Read Online Adrasteia (Eternelles: A Prequel, Book 0) by Zee Monodee, Natalie G. Owens - Free Book Online Page A

No way out of facing her truth.
    Adri winced. Her mother had been a maenad. A human woman who had become a follower of the Greek god of wine and revelry, Dionysos, and who had achieved power over crowds as a result. Usually barren to the god’s seed, this maenad had miraculously borne him a child. A baby daughter he’d wanted sacrificed on the altar of his greatness mere minutes after her birth. Had the mighty Zeus not stepped in to save her, she would have died that day.
    Or would she? Because in her nearly three millennia of existence, nothing had managed to kill her. Fine—she hadn’t tested the guillotine, but maybe that, too, wouldn’t have worked on her.
    She’d never known her mother, had never even found out her name, and her biological father had only sought her out once in all these years, and that, too, to taunt her about possessing as vile a heart as his. She shivered as she remembered his words.
    “You’re cold,” Ares said.
    Adri snapped out of her thoughts and blinked her eyes open. The rasp of goose bumps against her opera-length gloves shouldn’t have happened, and this told her how cold the night had gotten. She glanced toward the stables. The orange glow of a fire seemed to shimmer in the interior. Dear Marcel who loved the animals had begged her to install a protected fireplace inside the stables. A door connected the stables to the servants’ quarters, and from there they could access the kitchens of the château. This cold—somewhat unusual on a summer evening—was getting to her and she refused to have to walk all the way back to the front door while she froze gloved fingers, tired limbs, and scalp under the delicate hat and the hood of her light cloak.
    She clasped Ares’ hand and alighted from the gig. Her shoe slipped on the step, and she landed with a thud against his hard chest.
    “I told you you were having too much to drink.”
    “Bugger off, will you? I had a couple glasses of punch, is all.”
    “Five.”
    She glared at him. “And who brought me the damn drinks in the first place? My ‘delightful, handsome companion’.” She mimicked the simpering voices of the women who had drooled all over him at the ball.
    He shrugged and pulled her to his side. “I was only looking out for you. Father did ask me—”
    She froze. “Stop! I don’t want to hear about him.”
    Ares sighed and rolled his eyes, but she chose to ignore him. Childish attitude of hers, she knew. But how else should she act toward the one she had loved above any other and who had then thrown her out on her arse in a fit of petty rage? Zeus had pushed her off Mount Olympus, her only home, and she’d landed on Earth, a realm she hadn’t known existed.
    “Someday, you’ll have to make your peace with him.”
    Adri snorted. “When Hell freezes over.”
    He sighed, and she sighed, too, albeit for different reasons.
    “Never mind. Let’s go in. This cold is making me crave a warming brandy.”
    Ares matched his steps to hers. A feat, given how, at five foot three inches tall, she didn’t have long legs. Her new shoes, a treat she hadn’t been able to deny herself while at the shops, pinched her toes to an inch of mush. As she steered him toward the stables, he laughed.
    “Slumming it, are we?”
    “With you on my arm? Most definitely.”
    “That’s not the impression I got at the ball.”
    She snorted. “You’re a little too full of yourself. But seriously, Ares. You held me so close on the dance floor, everyone must’ve thought we were about to do the deed right there. And if they knew you’re my brother—”
    “You are so uptight, Adri. I swear I’d never believe you have lived for centuries as one of the most notorious courtesans of European courts if I hadn’t introduced you to the demi-monde myself.”
    “Yes, well, courtesans are no longer what they used to be. It’s just another word for ‘whore’ now. Not the exalted, intellectual existence I thrived in with the likes of Veronica