Beware the Fallen: Young Adult Mythology (Banished Divinity Book 1) Read online

  Beware the Fallen

  Banished Divinity, Book One

  Logan Delayne

  BEWARE THE FALLEN

  BY LOGAN DELAYNE

  COPYRIGHT 2019

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Afterword

  This book is wholeheartedly dedicated to my two witches who cackle with me in the moonlight. You know who you are.

  Chapter 1

  My sister’s hands shook as she revealed a strange shell, still dripping wet. “I’ve been to the islands of Tithe and I’ve seen the wicked faces of our enemies.”

  I gasped at the visible proof of her rebellion. She had gone too far. Pink with ridges, the shell had been loved by an ocean that I knew all too well. A place where we were forbidden to ever go. Reaching out, I covered the evidence and whispered, “You must hide this and never speak of it again. If father knew…”

  “He won’t.” She tossed her golden mane haughtily before she lifted her chin, eyes like yellow diamonds and the opposite of mine. “Mother will not let him punish me, anyway.”

  Our mother barely tolerated Cenia let alone would she side with her in the raging war between the Olympians and the Titans. We’d been put in our place and this….our father’s most hated bloodline of all.

  Since time began, we had been enemies and now my sister has tipped the scales of fate without even knowing. I felt the shell’s spine poke the soft parts of my hand. Such a silly thing. Such a tiny and insignificant—

  “Daughters,” my father’s voice boomed.

  The halls rippled with his summoning, and Cenia and I were pulled as if twins from a womb through the air until we appeared at his feet in the main throne room. Titus, god of many moons, but none known to the human realm. And it bothered him that no homage would be paid to a god whose kingdoms were but rocks spinning in the air without anything alive to tell the tale.

  It was a boon that we were given a small kingdom at all in the human world, but my father ruled with brutality, hoping to make it into the history books and songs evermore.

  His summoning of us had happened in an instant but it was enough time for me to pry the shell from my sister’s hands and wrap it in my skirt.

  My sister’s bravado remained, but I knew she’d cave. Soon there would be tears and mewling and apologies. Once she knew what she’d truly done. That this was treason. And our father did not love us as a father should.

  My father was pale as the moons that he governed, his eyes like stars dotting the sky. “Word from a forbidden island. A bright daughter with hair like spun gold was found dancing along the shoreline as if enchanted. Sailors were so enamored they crashed their ships upon the rocks to see her and hear her song.”

  My sister said nothing. For once she was wise.

  My father lifted his hand and a shell was in his palm.

  Frantic, I checked my skirt to find it empty.

  The redness of my father’s cheeks made my knees quake. His anger so great that his countenance was almost like a human’s.

  My mother stood just behind him, her skin and hair glowing like the sun god, her great-great-great-grandfather. Her eyes were forward and taking in neither of her daughters.

  Perhaps she had always hated the titans even though she’d married a lesser one. Perhaps she plotted against us all for her real family, the Olympians.

  “Banishment,” my father said, cracking the shell so that its powder fell out like salt. “Banishment for eternity.”

  My sister gaped as I felt myself falling from the cliffs. No matter how much Cenia deserved her punishments, they hurt me more than they hurt her. As the elder, I’d raised her myself, and every golden cherub moment flashed through my mind. I was young, but still, a mother nearly—where it counted. I loved Cenia more than life itself and surely….

  “The sailors were wrong, Father.” I lowered my head. “They saw a dark maiden, not bright. I used a charm to seem like—” I almost said like Cenia. Truth, I had done it before, but knew my father was weak to flattery. “To be like you. I made myself as bright as everyone in your house.” But me.

  For I was not bright at all.

  “Is this true?” he asked Cenia, but she wisely held her tongue.

  I found my voice again. “Where?” I asked hollowly.

  My father’s eyes flashed. “To the islands you so long to be.”

  I gasped this time. “Surely the king and son of Acheron would... There will be no mercy. He will murder me and take his revenge as soon as my foot touches his shore!”

  My father might have relented…for Cenia. He might have done so for his favored daughter. And as I watched the trapping noose close around my neck, I saw it in his eyes.

  He’d known that I would step into her punishment, because hadn’t I always?

  He planned to send me to our enemies all along. He knew the king would take his revenge and perhaps that would stop the flow of blood between the two families.

  I was a peace offering and I turned to see it in Cenia’s expression as well.

  Guilt—cloudy and milky in her beautiful sunny eyes.

  She, too, had known.

  They had plotted this for witnesses.

  Or perhaps she and my mother…

  Neither would give a tell of which viper’s bite struck the final blow.

  “I will go,” I said finally as if it were my choice.

  Of course I would and I’d hope the revenge of the god-king, son of Acheron, king of the islands, and Olympian blood, would be swift, so that I would spend my days in the afterlife, for I would not look on those I love again for all of eternity.

