Styxx (DH #33) (18 page)

“Shh, Highness. You cooperate and I’m sure we can come to a sweet compromise regarding your punishments from now on.”

*   *   *

An hour later
, Styxx stood in the corner of his punishment room, trying to find even a tiny shred of dignity. But he had none left. Worse, he couldn’t stop his tears no matter how hard he tried.

I
am
a woman.

He’d been used like one.

The door opened behind him. His stomach shrank as he feared the scold returning for more. Surely to the gods, the bastard was well sated by now.…

“Why are you still here?”

Great. It was his adoring father. Just what he needed.

“Answer me, boy.”

“I don’t feel well.”

His father curled his lip in disgust. “I am so sick of that excuse. Can you not think up a better lie? And those tears … you’re weak and pathetic!” The king slammed his hand down on the table where the scold had …

Styxx vomited at the memory.

Jumping back, his father screwed his face up. “I guess you are ill.”

His breathing ragged, Styxx wiped a trembling hand over his mouth and did his best to control his raging and raw emotions.

For the first time, his father’s features softened as if the bastard finally had some tender feeling for him. He pulled him into his arms. Styxx had to force himself not to recoil.

Or cry harder.

“Come, child. Let me help you to your bed and have a bath prepared. Do you wish to have a maid help bathe you?”

“No.” The last thing he wanted was another pair of hands on his body, especially since he could still feel the evidence of the guard’s intrusion sliding out of him. If anyone else bathed him, they’d know what had happened.

“All right. I shouldn’t have been so harsh to you. Had I known you were really ill, I wouldn’t have been.”

Maybe you should listen when I try to tell you something
,
old man
.

But he never did.

“Father!” Ryssa snapped as she saw them on the stairs. “How is he to learn any lesson while you coddle him so?”

“Enough, kitten. Your brother is severely ill. I can feel his fever radiating through his clothes and mine. You should have pity for him.”

“What I pity is this empire when he sits on your throne.”

Styxx glared at her.

“Father, he’s threatening me again.”

His father paused beside her. “How so?”

“The way he looked at me just now. Like he could go through me.”

“You would do well to remember that one day, he will be your king, kitten. And he conducted himself with honor today. He walked to the scold without aid and gave no complaint.” Looking down, he tightened his arms around him. “I’m proud of you, Styxx.”

Great. After all I’ve done to please you, it’s my rape that makes you proud.

Bloody figures.

Styxx couldn’t meet his father’s gaze. Not when he could still feel the scold’s groping hands. He tried to pull away, but his father tightened his grip. It took every ounce of will not to break at the memories that stirred.

“Please, Father, I need to lie down for a while.” He choked on another spasm.

His father finally quickened the pace and got him to his room just in time for him to reach the chamber pot.

“Should I send for a physician?”

“No … I’ll be fine. I just need to be alone.” Styxx started to sit then thought better of it. Between the beating and other matters, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to sit again.

“Let me know if you need anything.” Finally his father retreated.

Styxx crawled onto his bed and slowly lowered himself down. Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine another life. One where he was welcomed with a loving hand that never turned violent on him. One where no one hated him without cause …

In his mind, he saw the image of a woman. She would be as sweet as the morning sun, with the voice of a songbird. And she would smile whenever he approached her. A real smile that said she enjoyed his company …

Not his title.

But he knew that dream would never come to him. Commoners married for love. Princes married for alliances. His marriage would be negotiated and he’d be lucky if she tolerated him long enough to conceive his heir. The only real friend he’d ever known in his entire life was locked away in Atlantis, suffering endless days like this one.

How do I get us out of this?

There was only one answer. If he could heal enough to ride by the morning, he would be able to get to Atlantis before Estes did. Hopefully his uncle and his friends would take their time returning home.

He could free Acheron and then they’d … do something. It didn’t matter what. The goal was to get them both out of this torment and find a place where the world would just leave them in peace.

But even as he had the thought, he couldn’t help wondering if such a place existed.

