"Ixion, my dear."
Crushed. Defeated.
That was the look on my mother's face as she returned from that battle. The one where she silently accepted the truth she'd ignored for so long.
Antion, her husband, was dead.
Despair's words, and other whispers she'd heard, all pointed to that poignant truth.
If the circumstances were different. If they had told her the truth from the beginning. Maybe it would have ended differently.
Maybe she would still be alive.
Wearing a look of shame that only a few could recognize, my mother took me into a nearby tent and ordered Despair and Hope, fourteen at the time, to stand guard.
Those two were the only ones she trusted.
She'd fallen to her knees and put a hand on my pale cheek. Her eyes were hollow. The once-vibrant blue seemed a dull gray.
"You look just like your father."
She stroked my cheek with her thumb as she continued:
"The man you killed."
