For the Godly Glory

I

PRAYERS TO THE GODS WERE FOR THE FEEBLE-HEARTED.

Irene's bright eyes overshadowed by death and soothing voice, then held down with a coarse illness that would never be cured, were proof enough. Miracles were for the blessed. Andronika and her mother were not such.

By the time her tenth year came upon her, Andronika's daily routine was bleak with ruination. She'd seen countless of her grandfather's men meet Hades before their time, watched the blood of sheep pour out of red veins as offerings to implacable immortals, hereafter stood rigidly while the life ebbed from her mother's pale skin.

Before the end of innocence, she often queried "Where is my father?" Youth was said to have been brimming with curiosity. But Irene's eyes only darkened, and she shut her daughter up with a slap that left cheeks red and the steady promise of no supper. Andronika never asked again. The next day, she was sent to a temple and forced to bow before the statue of Ares, the infamous war god.

Irene knelt beside her, two figures mirroring the other in beauty but not in thought. Not yet. "Feast your eyes upon your father, a coward in all aspects," she whispered, head lowered to the marble flooring. "Do not let the gods deceive you; their trickery shall send you to your undue end!"

Andronika's eyes grew wide - her haughty father, a god? She stood to laugh at her mother's joke, wiping unfathomably clammy palms on her skirt, when Irene's bony hand coiled tightly around the child's thin wrist. Blue eyes racing, veins bulging, she pulled her daughter to her at arms' length.

"It's not a jest. You shall see. The day you pick up a sword and feel its icy blade glide along your fingertips is the moment when his evil becomes yours. I see all, Andronika, and your fate has already been ordained." She ran a thumb over Andronika's cheek; the girl had not noticed her own hot tears spilling from her eyes. "But as my daughter, I will protect you. Curse those wretched gods until you take your last breath, for look at what they've done to me!

"Apollo burdened me with a sickness I cannot escape from! Ares begged him to, and alas he agreed. I'm on my deathbed, dearest daughter, for your father is a coward who can only kill from the shadows. Put your faith in them if you must, but when the time comes to test their loyalty they will betray your heart as they betrayed mine." Andronika's eyes were wide with fear. Though she could not decipher the tumult of emotions whipping inside her, she'd one day recognize the strongest of them all as not love, but rage.

"Your father killed me."

The temple air was hot, but the young daughter of a monster stood shivering in her robes.

Not even a week passed before Irene was declared dead.

She spent her last days with her daughter. Dark-haired Andronika cared for her mother as a child took pains over a sick pet. Day after day, she repeated the same steps to "cure" Irene.

Taking in one palm a cool cloth damp with intermingling sweat and water, Andronika would place it on her mother's pallid forehead. Soft chants, childish in every way and pleading for Irene's life to be saved, had echoed throughout the small hut. Beads of sweat cascaded down both's temples. One was fearful her last tie to hope would become severed, the other a step away from the crumbling ledge of extinction. 

Lying in a cot, Irene tossed and turned until she faced her daughter, breathing speeding up as if she'd been running her entire life. Maybe she had. Maybe they all were running from the ineludible.

"Mother," Andronika whispered, "please get well. I... I prayed to Apollo again. I begged him to spare you."

Irene cupped her daughter's soft cheek. "Do not waste your time on prayers anymore, Andronika. Now is the time when you shall see all." Andronika gripped her mother's gaunt hand in her own; growing stronger each day, more so than the boys her age and older, she feared she'd break the older woman. But Andronika could not - would not - let go.