September 8, 9533 BC

Damn it, Estes, how many rooms are in your home?

The number seemed to be infinite. His uncle’s villa was even larger than their primary palace in Didymos. Worse, Estes had a full staff of servants and guards Styxx had to avoid. Since it was well after midnight, no one should be awake. Yet there were a number of maids and men walking about.

But what sickened him was the reason for all the rooms. The majority of the ones he’d searched had been set up as sex playrooms with different themes and props. And every time he opened one, his heart broke more at what had been done to Acheron.

I hate you, Father.

No human being should be reduced to this. Especially not his brother.

Styxx snuck to another door and pressed his ear against it to listen. He didn’t hear anyone inside it, either. Looking right and left, he slowly, carefully pushed it open. When he didn’t see anyone, he slid inside to double-check. Like the others, it was set up with sexual holding racks and a large bed near an oversized fireplace.

He approached the bed then froze. There in the center of it lay Acheron, peacefully sleeping on his stomach. That sight slammed him back to their childhood when he’d sneak into Acheron’s room at night to talk, play, or sleep. Whenever he was alone in his bed, Acheron slept in that position. But he’d never slept like that when they were together.

An overwhelming urge to curl up at his brother’s back and press his feet to Acheron’s went through him. And in its wake was a brutal pain for what they’d both lost these past years.

Innocent brotherly love.

Friendship.

Two things he didn’t know if they’d still have or not. But the one thing he couldn’t deny was how much his brother meant to him. How much he loved Acheron.

Forever and always.

Yet the man on that bed right now was a complete stranger to him. The changes in Acheron’s body slapped him with a harsh dose of cold, disturbing reality. Funny how, even though he was well aware of the changes in his own body over the years, he’d come here expecting to see the same young brother who’d been taken.

But that wasn’t what he found.

They were both grown men now and neither bore much resemblance to the twins who’d been separated. Just like him, Acheron was taller than most Greek men, with lean, well-defined muscles that were still in the process of filling out. Acheron’s skin was slightly paler than Styxx’s, yet both possessed the same exact wavy blond hair. Styxx kept his cut to just past his ears while Acheron’s fell to his shoulders.

His brother was completely naked except for gold bands on his ankles, wrists, biceps, and neck. A thin gold chain linked his wristband to the one on his biceps. Styxx winced at them and what they signified. Those tsoulus chains were put on young men and women who were essentially kept as pets for the sexual perversions of the ruling class. While his father had never owned one, Styxx knew plenty of noblemen, princes, and kings who were not so kind. Men who bragged about their property and how they loved to debase their slaves who had no choice except to take it.

But what made him angriest of all were the small loops on the wrist and ankle bands. Those were to tie his brother into different positions so that his owner would have full access to his body to do anything he wanted while Acheron would be powerless to stop it. The fact that they were cast in gold and left on Acheron’s limbs even while he slept said it all.

His uncle used his brother well and often.

Styxx wanted to kill Estes for what he’d done.
You worthless bastard …

Moving closer, he dropped his gaze to Acheron’s open hand where Estes had burned a slave’s mark into his palm. That sight repulsed him even more as he realized that had been the pain he’d felt on the day he’d come home from the Dionysion.

Though his uncle had told him what he’d been doing with Acheron, he’d held out hope that Estes was lying or exaggerating the abuse.

But there was no denying this.

His brother really was a well-used whore.

Yet what screwed with his head most was the fact that while he knew it was Acheron on that bed, he saw himself there. They were identical in every way, except for their eyes and physical scars. But for one small birth defect that could have been his as easily as it was Acheron’s, he would be the one being bought and sold every day of his life.

He ground his teeth at the injustice of fickle random luck. It was so unfair.

This stops now!

No matter what it took, he was getting Acheron out of this nightmare. Styxx knelt on the floor and reached to touch his brother. The pungent smell of fruit hit him hard. It was the same scent of that damned aphrodisiac his uncle had forced him to take.
Please be more coherent than I was.

