Prologue

The torches flared from their sconces, washing the rough stone walls with fire and deepening the craggy shadows. The goddess Apate sat upon her throne, skin glossy and black as night, her face masked by a black veil, but I could feel her gaze as surely as a claw raking across my flesh.

She reached for the delicate china tea set, so out of place in this hellish landscape, and held the pot aloft. “Tea?” she offered.

A shudder crawled up my spine, a warning that would not be ignored. “No, thank you.”

I thought for a moment she would insist, but after an ominous pause, she nodded and poured herself a cup. The tea was not brown as expected, but a thick, viscous scarlet. I kept my face neutral, even as something with far too many segmented legs slithered from inside her sleeve before scuttling back between the folds of fabric. She brought the cup beneath her veil and drank deeply.

Apate was the goddess of deceit, rumored to have escaped from Pandora’s box of evil. As someone who took pleasure in the pain of others, this trickster had every reason to help me enact my revenge. Though even I, the god of terror and dread, had trouble standing in her presence.

She set her cup down with a clatter and sighed, leaning back in her throne. “Are you certain?” Her voice seemed to whisper through the ether, both here and somehow not. “Once complete, it cannot be undone. You will be cursed for all eternity.”

I stared down at my hands, coated with blood from the offering I’d made. Thick droplets formed at my fingertips, hesitating briefly before dripping to the stone altar below with a wet splat. I couldn’t stop now. I was so close to everything I’d wanted. Revenge first, but ultimately, peace at last. I could finally put my broken heart to rest.

“It’s not a curse,” I said, though the words felt heavier than they should, the smallest sliver of doubt creeping in. “It’s a gift.”

Her silence echoed within the cave and my skull. It seemed to go on forever, to extend to the very ends of the earth, until I thought I would scream. At last, she said, “Very well. Let your fate be written in blood.”

Bringing my hands to my face, I painted my flesh with the sacrificial blood.

Closing my eyes, I recalled my beloved’s face, his teasing eyes and wicked smile, the drag of his callused hands across my skin. “For you, Gorgias. I will make Loki pay.”

I felt her whispered spell hook its thorny barbs into me. It was ruthlessly painful, like having my skin peeled from my body, strip by excruciating strip, but I embraced it. A scream was torn from my lips, my throat raw, and I tasted blood.

I told myself it was worth it, because love was pain.