Chapter 1

I am the illegitimate half-blood daughter of Hermes, god of trickery—forced to become my stepsister Victoria's body double in bed.

Every night I endured her husband, the war god Ares, taking me like a beast that knows no satiation. And every morning, I knelt before her and recited his pillow talk back to her, word for word.

When our three-year agreement expired, she tried to marry me off to a violent, deranged guard.

I begged Ares for some kind of status. He laughed and said: "You're nothing but a gift with purchase."

So I turned around and knelt before Geneteira, the Mother Goddess—and volunteered to marry the dying god, Apollo.

Everyone thought I was walking into my own grave.

But in the end, it was Ares who dragged his broken, stripped body through the dirt, weeping.

And my name was already carved at the very top of the divine register.

……

……

Ares had come to Victoria's bedchamber again.

The two sat entwined in candlelight, temples brushing, murmuring sweet nothings only they could hear.

Victoria rose with flushed cheeks to bathe. Before she left, she blew out every candle, as she always did.

Half an hour later, I pushed open the door.

The chamber was pitch black—only a thin wash of moonlight seeped through the latticed windows.

Ares lifted his eyes lazily, amusement lacing his voice. "What took you so long?"

He pulled me into his arms in one swift motion, then frowned. "Why are you so cold?"

"I was outside watching the stars for a while," I answered, keeping my voice low.

The truth was, I'd been standing outside the chamber door in nothing but a thin handmaiden's robe, waiting. I didn't dare stray far—I had to be ready to take Victoria's place at any moment.

The whole night was relentless. Ares left countless marks across my body.

He was a beast that never knew satiation, and I was prey thrown into his cage.

Just before dawn broke, I slipped out of the bedchamber barefoot.

Victoria was waiting for me in the side hall. I knelt before her despite the ache in every muscle, reciting every word Ares had spoken during the night—each one repeated exactly as he'd said it. That was her rule.

Her gaze settled on the red marks along my neck, and her expression darkened instantly.

Then she smoothed her gown and slipped silently into the bedchamber, easing herself into the bed beside Ares.

Ares rolled over, half-opening his eyes, reaching out to brush a strand of hair from her cheek. "Where'd you disappear to in the middle of the night? Sneaking off to meet some other man behind my back?"

His tone was teasing. Victoria pouted and swatted his chest playfully, and the two dissolved into laughter.

I withdrew from the chamber without a sound and pulled the door shut behind me.

Victoria was Hermes' legitimate daughter—pure-blooded divine, noble in every sense. But she'd been gravely injured before, leaving her body too frail to endure anything remotely intense in bed.

Because of this, despite her unmatched beauty, no god had been willing to offer her a marriage contract when she came of age.

Until a spring banquet, when Ares saw her.

The war god was captivated at first sight. He proposed to Hermes on the spot, offering her the position of principal wife. Victoria was equally smitten. The two became inseparable—the most celebrated couple in all the divine realm.

As her attendant, I'd once been genuinely happy for her.

But on their wedding night, Victoria fainted dead away on the marriage bed.

Ares was the god of war. Strength and dominance were etched into his very bones, and nowhere more so than between the sheets. Victoria's body simply couldn't withstand it.

For three consecutive nights, the marriage went unconsummated. Word spread fast, and Victoria became the laughingstock of the entire realm. The war god's bride can't even survive the first night—everyone was waiting to see her cast aside, replaced.

Desperate, Victoria devised a solution.

Each night, she would extinguish every candle and have someone take her place in the dark.

And I—as her father's illegitimate daughter, our shared blood giving us similar builds and voices—was her perfect choice.

I didn't want to do it.

But I had no choice.

My mother was mortal. Her affair with my father had been nothing more than one of Hermes' passing amusements in the human world—no one cared whether she lived or died. She was gravely ill, and only the divine realm's spirit medicine could keep her alive. The supply of that medicine was entirely in Victoria's hands.

I was forced to become her handmaiden. I knelt and thanked her for the privilege.

"Relax—three years at most. Father's already looking for a healing god to restore my body. After that—" She glared at me with undisguised revulsion. "Even if you wanted to stay, I'd never let a half-breed mongrel like you remain."

Then, fearing exposure, Victoria used sorcery to seal my voice. She announced to everyone that I was a born mute. Only in Ares' bed was I permitted to speak.

And every night thereafter, when the candles died and the chamber doors closed, I ceased to be Nysa. I became Victoria's shadow—bearing everything in the darkness that was never meant to be mine.