The Daughter of Zeus novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Styx

The Hall of Oaths was a cave with a hole in the roof, and the water in it was black.

It wasn't dark water.

It was black, and it didn't reflect the stars overhead.

It didn't ripple, either, even when the cold wind blew across it.

Every god in Olympus was crowded around the rim, wide awake at two in the morning.

I stood at the edge in my oatmeal tunic with Alekos's cloak still over my shoulders.

My hair was a mess.

I knew exactly what it looked like.

Hera's eyes went from my face to his, and then to the cloak, and her mouth curved.

"The Styx does not forgive," she said, to the hall.

"What is sworn on it is kept, or the breaker burns.

We begin with the Champion."

Alekos stepped forward without a word.

He knelt at the water's edge and laid his left wrist in it.

The black liquid climbed his skin.

"Say it," Hera said.

He didn't look at me.

"If the Judgement finds the accused guilty," he said, in a flat, clear voice, "I will carry out the sentence with my own hand."

The water boiled once.

It left a black ring around his wrist, and he drew his arm out with his face carved to stone.

My stomach dropped, and I wanted to throw up.

He had told me on my first day that he wasn't sure.

Now the water had decided it for him.

"The accused," Hera said.

I walked to the edge.

My knees didn't want to bend.

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