Blood of Hercules (Villains of Lore, #1)

Content Warning: This section includes descriptions of child abuse and neglect, violence, torture, starvation, death, bullying, trauma, panic attacks, stalking, and forced marriage and briefly mentions suicide.

One of the Fates receives a prophecy stating that a “lost one” will be chained to death’s soldiers, or else the Titans will inherit the earth and war will rage. She goes to the council room of the Spartan Federation and tells the members that the marriage law dictating that all Spartans must marry by the age of 26 will be enacted. She demands that Kharon Artemis and Augustus become professors in the crucible this year.

Eons before humanity existed, hundreds of immortal Spartans inhabited the archipelago of modern-day Greece, along with their animal protectors and local creatures that included various sentient beings and peoples with special powers. Humans eventually discovered that the Spartans could be killed. As the humans turned against them, the Spartans hid in the Italian Dolomites. However, tension grew between the two Spartan factions, the Olympian Houses and the Chthonic Houses. The Olympians circumvented their fertility issues by having children with humans: so-called “mutts” who were half Spartan and half human. Because the human offspring of Chthonics were rarely capable of handling their inherited powers, their numbers remained small.