Chapter 1

Ancient Greece

Leucothea was waiting in her chambers for her lover of two years. She was excited to share her news with him, and knew that he would soon visit her. It had been a few days since he had been by, so she knew that he could walk through her doors at any moment.

Suddenly the doors to her room opened, and Leucothea turned to greet her lover with a smile. But her face fell, and she became alarmed when she saw her father and several guards. Her father looked enraged as stormed up to her. Leucothea took as step back in fear, but her retreat was stopped when her father reached her and painfully grabbed her upper arm.

"Father you are hurting me." Leucothea cried out in pain.

Her father's only response was to push a hand painfully hard on to her lower abdomen. Leucothea froze in fear.

Her father's face twisted in disgust and rage before he back handed her, knocking her to the hard stone floor.

"Guards, take her away." Her father ordered before storming out of the room.

The guards picked Leucothea up from the floor as she struggled to get away from them. She was dragged to a cell and tossed in. She could only curl up on the floor and cry until sleep took her.

The next morning she was dragged from her cell and bound and gagged. She had to be practically dragged to the beach by the guards, and each step forwards dread built in her stomach. When they arrived at the beach she found her family and more guards waiting, and her fear turned to terror when she spied the large hole that had been dug in the sand.

Leucothea turned to look at her family. Her father was refusing to look at her, her mother was silently crying, but it was her sister that broken her heart. Her sister, Clytia, was looking at her smugly, as if she had won something, and Leucothea in her heart that it was Clytia that had somehow found out her secret then told their father.

Leucothea was unceremoniously pushed into the hole, she cried out as she hit the bottom. She blinked the tears from her eyes as she looked up, to see her father looking down at her.

"You have shamed me, daughter. You broke your betrothal and betrayed both me and our kingdom. This is a punishment that you have brought upon yourself." Her father told her coldly, before moving away.

She heard her mother begin to sob and wail as the sound of a shovel meeting sand hit her ears. Leucothea could only curl up and cry as sand fell on her as they buried her alive. The she had only two regrets, that she would never see her lover again, and that she would never be able to tell him of what their love created.

Slowly the sand covered her until she could no longer take any breath. Leucothea died in a cold, dark hole, alone, knowing that it was her sisters betray that put her there.

It was that night that Leucothea's lover made his way to her chambers. He was excited because he hadn't seen her in several days, because he had been calling in favors. It have been two years since he had taken Leucothea as his lover, and since he had not looked at another. His eyes and heart had become only for her, and now he finally found a way to keep her forever. She would become his wife and they would spent the rest of eternity together.

He sunk into her chambers to find her asleep in her bed. Her back was to him and he could only see the outline of her body, and her long raven black hair spilling over the pillow. He quietly moved to the bed, and crawled in behind her. He moved her hair, and kissed her neck. She awoke and turned towards him, and in that second he was horrified.

He jumped from the bed and moved away looking horrified, because it wasn't Leucothea in the bed but her sister Clytia. Clytia sat up in the bed, the covers falling to reveal her nude body.

"Why don't you join me, my lord?" Clytia said in a seductive voice while lifting the cover to show her body to him.

"Where is Leucothea, Clytia?" he asked angrily sneered at her. He was not amused to find her in her sister's bed.

Clytia just rolled her eyes and scoffed before getting up and walking over to him swaging her hips in a seductive manner.

"I could offer you so much." She whispered seductively as she tried to remove his chiton.

He smacked her hands away from him, and felt rage fill him. She fell to the floor whimpering as his rage weighed on her.

"Where is she, whore." He said in a dangerous voice.

She just whimpered and refused to answered, so he ripped into her mind for the answers. His heart broke when his found his answers.

In a flash of light he disappeared, and reappeared on the beach. With only the moonlight to guild him, he found a mount of sand, and with a sob and a wave of his hand the sand from the grave disappeared. Tears streamed from his eyes as he pulled the body of his lover from her unmarked grave.

He removed her bindings and gently swiped the sand from her body. He cradled her cold body in his arms and cried. He didn't know how long he sat there crying, but it was his sister that pulled him back to reality.

"Come brother, let's take her from this place." She said gently.

He pulled Leucothea to his chest as he stood. The two of the, disappeared in a flash of light and reappeared with his sister's Huntresses. The camp was silent and the Huntresses bowed their heads in respect as his carried his lover into his sister's tent.

He laid Leucothea on the bed, as his sister fetched a bowl of water and several rags. They two of them gently cleaned Leucothea's body, but it was when they removed the robe that she had been wearing that he felt his heart break all over again. Leucothea's belly had the slight curve of pregnancy, and he had not only lost his love that day, but his child as well.

He simply collapsed on Leucothea's still chest, sobbing. This wasn't supposed to happen. His sisters wrapped her arms around him, pulling him into her chest. He wrapped his arms around her waist, weeping into her chest.

She held him as he cried, she had never seen him this distraught before, but even she had to admit that Leucothea was special. She had only met her twice, but Leucothea had been able to worm her way into her heart.

It was after he could no longer shed anymore tears that spoke, "The Fates told me that we would be together, and I even got Hebe so agree to ascend her. I was coming to tell her the news." His voice raw from the pain and tears.

His sister had no words of him, because nothing she could say would help.

After he had composed himself enough, they continued to prepare Leucothea for her farewell. After she was clean of sand, they dressed her in fine silver silk funeral robe. He carried her body from the tent to the pyre that the Huntresses had built and gently sent her in the straw bed that would take her body. He place a drachma over each eye, before kissing her for the final time.

His hands glowed as he used his power to set the pyre on fire, and watched as the flames consumed his lover's body. He stood watching all night and into the morning until the flames died.

He knew that he would never love another in the way that he had loved Leucothea. She had been the one that he wanted to love the rest of his life, that that was not to be.

"Brother." His sister called but he ignored her. "Brother. Apollo!" she snapped.

Apollo slowly raised his head, to look at his sister, Artemis. She held a delicate necklace, which had a small lyre charm on it. Apollo sobbed once as he took it from her, remembering the look of pure joy on Leucothea's face when he had given it to her.

Artemis watched as her brother curled around the necklace, his grief was palatable. She could only hope that he would recover.