“Rhea,” Prometheus followed his sister through a set of marble pillars. “Don’t you feel anything? He’s taken five children from you already. Five!”

“My dear brother, whatever would I want with a child?” Rhea’s dreamy voice drifted from her cherry red lips in an almost unconscious way.

“Doesn’t your blood boil to think that the flesh of your flesh is routinely devoured by your husband?”

“My what boil?”

Prometheus silently cursed his own careless tongue. Epimethius had blood, Titans did not. He had been spending so much time with his secret that he had begun, almost, to think of himself as a man like Epimethius.

“Don’t get caught up in the imagery, sister. The point is, what good could possibly come from it?”

“Good? Come from what? What do I care about good?”

Prometheus felt the impenetrable incomprehension of irreconcilable experience. He drew a hand across his face.

“What do you want then?” He felt tired as he asked the question, as though his ten thousand years had become ten thousand eternities.

“Well, now.” Rhea sized him up with empty eyes. “I wouldn’t mind having a piece of you.”

Prometheus shuddered at the suggestion.

“And what would that do for you?” He asked.

Rhea threw her head back and laughed.

“Everything that Cronus doesn’t.” She said, twirling a finger in her shining black hair.

“I offer you the security of a king who is not a child in temperament, and you care for nothing but your own pleasure?”

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

“Oh, please.” Rhea pursed her lips into a pout and turned so that Prometheus could see her exquisite profile. “Are you surprised? Really? You’re so very fond of saying that I, too, am a ‘child in temperament’. What else would you expect?”

Prometheus leveled a stare at her. “Even a child has some sense, enough to want equitable rule.”

“I hardly think a child would understand either the term ‘equitable’ or the concept ‘rule’ at all. And what makes you think a child of mine would be any different than our dear brother, my husband, who, I may remind you, would also be that child’s father? If anything I should think he’d turn out worse.”

“Cronus,” said Prometheus, “was born a god your children are born as infants.”

“Yes.” Rhea sneered. “So I’ve seen. Disgusting little creatures, aren’t they?”

Prometheus bit back the searing retort that seemed to naturally jump from his liver at her attack on the purity of infancy.

“I fail to see how that has any bearing on the kind of god one is.”

“It makes all the difference.” Prometheus snapped. “I’ve seen it my—” he cut off mid sentence, aware that he had already said too much.

“Seen what? A wriggling worm of a baby become a king? No thank you.”

“Fine, then,” Prometheus said, “what about the promise of being in charge yourself?” That, finally, seemed to peak Rhea’s interest. Power, after all, seemed to be the one thing that no Titan could pass up. However, the instant of interest quickly changed into suspicion.

“You’re trying to set me up.” She accused. “You know I’m weaker than Cronus. There’s no way he would ever let me take power.”

Prometheus tightened the corners of his mouth so that his face seemed to approximate a smile. “There’s no need for you to.”

“Stop speaking in contradictions, Prometheus. It doesn’t suit you.”

“No,” Prometheus replied. “When I speak in contradictions, it’s you it doesn’t suit. It suits me just fine.”

Rhea gave an over-dramatic sigh, calculated to show supreme exasperation.

“What I mean,” Prometheus continued, “is that a child of two Titans, especially Titans such as Cronus and yourself would be endowed with substantial power. Why, such a one could harness the very power of the sky itself.”

“I don’t see how replacing Cronus with some more powerful king helps me in any way.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Prometheus couldn’t resist a patronizing tone. “You will be able to raise your child to believe whatever you want. Your word will be truth to him. If once your child overthrows Cronus, then you will be the one in charge of the one in charge. Your child will be an extension of you yourself—attuned to your will and obedient to your good.”

Rhea was silent. For the first time in what Prometheus supposed was six-and-a-half thousand years, she seemed to be thinking.