January 3, 12,247 BC
Set held his infant daughter in his hands as his heart broke all over again. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he met Ma’at’s gaze and saw his own sorrow mirrored in her eyes. After the death of her husband, Bathymaas had gone on a bloodthirsty rampage that had almost cost the Olympian pantheon all their lives. But since Apollo’s life was tied to the sun, they couldn’t allow her to kill him, or else the entire world would have ended. But her rage had been such that no amount of logic could keep her from her vengeance.
Uniting for the first time in history, the gods and Chthonians had all gathered to lay a death sentence on her. Something Set couldn’t allow. Desperate, he’d gone to his sister, who’d conceived the plan to have Bathymaas reborn with half a heart and with no memory of her precious Aricles.
Now she slept again in his arms, tiny and defenseless.
“Will you ever let me hold my daughter?”
He glanced up at Symfora’s request. She lay on the bed where she’d delivered his daughter to him just a few minutes ago. The Atlantean goddess of sorrow and woe, she’d been the perfect mother for his child. If anyone would understand his daughter’s pain, it was Symfora.
Kissing his daughter on the brow, he carried her back to Symfora and placed her in her mother’s arms. “She is beauty incarnate.”
“As is her father.” Symfora cradled her with the love he wanted his girl to know. “So what are we to call her?”
“Bet’anya.”
Symfora arched a brow at that. “House of Misery?”
“She is to be your goddess of misery and wrath, is she not?”
“Indeed.” She glanced down at her daughter and offered a rare smile. “But I shall call you Bethany, little one.”
Set cringed at the name that was almost identical to Aricles’s nickname for her. Symfora could use it if she chose to, but he would never call her by the name her husband had given her. She would always be his precious Bet.
He took her small, fragile hand into his. I hope I haven’t harmed you, daughter. Because of the Source powers they’d used for her birth, Bet only had half her heart.
The other half lay with her Aricles and wouldn’t return to her until he did.
You better find her, you bastard.
Otherwise, Set would rain a wrath down on this world that would make Bathymaas’s seem merciful. But in his heart, he knew true love when he saw it.
Come what may, Aricles would find and reunite with his Bathymaas. And no matter what powers sought to divide them, Set held no doubt that they would one day be together again.…
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Read more about Bathymaas and Aricles in Styxx.