“Acheron?” he whispered, shaking his brother’s shoulder.

Moaning low, Acheron turned his face into Styxx’s hand and licked his palm.

Styxx jerked his hand back, stunned and disturbed by Acheron’s actions. “Brother?” he tried again.

Acheron moved closer to him. “
Idikos,
” he breathed.

The Atlantean word hit him like a fist to his groin. It was one a slave used for his master.

“Acheron!” he said more sharply, shaking him. “Wake up!”

His brother pushed himself up by his arms immediately, but was so groggy that he couldn’t focus. Of course, he was drugged. How else would Estes be able to keep him here?

“What would you have of me,
Idikos
?” Acheron asked in Atlantean. He was so out of it that he had no idea to whom he was speaking. Even his thoughts were incoherent jumbled words that were a mixture of Greek and Atlantean. Worse, he kept his gaze on the ground as all slaves were forced to do.

Styxx cupped Acheron’s face in his hands and tilted his chin until Acheron met his gaze. “Look at me, brother. Do you remember me?”

Styxx?
The hopeless agony of Acheron’s thought wrenched his stomach hard.

“Yes,
adelphos
. I’ve come to take you from here.”

That succeeded in breaking through Acheron’s drugged stupor. His swirling silver eyes flared wide as terror consumed him. He tore himself from Styxx’s hands and scooted back on the bed to cower in a corner.

Styxx shot across the bed after him. “We have to hurry. Where are your clothes?”

“I can’t leave,” Acheron said in a low, vicious whisper.

“Yes, you can.”

Acheron met his gaze and shook his head hard. A tic worked in his jaw. “I can
not
leave.”

“Are you insane that you would stay here?” Styxx glanced around at all the sex toys and the tag on Acheron’s collar that marked him as property and not a human. All slaves were viewed as nothing more than tools with feet. “I will protect you.”

“You can’t.”

Gods, what had they done to him that he’d be so frightened he shivered at the mere thought of having freedom?

Styxx tried to make sense of Acheron’s rushing thoughts, but he wasn’t thinking in a single language. Rather in about nine of them, only four of which Styxx was truly fluent with. He also used words Styxx wasn’t sure about, but he had an inkling they had to do with sex.

“Listen to me!” he said, cupping Acheron’s face again. His brother refused to look at him. “Estes isn’t here. I’ve ridden day and night, only stopping to change out horses, to make sure I’d beat him back so that I could help you. I didn’t know what he was doing to you, little brother. But now that I do, I swear to you that I will keep you safe.”

“You can’t.”

“Why won’t you believe me?”

This time Acheron did meet his gaze, and the abject shame, misery, and pain in his brother’s eyes stole his breath. “Because you
are
me and I couldn’t stop them.”

“You were a baby.”

Acheron shook his head. “You don’t know … you don’t know.”

“Know what?”

A moment later, Styxx sucked his breath in sharply as Acheron’s thoughts spun even faster and with so much emotion they pierced his skull with pain. What in the name of Hades? “Acheron, calm yourself. Where are your clothes?”

“I have none.”

Of course he didn’t. Why would he? A tsoulus wouldn’t need any for his duties.

Styxx removed his cloak and wrapped it around Acheron. Once they were away, he’d buy something for Acheron to wear. The important thing right now was to get him out of here before a guard or servant heard them.

He pulled his brother from the bed, but it was hard to get him across the floor. Acheron fought him every step of the way to the point Styxx was ready to hit him for it.

He’s afraid
.

And I’m not?

If they were caught … he didn’t want to think about the consequences. Frustrated and angry, Styxx slammed his brother against the wall. “Damn it all, Acheron. Stop this! I’m taking you from here. Stop fighting me.”

Acheron glared at him with so much hatred it cut through him. “You think you can control things because you’re a prince. But you don’t control shit!”

“What I think is I’m putting my ass on the line for you, brother, and you’re being
stupid
. I’m well aware of what’s at stake … for both of us. But we can’t live like this. Not me and definitely not you.”