His words went far deeper than she wanted them to, far deeper than she knew she was allowing, and twisted. The truth, the wretched and horrible truth, was that she was glad he wasn't her Akheron, either. Both of them could incite a fury in her, but her own brother was something different, something far more terrifying than this one before her. There'd been a touch of him, back at Deimos' bar, but the remnants of what could've been her brother sunk again behind this god of Pain who apologized and adjusted his tie and kept his anger to words that quickly cooled again. His Styx had been happy. His Styx had been satisfied. And he had made her this.
"I wish I did," she confessed, the words out of her before she could think better of it. It had been a very, very long time since she felt contented. Pallas. Perhaps as far back as Pallas. Before Zeus, before it all. She'd been much different, then. Her laughter had never been cold.
Styx dropped her head and stared at the toes of her stiletto boots. A halfhearted shake of each ankle rendered her barefoot and she padded nearly silently on the marble floor back to the spot on the couch she'd staked as her own. Dropping into the cushions, she laid her head against the back of the couch and stared up at the arching ceiling. "You must hate it here," she said. "You must hate me."
But even as she said it, she knew it wasn't true. She would've felt it if it were true. What did he hate? Unlike her own brother, this Akheron didn't seem to run on her own power, wasn't driven by her, didn't breathe her in and out like something more precious than oxygen. Styx tilted her head to the side and stared over the velvet at the one who stood so stoically at her staircase. "What of me do you carry? Anything?"
How odd, not to be needed by Akheron. How odd and... and, she thought sadly, how wonderful for him.