Minerva stepped along the grassy path bordered with rose bushes. To live outside her world and to ogle towards never-ending horizon made her heart skipped one beat as she devoured every beauty of nature she'd seen for the very first time. Feeling the mellow sunlight on her pale skin, taking a good glimpse of colorful flowers, white crimson trees in the woods, she was slowly captivated by everything she saw. But she was not here for all of these heavenly creations. Who would have thought that an Atlantean Queen could make a step away from her cursed homeland?
Yes, Athena, the goddess of wisdom mercilessly cursed her innocent, lovely city after she decided to send away her kind from the surface of the earth. It was the time when one of the gorgon sisters was seeking help after Athena turned every gorgon and the whole Meduria into a living nightmare.
Athena cursed those gorgons into hideous monsters and banished their city, which they called Meduria, as a result of Medusa's mistake when she had fallen so deeply in love with Poseidon. And Atlanteans was cursed too, when the Greek gods decided to turn them from heavenly beings to fish creatures. No one could walk outside Atlantis. They eventually turned into mermen and mermaids. It was a kind of curse that they still had up to the present.
Her heart ached as she remembered her dear big brother named Ayden.
To be a righteous queen, Minerva should do anything for justice. And keeping that integrity meant that she would find Ayden and his wife, the gorgon heiress named Fate and kill them both for murdering the former king of Atlantis and Ayden's twin brother. A law should prevail and even if this was the hardest thing she would ever do, she had left her city with unspoken words and unregretful eyes, for whatever would happen, there was nothing left on her isolated heart, but only loneliness and bewilderment.
It has been a year since she'd last seen him and it was like a feeling of eternity for her. Minerva's lips twitched unconsciously. Why is it that her own brother chose a snake monster instead of her?
It was Fate who killed Ayden's brother and it was Ayden who murdered his own father.
She heaved a sigh for she didn't really know the feeling of how would a normal family should be—and she would never do.
*******
Not far away from her, Dr. Phoenix, a famous historian, was nonchalantly standing at a corner while taking a secretive glance towards the finest-looking woman he'd ever seen. The warm sunlight highlighted her golden hair that she pulled back from her poignant face to trail a ponytail of small braids from the crown of her head. Her lips were perfect and outlined in a dark red glossy lipstick and she had languid almond-shaped eyes with deep dark blue colors like the ocean itself which made her even more eye-catching. But he knew her profound secrets and that kind of information pulled him backwards, instead of walking towards her.
For Minerva, Dr. Phoenix was nothing but only an acquaintance to find her brother. But for him, she was his everything after she saved him from drowning two years ago, when his submarine got lost its engine power in the middle of his underwater discovery.
If only he could see her sweetest smile once more, a smile that would light up her blue eyes just like what he'd seen when he'd first met her.
If only he could.
But how, when her duties as a queen made her heart shattered into a million pieces all over again?