Red Mortal by Deidre Knight

Author:Deidre Knight
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Man-Woman Relationships, Goddesses, Gods, Paranormal, Delphian oracle, Fiction, Romance, Paranormal Romance Stories, Immortalism, Daphne (Greek deity), General, Leonidas, Contemporary
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2011-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

Daphne was still half-drowsy when a polite coughing sound interrupted her dreamy thoughts. She and Leo looked up at the same moment, and found Eros standing beside the pool.

He quickly averted his eyes from their scantily clad bodies. “As delighted as I’d be for you to avail yourself of my pool for hours, I know you’d both agree that we must assess the king’s progress. We know how fast and lethal my father can be. If this has not worked, we must know now.”

Leo spoke for them both. “Eros, thank you. But if the effect was to have been immediate . . . I am unchanged.”

Eros strode to the far edge of the pool. “King Leonidas, I couldn’t be filled with more regret.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “As I suspected, I’m powerless to help you end my father’s curse. How ironic that he’s immune to what he sired in me. And how unfortunate, in this particular case. I’m sorry, dear ones.”

He thinks Leo’s fate is sealed now.

Daphne crumpled then. All those dreams she’d just had of children and a life together—were they only a mist? Submersing themselves in Eros’s pool had been her best, strongest hope for changing Leo’s fate, and it hadn’t helped at all. Now they might only have hours together—perhaps not even weeks or months, as she wanted to believe.

She pressed her face into her hands and began to weep. Ugly, loud sobs shook her body, and Leo’s hold on her became a caress, a soothing touch. “It’s all right, Daphne. Shh, now,” he reassured her softly. “It will be all right.”

She swiped at her tears. “How can you say that? I’m going to lose you!” She cried out in despair. “If I can’t stop my brother, that’s what will happen. There has to be somewhere to turn. I’ve got to do something, find a way.” She paused, growing still as an idea formed. It was one she’d dismissed earlier, but that had been before this plan had failed. “Sometimes the way out may look impossibly grim, but it doesn’t mean it won’t work,” she said, a tiny flutter of hope stirring inside. “Leo, perhaps it’s time you met my father.”

His eyes grew wide. After all, there was meeting your fiancée’s father—and then meeting her father, who just happened to be one of the most epic gods of Olympus.

“I don’t know what Zeus might do to intervene,” she said, “but I will fall upon his altar and beg. I am not above pleading or . . . bargaining. Maybe he could show me how to feed you some of my own power.”

She gazed up at Leo hopefully, her thoughts coming out in a rush. “Perhaps having you come with me, if we beseeched him together.” She seized hold of Leo’s hands, desperate. “Zeus has little interest in me, true, but even he has been angered by my brother’s recent folly.”

Leo shook his head, a shadow crossing his countenance that she didn’t understand, one that matched whatever unnameable emotion she’d seen in his eyes earlier.

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