Solar Prince Apollo held Cassandra with wires, hands and feet bound by the snake-like things. She could feel one of them in the back of her neck, electricity slowly being fed to her brain, keeping Cassandra awake against her will. It's torture.
It's been seventy-nine hours since she last sleep. Cassandra didn't doubt it would take even longer for her to rest.
She played too many games - at Chariot, the biggest sky cassino in all of Delphi; with Wise Princess Athena and Bejeweled Princess Aphrodite, betting on the inconsequential as if they were schoolyard friends; flirting with Solar Prince Apollo, praising him to high heavens and beyond, but what was not to praise? The Solar Prince, regent of Delphi at age nineteen, sending it high above the clouds barely six months into his rule, had one of the most accurate algorithms for Prophecies, the fortune telling games everyone bet on the results: fortunes were made and lost in prophetic cassinos. Everyone wanted a prophet coded by the Solar Prince to tell them the odds, and Solar Prince Apollo kept them under lock and key, the numbers of that particular body modification a well kept secret.
As a gift to her, he'd given her the same power, and then asked how is it? How does it feel? You're not a Monarch, surely, but you're equal to us, Cass. How does it feel to be a god?
Cassandra hadn't asked for it: he'd picked her off one day, knocked her out, and added in the programming to her brain. Then, he'd let her go, as if nothing had happened. Everyone in the city, too suddenly, was after her, trying to grab her by the shoulders and shake prophecies out of her as if she was a faulty machine, as if she were a fountain of golden coins. Cassandra screamed and screamed in front of Chariot, until the Solar Prince's bodyguards brought her to him, and she screamed at him until her voice grew hoarse.
What makes you think I wanted this, Apollo? What makes you think you had the right to this? I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!
The sunshine disappeared from his golden eyes, exchanged his friendly expression for one as cold as Khione's winters. Then, the wires, snapping around her feet, taking her down to his laboratory, before she could even react.
Cassandra had known of the body modifications he kept hidden, the real bodyguards: the computer wires stuck to his back, always ready to take off flight and pick up whatever assailant dared touch the Solar Prince. Cassandra never had seen them, had doubted their existence when Bejeweled Princess Aphrodite drunkenly had mentioned them. Now, regret washed over her.
Since then, the lack of sleep: Cassandra watched as the Solar Prince tapped on his keyboard, fast and maniac, unstoppable, perfecting something. Not even Lunar Princess Artemis had been able to take him out of there, and Cassandra chuckled dryly, humorless. No future showed Lunar Princess Artemis doing so.
Are you happy, Solar Prince Apollo? Cassandra asked, her voice a rasp. Her eyes now shone in silver, powerful and all seeing, illuminating the scenery in front of her. She missed the brown hue they had. I am ruined, now. Just like you.
He gritted his teeth, looked at her from atop his computer, as if it was his throne. It was: no one was as skilled with them as the Solar Prince, no one did body mods as him. The body modifications he wrote in code were perfect matches, never giving out errors, never bugging out. Truly the work of a Prince.
Once she'd called him Apollo (a privilege not given to many: to call one of the Celestial Monarchs by their name, instead of the title, was a blessing and a curse), had considered marriage to him - even though Celestial Monarchs did not do marriage, at most a concubinage, but she had hoped, like any vain girl hopes to conquest the prince's heart in a fairy tale -, had considered him a lover, held him in her embrace through moonless nights, watching stars drift by. Not anymore. Never again. Her trust had been broken the moment he'd given an unwanted gift to her, and she knew there was no way of getting it out.
The best body mods, tongues had whispered as she had moved through the sky cassino, her on his arm as if she was a trophy, giggling loudly with him, are impossible to take off. They all looked at him, at the beautiful tattoo sleeves that shone with ichor, at the golden eyes, the tattoos on his back that hid wires, and then at her: Cassandra, a nobody from the soil, brown eyes and virgin body. A foreigner in strange lands.
The women at the place she'd been staying warned her: Celestial Monarchs are vain, fickle things, and Cassandra, too in love, had dismissed their concerns.
Cassandra, I will only be happy when you are not. He pushed a button on his computer, and she felt electricity overwhelm her, too fast for her neurons to understand: all she saw were afterimages, superimposed over her vision, futures to come and futures cracked like geodes on the soil of Delphi.
He rose from his place at the computer, walked to her: his heels made an unpleasant clack clack clack sound on the floor.
I will allow you to keep the prophecies, but there's a catch: no one shall ever believe you. You'll be spat at; after all, what use does a gift for prophecy have, if it rings untrue?
The realization dawns quickly on Cassandra, his words ringing in her ears, echoing.
You're a monster.
His fingers gripped the skin of her cheeks, and he was warm, just like the sun he was named after and that he had named.
I know. There's an unkind smile to his face, and Cassandra regrets ever setting foot in the Chariot. And so will you be.