Cruelty Is My Pleasure

Summary: From the inside out, she corrupts him.

Note: Because I've been feeling a little dark lately. Please take into consideration I haven't read this series for a while now, but whatever.

Also, please take into consideration that this is an Alternate Universe in which Luke gives Kronos Percy's body, and Luke becomes Kronos' second-in-command. The Titans have WON.

Prologue: Of Questions and Possibilities

She weaseled her way in: a sly, enchanting snake. (A sorceress of some kind, delightful and deadly.) She was his temptation, his mistress that was so out of reach, yet so close at hand. (How could he be fooled by her beauty? How could she overestimate his strength?) She was his love.

But of course he didn't feel love. Yes, he had watched the wretched thing up close. But never in his life did he wish – or think – to experience it. But wasn't that the trick? To be so cunning as to sweep the world into his fingers and let it dangle, while he parades off with his new lover? Only to tear her heart and rip it up and find another?

Or was he going about this all wrong? Shouldn't he take a lover from the crowd, strengthen his reign? So that whenever some fool tries to stage an uprising, he can clutch her pretty little throat over their heads and laugh? Yes, that was smart.

Too bad that never happened.