“You could say it, yes,” Procyon growled, “but you’d be dead in the sand before the words left your tongue, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, yes, both of your cocks swing as low as the ground between your legs.” Tethys’s voice, venomously sweet, sliced through the wall of tension between the two men. Now dressed in black ankle-cut trousers and a smart matching tunic that laced up her neck, the goddess descended the riverbank and took her place between them. “Thank you for aiding me, Lieutenant. The convoy is making haste to pack before more of those wretched creatures find their way here. Why don’t you return and collect your effects?”
Although grateful for the goddess’s interjection,Araes’s heart still roared in his throat. She threw him a pointed look as he went to protest.
“Make haste, Lieutenant Araes.” A thin index finger shot in the air, gesturing toward the trailhead.
He dipped his chin, and with white knuckle fists at his side, started for the trail. Let Tethys deal with her husband, then.
Chapter 10
The smell of this place was ancient—older than time itself, yet all too familiar. Tethys knelt beside the altar, a sheer black veil curtaining her face in quiet, despondent, solitude.
“You have done well, daughter, but there is still much to do.”
Tethys raised her eyes, now blurred with tears. “No, Mother. I’ve yet to do anything. The world burns because of me. The continent suffers, because of me,” she replied.
A hand, not quite settled into reality, brushed her cheek. Its touch was a cooling trail across the blazing warmth burning from within her.
“Tell me, dearest, do you know where the child sits?”
Tethys paused, her breath catching on her mother’s words. “What child?”
“He floats between worlds, waiting for you. Save him, daughter.”
The darkness around the altar swirled to life with groaning and wriggling shadows. “Save him, daughter. He waits foryou.”
The touch of a hand, once gentle and coated in love, tightened around her throat until Tethys barely drew breath.
“You’re hurting me, Mother,” she choked, struggling against the iron grasp. Her nails dug into the altar’s edge, cutting through the sensitive flesh across her palms.
“He waits for you. Save him, daughter. Save him.” The voice was more persistent now, pushing her toward a hesitant future.
“Let go, Mother. Please,” she begged. Sweat dripped down her brow, stinging her eyes under the suffocating veil.
“He waits for you. Save him.”
Tethys lifted the veil. Sitting on the altar was a boy with yellow hair and milky white eyes.
“Find me,” he whispered, unhinging his jaw. Suddenly her vision blurred and the boy’s image molted into pale flesh, and rotten teeth. Then the darkness swallowed Tethys whole.
Chapter 11
Aloose wheel jolted Tethys upright, ripping her from the rest she’d finally found. It’d been three days of grueling travel since they’d left the clearing. At Procyon’s request, the convoy only stopped for a few hours at a time.
Now, Tethys’s neck ached from the position she’d slumped into amidst her dreamless sleep. Although their chariot was adorned with a narrow cot, she preferred the cushioned bench. The sway of the chariot-house as it rocked over ruts sent her stomach sprawling. At least seated upright she could lean her blazing cheek against cool glass and steady the churning in her stomach.
Her breath shallowed in a brief moment of panic, having forgotten where she was as she awoke. Milky white eyes still lingered behind her lids, sending shivers of residual terror down her spine. Inhuman clicks and guttural growls haunted her with each bump along the unevencobblestone road.
She’d been so powerless in the midst of the attack.
So helpless.
So pathetic.
Obscuros words rang true.Such a waste. Left with the options of humoring her husband in casual conversation or wasting away from her own self-disgust, she’d chosen the latter. Now her thoughts coated her tongue in a grimy film. Even without magic, she could’ve done something.Anything.Instead, like a pathetic little girl, she ran.
“Leave the fighting to the males,”Altair once said to her when she’d asked to join her brothers’ training session. In her adolescence, she hadn’t questioned his authority. Now, regret poisoned her like an insidious toxin. Had she insisted further, maybe she could’ve at least aided in the fight.
