Page 81 of Styx

A cruel, lilting voice interjected

before she could finish.

A Disturbance

When they asked me about my sisters,

I told Asteria and Leto I was close with none.

And while this was true, there were some

I hated more than others.

Acaste, with her cold emerald eyes,

and her cruel, beautiful followers,

Amphiro and Callirhoe, were

my least favourite of all.

Now here they were,

close to my and Asteria’s sacred cave.

Standing on what I had known

as safe sands away from them.

They were a corruption of nymphs.

Their unkindness had many targets

and my loneliness, they had assumed,

had made me one too.

This mistake had cost them in the past.

It would cost them again.

I got to my feet, as did Asteria,

to look them in the eye.

‘Why,’ I hissed slowly, venomously,

‘are you here?’

‘We always wonder where you disappear

to, my dear sister.’ Acaste’s poisonous

smile was not lost on me.

‘So we came out to find you.’

From the corner of my eye,