"Did you really believe you could defeat me?" Khronos asked softly, a faint smile on his lips. He slouched casually upon a throne adorned with metal shards. A ruff of glinting petals, beaten flat and polished, shimmered about his neck and shoulders. But for his ruff and gauntlets, and a pair of knee-high leather and bone-plaited boots, he was naked. Insultingly so. "Usurp my throne? Take what is mine?" He leaned forward when I did not answer immediately, the veins in his bald scalp standing out, his metal ruff chattering. "Well, did you?" he snarled.
I stood before him in his cavernous throne room, chin thrust out, surrounded by all his courtiers, his Clan Masters and House Mothers and Fathers, his sycophants and personal guards. I regarded him with what I hoped was a fearless expression, my hands clasped behind my back. I did not speak save to utter one word:
"Ilio."
He sat back with a satisfied grin, his eyes glittering. "I have your boy," he said. "He is being brought here as we speak."
I did not respond. I did not move. I only stared the God King in the eyes, waiting for him to bring my son.
Khronos was too restless to endure the silence. Too excited. He shifted on his throne and said, "Your rebellion was doomed from the beginning, you know. You possess a weakness that I do not. You love, Gon of the River People, and because you love you are vulnerable. Did you not foresee this eventuality? Or is your heart so swelled with mortal sentiment that you cannot see the world as it truly is?"
I waited in silence.
The God King flew up from his seat and shouted, "You will speak or I will make him suffer!"
"You lied," I said evenly. "You said that you had taken the Tanti captive."
He laughed, but he returned to his seat. "Yes, I lied. I sent several raiding parties to capture them, but they had fled in all directions. Oh, I took a few of them, the ones who did not flee far or fast enough to elude my slavers, but most of them escaped." His eyes narrowed. "Would you have come if you thought Ilio was the only one I had taken?"
I considered it a moment.
"Yes."
The God King laughed. "I thought as much. I have your memories. They are here, in my mind, remember? But I could not quite believe that you'd be so easily manipulated. You are truly pathetic."
"How did you capture my son?" I asked. It didn't matter. I only sought to keep him occupied.
"We didn't," he answered. "Oh, I sent my raiders after your son, and your precious Tanti, as soon as you escaped from me, but he is a good boy. He obeyed you, and fled with your mortal descendants the instant he returned from your battle with Zenzele. They vanished like mist in the sunlight. No, your boy came to us. He came seeking his father. He did not know what had transpired between us, and his woman was dying."
"Priss?"
"Yes. Lovely young blood drinker. Very tasty. Pity she was made so poorly. She had only been a blood drinker for a few years when the ebu potashu began to devour her from within. I tried to save her with my blood, but it only hastened her demise."
I frowned. "Why would you try to save her?"
"Because I took pity on her. I took pity on both of them. I am not incapable of finer feelings, Gon. Gon of the River People. I have sympathy. I can be generous."
I scoffed.
"But it is true," he said. "Ask your boy."
He gestured toward a side passage and Ilio strode into the chamber. The boy was garbed in the raiment of a high caste Uroboran. Padded leather boots and gauntlets. A flowing tunic. A ruff of flouncing feathers. I had expected him to be dragged into the throne room on a leash, naked and broken, but he strode in like a prince, his head thrown back, and his eyes… his eyes burned with hatred when they fell upon me.
"Ilio," I said, reaching out to him.
"Do not call me son," he said preemptively, and he went and kneeled down at the feet of Khronos. He placed his hands upon the God King's knees and glared at me. "Do not ever call me son again, you traitor."
My thoughts were spinning. I felt shattered. The God King had broken him, twisted his mind!
"What are you saying, Ilio? Why do you look at me with such revulsion?"
I could have wept. No pain is so great as the hatred of a beloved child.
"He hates you because he knows the truth," the God King said. "The truth of your deceitfulness." He grinned as he spoke, devouring my pain and confusion with the same relish he devoured mortal blood.
"What do you mean?" I pled.
"I know it was you," Ilio hissed. "You are the monster that fed upon my people in the grasslands. I thought that you had saved me, but you were the very beast that killed all of my tribesmen. My uncles, my cousins, you devoured them all, and then you took me as your son, and made me an immortal. It is because of you the Denghoi are all gone. You and your Eternal bitch." He was trembling with rage, his eyes burning, his muscles twitching. It was all he could do to restrain himself from leaping at me.
"How could I tell you the truth, Ilio?" I countered, black blood beading at my eyes. "I was a mindless animal when the Denghoi came upon me. Ground to meal in the belly of a glacier. I had no human reason, only the hunger, and after the blood of your tribesmen restored me, I was horrified by what I had done to them. I sought to make amends by taking you as my son, rearing you, protecting you. I came to love you. Love you like you were my own child. That's why I could never bring myself to confess what I had done to your people, what I had done to you. I couldn't bear the thought of your hatred."
"And what of your abandonment?" Ilio demanded. "You could have come looking for us after you fled from Uroboros, but you didn't. You deserted us!"
"I had no choice," I said to him. "I did not wish to lead them to the Tanti. Or to you. I wanted to seek you out, find you and rejoin you, but--"
"It is your fault the Tanti were endangered in the first place," Ilio interrupted. "There would be no war if you hadn't betrayed the God King. He would have accepted us. He would have protected the Tanti in return for your fealty, but that wasn't good enough for you, was it? You wanted to usurp his throne. You wanted to remake Uroboros in your image."
"That is not true!"
"I have seen it!" Ilio shouted. "Khronos Shared with me! I saw the memories that he took from you! You attacked him without provocation! You tried to tear off his head!"
"Because I saw what would become of his empire—"
"We should rule this world," Ilio said. "We are gods!"
"No," I said, shaking my head. It was all I could say. Over and over again. "No, no, no…"
"Priss got sick after you abandoned us." The heat of his hatred had exhausted him. He spoke softer now, unable to meet my gaze. "She was dying. I gave her the living blood to save her. I thought it had worked. She was strong again for a while. She was a blood drinker like me. We raised our mortal daughters as if we were a living couple. But she began weaken again after just a few cycles of the seasons. The blood began to devour her from within, as it does to mortals who are feeble when they are made. We decided to journey to Uroboros. We thought that some blood drinker here might know what had become of you, or how we might cure her. She was dying when we arrived in Uroboros. Dying again. The God King gave her his own blood. He tried to save her, but it was not enough."
He looked up, his cheeks bloody with tears.
"If a powerful blood god had given her the potashu when she was a living woman, she would not have died," he said. "My blood was too weak to change her well. It is because of you she died. Because you deserted us."
"He lies!" I cried, pointing my finger at Khronos.
Khronos's guards stepped forward, lowering their bladed staffs at me, fearful I would attack their liege in my anger. The God King's court erupted into outrage. They shouted for my destruction. "Tear him apart! Rip out his blasphemous tongue!"
Ilio rose. He snatched one of the bladed weapons from a guard's hands. "It is you who lie, Gon!" he hissed through his teeth, and then he swept back the bladed staff and swung it forward with all his might.