet he’d made no effort to find her. The last time they were together...
His chest tightened with something akin to fear. The last time they were together, she’d begun to weaken him.
He rubbed a hand against his thigh, caught the motion and inwardly cursed. Along the surface of his skin branched thin, crystalized rivers. Poisoned veins. The beginning of his downfall.
He’d collected ancient texts to research the legends about his father’s familial line, hoping to find a way to save himself. A fruitless task. Anyone who’d ever developed crystal veins—if anyone ever had—had kept quiet, just like Lazarus and Typhon.
Broadcast your weaknesses today, lose your life tomorrow.
So. He would fortify his defenses, instead. He would wed a vicious, bloodthirsty woman with a large army at her disposal. She would strengthen him, never weaken him. And he would ignore his burning desire for his μονομανία all his days, lest he track her down and attempt to convince her to return to his kingdom.
His μονομανία would spell the end of him.
“Come back to bed, and I’ll show you why I’m your best choice,” the nymph offered with a coy smile.
Mind reading was another ability Lazarus possessed, thanks to his mother. His head filled with the other nymph’s thoughts as she considered ways to kill her friend and hide the body.
“I’ll show you better,” she rasped, batting her lashes at him. “Pick me.”
The females tended the roses in the Garden of Perpetual Horror. They were lovers, not fighters, and lacked the necessary malice to be his wife.
He had to be ready for war. One day Hera and his father would end up in the afterlife. Everyone did. The Harpy who’d imprisoned him would end up here as well, and he’d have all of his enemies in one place.
Fighting rage, he gnashed his teeth until he tasted blood. The Harpy. Juliette the Eradicator. A bitch without equal.
“Return to your duties,” he said, and the nymphs pouted.
His stride long and sure, miraculously unimpeded by the damage his μονομανία had done, he opened his mind to search for any hidden dangers that might be awaiting him in the hall as he exited the room.
Two of his soldiers leaped from their posts to follow him.
Lazarus hadn’t learned their names. He preferred to maintain emotional distance and considered affection another form of weakness.
The moment you decide to trust another being, you lose the battle.
He turned the corner and said, “Have any disturbances been reported in the village?” The sense of disconcertment remained. If someone had hurt a person under his care...
No. Wouldn’t happen. No one would dare to raise a hand against one of his people. The consequences were too great. There was no trial, only punishment.
“No, sir.”
“And the sky serpents?” Upon his arrival to the spirit realms, the creatures scented him, abandoned their homes and entered what was—at the time—enemy territory, determined to serve him as they’d once served his mother.
Like him, they dreamed of killing his father.
Rumors claimed Typhon slept the sleep of the dead, but the truth was more complicated. He was entombed by the same crystals now growing inside Lazarus. He wasn’t dead or asleep, but immobile and aware.
“Two of your sky serpents were spotted in the forest a few miles away,” a guard said. “They were playing chase.”
“I wish to speak with them. I want a contingent of soldiers mounted and ready to leave in ten minutes.” Whatever the problem, he would find it. And he would end it.
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” The speaker rushed off.
Lazarus soared inside his private bedchamber, leaving the second soldier in the hall. He stripped, showered off the scent of frustration and sex and dressed for war, donning a shirt made of thin, lightweight metal links and black leather pants. The weapons he returned to their rightful places, anchoring semiautomatics under his arms, short swords at his back and daggers at his waist and ankles.
Every piece, including the kris, bore his personal seal—a sky serpent eating its own tail, forming a never-ending circle. An outward sign of his possession and, he supposed, a sign of his station.
A king by force. A drug dealer by choice. A lover by necessity.
Ambrosia grew in the realm, and he used it to his advantage. Since the purple flowers were the only substance capable of intoxicating an immortal, he oh, so generously gifted the rulers of surrounding kingdoms with a weekly shipment, ensuring their dependence—on him.
The women he bedded kept his mind off everything he didn’t have. Revenge, life...his μονομανία.
Lazarus opened a dresser drawer and traced his fingertips over the diamond knuckles and dagger pendant he’d procured for her. A wasted effort, considering he would never see her again.
He remembered the first time he’d seen her. An immortal walks into a bar...
Long raven hair had tumbled down an elegant back, curling at her hips. Eyes of liquid silver had peered at the world with innate sadness, and delicate features had appeared as breakable as glass.
There’d