  There was no packing and leaving or saying goodbye. I was at once out of the home I’d always known, and in the same instant on the shore of my enemy.

  Thrust from a palace that had heard my sorrows and fears and hopes and dreams, even if they had been loveless, I had been surrounded by kin, always locked far away from the probing eyes of my many male relatives, and a secret to all humans.

  It was no surprise to him either when I would arrive. The king was a god, and he had been given a message as soon as my father spoke the words. As if the utterance was the banging of a gong, announcing to all my demise.

  Here she was, Freya, the fallen.

  All of it occurred in mere minutes, as if we were not immortal beings and without time at our leisure.

  A small group and the king waited as I appeared on the beach in rags. Not quite on the beach, for the waves were hungrily lapping around my thighs, plastering what was left of my dress to me. My glorious robes had been torn in an abusive thrust of power by my father, rendering me bare except for the smallest shift beneath them all. I’d lost my shoes, my jewelry and adornments. I’d lost everything but my person and a sad white fabric holding on by a thread.

  It was calculated. Made to humble and humiliate me. I looked like a shipwrecked maiden, weak and vulnerable. My long dark hair that I’d always worn high on my head as a crown, woven together like snakes until my status could not be mistaken—for
the pins in my hair were nothing less than stardust and magic. Trapped by metal forged with the fire of the gods, they had been the only thing to hold the brown waves of my hair back from enveloping my face and body. My precious hair pins had already been ripped from my head hard enough to leave a burning pain in the wake of the travel. My hair, the leagues of it, was now loose behind me, floating and being tossed at the break, every so often, dragging me out to sea.

  I’d heard of a human girl who’d frolicked in a strong current with her wedding dress for the painter to capture her likeness, and she’d been dragged to her death from the weight of her glorious dress.

  Had I not been the strength of a goddess, perhaps my hair would have drowned me for all the people on shore to see. Perhaps it would have done the work that the king no doubt waited to perform.

  For a moment, I thought about turning and walking into the swirling depths, for the water was dark and dense and looked nothing like the shells it housed.

  I decided not even to look up, but to stare down, waiting in the waves for the sea or the king to decide what should happen next. The lightning bolts that struck did not cause more fear than what was before me.

  Palms outward, I waited as those who have eternity to wait, wait. Still and untired. Perhaps the king would lower an axe before I knew, and I’d be dead before I felt the sting of cold steel.

  I was patient. Nothing happened.

  A guard strode forward, wading through. He was clumsy and bruising when he reached for me.

  Of course, I should have stood still and let him drag me before the king, but I was the daughter of a god-king myself and it wasn’t in me to be a servant or handled like one. My reaction was quick and fierce and more of fear than resentment. I hissed at his touch as though it burned me, and I pushed out to ward him away, feeling the frail bones of a human give beneath my hand as I struck the man—a man that I had not realized was human until that very moment, crushing his skull without thought.

  I had only seen humans from miles away. I had only flown over them in travel. I had never had one touch me or smelled their sweat or felt their hearts beating. I had never had one grabbing me from the ocean where already I felt lost and confused.

  The human crumpled into the waves and was immediately pulled from shore in the giant swell that had barely moved me. The current tugged at my hair again, threatening to tangle us together, forcing me to move to shore to avoid it.

  A woman screamed when I drew near, and more men were sent to try to tame me. I told myself to give them leave. To be shackled, beaten, abused, and then murdered, but instead a panic tore through me like a horse through a fiery barn. Humans had eyes like wolves, and teeth to match. They were animals to me in that moment, snapping at my heels.

  I feared them as much as feared for them. The man’s blood that I had not noticed sloshing around me in the waves, had stained my dress a bright red.

  My body quaked with a fear I had not known until that moment. I was no longer protected by my father and mother. Though he loathed me, no man had ever been allowed to touch me, or even let his eyes linger. Now, at least ten were reaching for me, their hands like gnarled twigs to tear my flesh.

  I pictured them all plucking out my teeth for ornaments. My eyes for lanterns in their homes. My hair for a wig. Telling stories to others of how they brought down a young titan blood, how they’d carved their names in her flesh.

  I opened my mouth and commanded them, but it came out weak and that shamed me more than the rest. “Stop!” They refused but flinched at my voice as if I had whipped them with a lash, but I tried to soften the sound, to plead with them for understanding. “Please,” I said, my voice now lower, scratching, painful. “I will kill you all,” I said clearly, and I knew that my statement carried on the breeze. “Perhaps you will eventually bring me down, but the waves and waves of you that I would kill first…think of the cost.”

