“It was…well, it was,” Tethys replied. The goddess recounted the journey as they crossed sleeping streets, leaving out the vision of her future son. She wasn’t ready to share him with anyone else. Keep fighting, Mama. His little voice carried her home. Pink hydrangea bulbs, now pale in the darkness, swayed with a gentle breeze.
“Gods, my lady. I’m so sorry,” Jaide replied, as she hopped gently over a puddle from the morning’s rainstorm. It was the first in days since the drought began. It’d been a short spurt, not nearly enough to saturate the farmer’s fields.
“It’s nothing I haven’t endured before,” Tethys said, following Jaide across the puddle. “Jaide I…I’m sorry for being cruel. I guess I was ashamed and I didn’t know how to ask for help.”
Jaide paused before crossing the dark cobblestone street. “I’ve known you for long enough to know you didn’tmean it. Think of it no longer. I’m here for the good and the bad, Tethys. Always.” Her words were a warm hug against Tethys’s frozen flesh. “I just wish I could protect you from him. From what he does…” Jaide trailed off.
“Procyon is a fool. I’ve managed thus far in my marriage. Don’t worry about me,” Tethys replied, offering her friend an all too dazzling smile.
“I don’t know, my lady. Maybe you should speak with your mother about such things. She could offer a better solution than this ridiculous union,” Jaide suggested.
“I haven’t spoken with Phosphora in years. She’s long since lost her mind to her visions, you know that. Yes, maybe she would bring some hope, but I fear it’d be too tiresome to decipher her cryptic speech.”
The women stopped in front of a blood red door. Its white-shingled townhome, now bleached in moonlight, highlighted the vivid color just enough to make it feel slightly jarring. The goddess’s stomach lurched. They truly were doing this. Her heart thrummed in her ears, but her throat burned with a dryness only a glass of whiskey could quench.
“You’re sure his summons was for tonight?” Tethys asked. Jaide gave her a confirming nod.
The quiet murmur of mischief and moonlit conversation emulated from within. Tethys couldn’t help but shiver with a silent delight as a slow smile crept across her lips.
“Tiresome it may be, but Tethys, at some point, you need to fight for a better life. Do you really want to spend your immortality simply weathering your marriage?” Jaide asked, grasping the goddess’s hand before she could cross the front door’s threshold. Her eyes quivered with concern.
“I’ve been weathering the storm my whole life, Jaide. Even if Phosphora had some all-knowing advice, nothing would change. And so, let us move on from such depressing conversation. The night is young and we waste precious time out here.”
Jaide scowled at Tethys but nodded her agreement. The two entered the townhome as if they were its prey being devoured.
The townhome’s interior air was thick as smog as the women traversed the front hall. A small, red-faced man swaying unsteadily on his feet, nodded at them as they ascended the wine-colored carpeted stairway. Drunken men and women littered the upstairs hall, engaged in conversations only suitable beneath the blanket of the night’s late hour. Their whispers were a hair too quiet, their bodies a touch too close. Tethys felt her face redden as she passed a couple lost in each other’s embrace.
Jaide guided her to the door down the hall and the pair proceeded into the main sitting room. The interior dripped in decadence. Lavish ornaments glittered from the ceiling and the walls, a dark shade of blue, were embedded with gilded ornamental patterns. A crystalline chandelier hung low at the room’s center, encircled by various velvet and tan leather furniture.
A narrow-faced man with slicked black hair greeted the women as they sat along a settee adorned with exquisite embroidered patterns.
“You honor me with your presence, my queen,” he said in a voice as greasy as the thick pomade caked along his hairline.
“I thank you for opening your home to me, Lord Ophis,” Tethys replied, her eyes fixed on an open door opposite the settee. Within the candlelit room, a small crowd of people squirmed and groaned against one another as if they were appendages of some sort of fleshy creature. Tethys blushed at their exposed bodies, connecting and molding into one another.
“You are always welcome. I brought this for you. It’s laced with nightwing threads so it will alter your features and ensure your identity and honor are preserved.” LordOphis slid a golden mask across the coffee table between them. It sparkled in the flaming light from the chandelier. Nightwing thread, as delicate as a strand of saffron, came from a rare flower which grew only in the deepest of forests in the eastern realm. It had various medicinal properties, but its strength came from its ability to alter the vision of those that inhaled its sweetened scent, thus making it highly popular amongst thieves and those that required their identities to be masked.
“Thank you,” Tethys said, fixing the mask across her eyes.
“No one will question your mask either; it’s quite common for nobility to maintain their anonymity. You’d be shocked to hear my regular guest lists.” Ophis winked.
The middle aged lord was notorious for holding the type of gathering only suitable under a midnight moon. She was entirely at the mercy of his discretion, as he was to her. His townhome was a labyrinth, its center reserved for the wickedest of fantasies and the most treacherous of daydreams come to life.
“I’ll go fetch us drinks, my lady,” Jaide said, allowing the two to speak plainly. Tethys watched as her lady in waiting exited the sitting room and slipped through the murmuring crowd at the adjacent bar.
“Now, the reason I had one of my shades summon you…there’s been some additional evidence in regard to the child abductions in Serpens.”
Tethys shuddered. Unlike the majority of Venian nobility, she hadn’t forgotten the missing children. Arrissa’s morning messages not only brought news from Otto of the looming rebellion and their most recent attempt at penetrating the border, but also the city guard’s report. Their increased watch schedules were fruitless. With the kidnapper still at large, the lowborn families, heartbroken and terrified, spread dangerous allegations. The most precedent being that, the rebels were in fact behind theirmissing children.
Hopefully, Ophis’s additional evidence might lead them to the monstrous criminal behind the abductions.
“During the latest investigation, a city guard found this in the alley where it was suspected the little girl was last seen. A neighboring merchant reported he witnessed her playing in puddles one moment, only to find her entirely vanished the next. What do you make of this, Goddess?”
Lord Ophis produced a small off-white handkerchief from the interior pocket of his maroon velvet robes and handed it to Tethys. She unwrapped it, revealing a smooth, opalescent gemstone that fit nearly perfectly in the palm of her hands. She traced her finger down its cool curved surface. The mineral was unlike anything she’d seen in the natural world. Scattered in its creamy white hue were flecks of violet, citrine, and sapphire.
“Maybe some sort of composite?” she offered. The perfect spherical shape suggested it was man made, but only a master artist would possess the skills and experience necessary to carve such symmetrical curvature. “What is this, Ophis?” she asked.
“You have the same look I did when my shades approached me with it. Although exquisitely precious, it’s not otherworldly.” The orb was beautiful, and seemingly of high value. It wouldn’t be entirely out of the ordinary for a thief to have stolen this from some highborn. Maybe there’d been a chase and the criminal dropped it in an attempt to flee.
