Song of Princes (Homeric Chronicles #1) Read Online Free PDF

he’d allowed Herakles to steal his sister away to the Greeks. He’d feared his own death at the hero’s dreadful hands, rather than risk his life for another, for family. Everyone spoke of understanding the necessity of self-preservation for a prince. Some even praised him for his ingenuity. But now the events unfolded in an entirely different light. His courage and resolve had been called into question by the gods. Apollo had lost whatever wager he’d made to defend Priam’s honor. Now, Priam would pay for the god’s humiliation with the price of his unborn son’s life. His shoulders slumped with the burden he now carried, the news he must deliver, and the act he must perform. “Hecuba will never forgive me,” he said to no one.
    Priam set the mask of king in place, knowing what he must do, knowing that he would order it done.  Behind the resolute visage of a king, the father’s heartbreak would be endured alone in silence and despair. As he left the temple, he decided against immediately revealing this knowledge to his wife. Perhaps he would find a way around this. Maybe Apollo tests me again? Maybe Apollo will stay my hand in the final moment? His resolution of silence strengthened his thin hope that he yet had time, or more precisely, that Apollo yet had time to be moved, once again, to favor him.

 
     
     
     
     
    THE LABOR BEGAN with the pull of the full moon. Hecuba’s eyes opened. She recognized the familiar dull ache. The squeeze tightened down her lower back and wrapped itself around her lower hips and belly like a merciless snake.
    It begins . The child who’s Fate she agonized over these past weeks pressed his entrance into a hostile world. She rolled onto her side to ease the progressing pains. She knew precious little time remained before she would be forced to call Tessa to fetch the midwife. Hecuba planned to endure as much pain as she could bear buying precious time with her unwelcomed son…unwelcomed by all, except for her. She loved the child despite the prophecy.
    Tears filled her eyes for the child pushing his way to the light. Hecuba wept into her pillow. His innocence would be her life’s burden. She would never know the burn of the first milk passing to her breasts as his little mouth suckled for the first time. She would not know the smell of his baby skin. She would not feel the weight of him in her arm as she cradled him to sleep, or the weight of his little body as it grew to fill the circle of her arms, making them ache with his increasing size. She would not know him at all. He would be stolen away from her and lost forever. With each new tug on her bones, she clenched her teeth and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. In between the pains, she shifted to the opposite side to keep the mounting pressure from making her cry out.
    As the moonlight shifted past the high window, the birthing process accelerated. A piercing pain below Hecuba’s pelvis forced a shrill scream into the stillness shattering the silver calm. The warm sticky wetness washed down her thighs. Eleithyia wasted no time bringing the child along. Why goddess? Let him stay with me a while longer, I beg you. Her plea hung unheeded in that space between earth and sky.
    Priam bolted upright at her scream. The wet warmth of the birthing waters touched his leg beneath the bed covering. “Hecuba, how long have you labored in the dark without the women?”
    His wife grabbed his arm digging her fingernails into his skin leaving red welts and screamed again. “Now, Priam! He’s coming now!”
    The king leapt from the bed in one fluid motion. “Tessa!” He tossed a simple chiton over his nakedness just as Tessa entered with the midwife scurrying behind her. Hecuba’s private attendant had heard the scream moments before and wasted not a second on her mistress’s behalf.
    “Make haste. The queen nears delivery,” Priam barked at the women, as he walked passed to the door. He grabbed the guard’s shoulder.