  It was not that I was brave. It was that my fear would drive me to react blindly. And the humans were so fragile that I knew it would hurt me to grind them as easily as my father had the shell from their shore. They were my enemy, but also the enemy of the one who’d become my enemy in a single day: My father.

  Perhaps even the king himself I would kill in that moment if I tried, because I was afraid, and it unnerved me. Or we would fight.

  I finally glanced up at the king and shouted as such. “Our battle will harm your subjects. Oh Lord of Men, You have allowed humans near you and your palace. Please, I beg of you, do not do this. I will come quietly, but they…do not let them touch me again. I will bend for a blade but not a human hand. I am still a daughter of titan blood.”

  My teeth chattered. I had only ever feared so greatly once in my life when Cenia had been alone with a god who’d locked the door on me. I’d pulled half of the palace apart to get to him, and he’d fled naked into the night. I’d found Cenia asleep on the lounge, untouched, and only then had my blood stopped heating. Only then had I felt like I would not melt the stars into a weapon to slay the god who dared reach for the innocence of the one I loved.

  The humans gazed at their king then me. They knew I was no liar. I had sent their friend sinking into the ocean without even trying

  “King,” I said, not seeing him truly, because I gazed beyond, softly into space. “I have only been in my charmed palace or walked the moons of my father’s rule. Empty places, without anyone but kin. I have not known humans. I do not wish to harm them. This I swear.” Using a finger that I made sharper with my mind I carved a space out of my arm. The flesh opened like a gate, and I willed the blood to follow. “I swear it on my titan’s blood that I will bow before a blade and I will obey at a distance all that you require.” The blood trickled onto the shore, and I noticed not far from it was a shell just like the one my sister had stolen.

  My heart suddenly lurched at the thought that she too had turned against me. My will fled and my eyes filled with tears.

  I had lost her. My Cenia.

  The great king stepped down from his horse, I saw from the corner of my eye.

  I reached down and took the shell. I should’ve liked to hold it when he killed me. I kept my neck bent for his blade as I heard it ring from its sheath.

  He approached me and held it out. I squeezed the shell but carefully didn’t crush it.

  “I am no king.” His voice was deep and smooth as honey but human.

  I stood tall and was looking at another guard who was a head taller than myself, a great feat because all of the other humans were at least a few inches beneath me.

  His mouth was tight when he said, “Do not touch the Titan. Do not even gaze at her.”

  “You are not the king?” I said still confused because he commanded them all.

  “The king is away. Come. None will touch you unless you break your vow.”

  I expected a dungeon. Perhaps it would be a dungeon when the king returned, but for now, the human who’d ridden the horse had walked with a gait that bespoke of much riding, and he’d approached me with less caution than I thought was wise to show me the suite of rooms set apart from the castle’s inhabitants for me alone. I was not completely left to my own devices; I would be held there and unable to leave.

  Where would I go?

  He brought me food and drink, and I sniffed each but did not eat. I did not need to and expect it was poisoned. I had rarely slept as well, and so the bed was avoided.

  They did have a great many books. Human stories and tales that I had been forbidden to read.

  The guard from before returned. Now that I was calm, I could watch him more carefully and take him in. For a human he was quite large. His hands would swallow mine. I tried not to picture them around my throat.

  His hair was brown that gradually lightened to a halo of gold, left long enough to touch his shoulders. His eyes were the color of a stormy sea, but not like his dark ashen sea. The ones from our side of the world instead. He would have fit well with the golden members of my family.

&n
bsp; As if he read my mind he said, “You are not the golden goddess who’d been here before.”

  “A charm,” I lied.

  “I don’t think it was.”

  I did not show how I felt. Unlike him, I did not let emotion grip me and tilt my body and eyebrows every which way.

  He smiled. “You afraid that I might poison you?”

  “I am afraid that your poison would not do the job and I would merely suffer.” I mimicked his raised brows to see if I liked the affect. I raised mine even higher but then brought them down when his lips twitched with humor. “I will take my punishment, but I will take it from your god-king. I would like to be able to look at him as he takes his revenge. It is only fitting as a daughter of Titus.”

  The man nodded and gave me a second look as if for one, he thought that it was a worthy truth and for another, that perhaps he had expected me to fight him and not truly accept my death.

  “I am sorry for your soldier in the waves,” I said, and surprise filled his countenance.

  It was rather appealing to see someone’s reaction so plainly. Staring at him still, I drew closer. “It makes sense that the humans would mingle with the Olympians so well as they do. It makes sense to me now because just a little interaction has piqued my interest in you.”

  The man’s face turned red and I knew that expression because the gods had born it as well. Shame. Embarrassment. “I have made you uncomfortable.”

  “An understatement, lady—goddess. You’re unnerving to say the least. My king had hoped for your sister to pay for her own punishments. Not you.”

  And now my face would show red.