She Had Only Want To Get Through One More Night

“You know people say that Athena was acting on someone else’s orders, that the assassination attempt emanated from within the palace itself.”

“And who is Athens, again?”

“Athena,” her sister quickly corrected.

“Here, let me show you.”

“You really do not have to do that…” Leda started, but Cythia was already up and moving toward the CommNet station to get the news for her to see for herself.

Cythia held up the screen that now held the scowling face of a different man.

“Athena, retired palace guardian and now convicted murderer.”

The image flashed away to another picture inside the palace, clearly both images were part of an album that defaulted to scroll across the screen. It later changed again to a group of men with one standing on a raised podium in the middle. She vaguely acknowledged that man as King Zeus.

Leda would never understand her sister’s infatuation with the royal family and other elites in the upper levels. Cythia was like a hungry child mashing their face against the glass of the finest sweet shop, able to see all the delightful things contained inside but unable to have any for themselves.

Leda liked not to have the constant reminder that she was treading in the dirt while others lived encircled by luxury. While her sister aspired, she simmered.

Leda did not want to think about the murdered princes or the political machinations that kept so many people subsmissive to the very few at the top.

She wanted to focus on the more sudden need to get through the night.

“How much of this do I need to take?” Leda asked while reaching for the pills.

Her sister slapped away her hand before Leda could get close to the pile of carefully stamped pills.

“I’m not an apothecarist, you know. I’m only reckoning at what dosage will work.”

“Why can’t you just give me whatever you've given to me before?” Leda had requested.

“Because I do not have the same set of strengths and amount as I did before,” Cythia puffed, sounding more aggrieved by the puzzle in front of her than with anything else.

“If I've the adequate equipment, I could titrate things with more exactness but this is really just a crap shoot.”

After enough dithering to make her want to pull her hair out, her sister finally placed a small handful of pills in front of her.

“Is this it?” Cythia shrugged as if she could not be sure one way or another.

“There is only one way to uncover it”

“Down the hatch,” Leda murmured with her voice heavy with sarcasm.

She tossed back the pills then chased them with a gulp of filtered water from the glass beside her.

“Let us hope you got it right.”

Cythia rolled her eyes at that, but could not hide the flash of interest in her gaze.

“It isn’t us that I’m worried about. It’s you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Leda assured her sister, with more confidence than she actually felt.

“Everything is going to work out fine.”

Now if only she could persuade herself.

Her sister had set the portable CommNet screen down on the table between them as pictures continued to flash across its surface. When another emerged, a candid shot of a man alone in a dark room, Leda moved quickly to pause on it.

“Who is this?”

Cythia looked down as she continued to count pills back into their respective bottles.

“Oh! him, that’s another nasty one. His name is Brumeh, or at least that’s what he addresses himself. He’s not a political Alpha, but he still has way more power than any one man should. I’ve heard people say that he’s a terrorist who controls the Senate through threats, but that’s probably just rumors.

I think he just has a lot of money and spends it on controlling politicians.”

Brumeh. So that was the name of the Alpha who had put her over his knee, whacked her and then fingered her into oblivion, all while murmuring the nastiest things that she had ever heard into her ear.

Somehow it did not make it better to know his name, to put an identity to the man who had overrun her dreams. It made things that much more intimate and she needed nothing to draw them closer.

She wanted to ignore all the things that he had forced her to feel. Except she was going back that very night to do it all over again, now armed with his name.

Sour bile rose in the back of her throat, stimulated by the overdose of alternate and her own fear.

She only had to get through one more night.