ORACLES OF DELPHI
Tell the People:
Our Mother Earth has spoken.
Gaia's oracle is broken.
Apollon's hundred arrows
Silenced her sacred servant.
Now, in one or one thousand years,
His fair wrought house will fall.
A god reborn shall reign.
Oracle of Gaia, Delphi, 340 BC
Tell the King:
The fair wrought house has fallen.
No shelter has Apollon,
nor sacred laurel leaves;
The fountains are now silent;
the voice is stilled.
It is finished.
Oracle of Apollon, Delphi, 393 AD
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Delphi in the Region of Phokis in the Month of Mounichion in the First Year of the 110th Olympiad (340 BCE)
CHAPTER 1
His heart pounded against his rib cage like a siege engine. He pressed his back into the stone wall, closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing. He couldn't believe he'd been such a fool. Next time, Charis always promised. Next time, he always hoped. This time....
He pulled himself to the top of the wall and lay flat. The gates of the Sacred Precinct were locked, and he had to climb out the same way he'd climbed in. On the way out, though, he wasn't lugging a body.
He glanced behind him, toward the theater, and then down to the Temple of Apollon where he'd left Charis's body for the priests to find. Stars winked in and out as clouds drifted across the black dome blanketing the night sky. He crouched, reached for a nearby branch, and swung down to land on the ground with a soft thud.
It wasn't the first time he'd taken a life. But he'd never killed a woman, never killed anyone unarmed. Not that Charis didn't fight back. His shoulders, red with teeth and claw marks, throbbed. And his face. He ran his tongue across his lip. At least the bleeding had stopped.
He could still smell her. Still see how she licked her lips as she loosened her braids. Still taste the sweetness of her breast, and feel her hot breath as she put his fingers, one by one, in her mouth, wetting them, running her tongue over them, sucking gently until his whole body trembled. When she pulled him down into the soft pile of hay and wrapped her legs around his waist, he had been ready to give her anything-even the gold tiara. Diokles would never know. There were other treasures from the Sacred Precinct to sell.
Of course, none of that mattered now. None of that mattered the moment he felt her brother's blade against his throat and the trickle of blood drip across his collar bone. The moment Charis scrambled up from beneath him and laughed in his face. Brother and sister, what a pair. Charis's brother had picked up the tiara and threatened to go to Diokles with proof he was double-dealing-unless he split his take fifty-fifty. And not just on the tiara. On everything. He'd still be a rich man, Charis promised, laughing at how easy it was to blackmail him.
Her brother was still laughing when the dagger pierced his heart. Who was the fool now? Didn't they know nobody bested him with a blade? And then, like a wild thing, Charis jumped on his back, clung to him, all teeth and nails, punching, kicking. By the gods, he thought all of Delphi would hear. But no one did. No one came. He wanted to make her pay, he wanted to hurt her, but he hadn't meant to kill her. He groaned and his face darkened as he remembered those last moments. She was not laughing when she died.
