What did he want, this skeletal creature that commanded the dead? He snarled, pointing again to her breastplate. Dangling loosely from her neck was a simple silver key. Tethys pulled the clasp, anything to keep those demonic eyes from closing any more distance between them. She held it out. Before letting it fall into his outstretched hand, slender fingers grasped Tethys’s bicep. Her eyes shot to her right.
Her blood went cold.
Seated beside her, in a bloodstained, gossamer gown was…her own face. Her own golden curls, now windblown and knotted, curled around her shoulders. Where her other arm should have been, only a gnarled, bloody stump remained.
“Offer anything but that. Anything but the key,” her mirrored self cried.
Tethys unleashed a scream that deafened even the roaring rapids around them. The ferryman lunged for her, his cloak wrapping itself around her shoulders. He clung to her with frozen limbs and bruised, rotten flesh.
“Anything but the key,” her mirrored self cried again, clawing at the ferryman as he dug his claws into Tethys’s biceps. The snarling wolf pounced on him, its growls blistering her with each ferocious bite.
She shut her eyes, willing her soul to leave this place, this vision, this body. Everything stilled as she faded into the abyss.
Chapter 23
Tethys awoke to a thundering heartbeat and soaked sheets. That nightmare hadn’t been like any before. She’d gotten them since she was a child, these visions through the eyes of a woman with midnight hair and pale, wintry skin. But this? This terrified her to her core.
She threw her duvet off her bare legs, only to realize that what she believed to be sweat between her thighs was, in fact, urine. Something was seriously wrong. Tethys ran an arm down her shoulder, reassuring herself that both limbs remained attached.
A knock at her door announced her chambermaid’s morning service.
“Come in,” she called, peeling the damp nightgown from her skin. Her first handmaid came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the naked goddess. She swiftly averted her eyes, her cheeks reddening to a deep shade of cherry.
“I should like a bath this morning,” Tethys requested, brushing past the chambermaid and entering her washroom. While two mousy-looking maids drew her bath, shesat at the vanity, inspecting the damage the rebel men had done. Her body was bruised in more places than she thought and a long, thin scab, marking the blade’s edge, traced across her throat.
She swallowed hard, hoping the dread now spreading like a toxin through her would dissipate. The rebels were dead. Araes made sure of that. She was safe. For now. The promise of another attack loomed over her like a shadow cast by a stark, unrelenting sun. Tethys knew down to her very core that others would come. Her confidence in the security of the manor dwindled and she could only think that the safety of this room, these walls, was merely a delusion.
The smaller of the two maids, a black-haired woman named Marta, placed a tray of oils beside the now-full copper basin and nodded to the goddess.
“Thank you, Marta. I don’t need anything else, please go enjoy breakfast,” she said, slipping into the tub and welcoming the hot water’s sting on her skin. She’d always preferred her baths to be as close to scalding as possible without leaving burns. The chambermaids dipped their chins and left Tethys to her thoughts.
When she’d bathed, combed through her hair, and dressed in a peach-colored gown adorned with mother-of-pearl beads, she descended the manor and broke her fast in the sunroom away from the usual formal dining space.
Her blonde ringlets, usually piled atop her head, draped her frame as she found a seat by the room’s floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden. Aside from the library, the sunroom was her favorite space in the home. The natural light that poured in from the morning washed the room in its comforting rays. Outside, rows of peonies, now blooming in vibrant pinks and whites, bristled with the whisper of springtime wind. Ivy crept up the marble columns on either side of a separate entrance from thegarden.
Tethys sipped her coffee, inhaling the bitter aromatics that lingered in the room. Her buzzing thoughts cleared with the arrival of dawn. Once she was able to think a bit more clearly, she realized that the lieutenant hadn’t made his presence known yet. That was unlike him. However, after yesterday’s incident, she supposed he, too, made himself scarce for the sake of his own mental recovery. Wasn’t this the peace she desperately sought for? To finally be alone?
Yet, the silence was slightly too heavy. The vacancy, slightly too apparent. Tethys hadn’t revisited the surprising feelings that budded upon Araes’s rescue. The gentleness in which he’d cradled her through the still-sleeping city, or the scratch of his palms across her bare thighs…it ignited something thatreallyshouldn’t be lit. But it was. There was no denying this sense oflonging. Was that what this was? Desire?
Tethys huffed, pinching the bridge of her nose. These feelings were nonsensical. Traitorous. She’d be a complete idiot to fall for his vices. Like a lamb to the slaughter.
And what of his panic attack? She’d seen a part of him she was sure he hadn’t wanted her to see. The hardened lieutenant, stoic and noble, brought to his knees by the torment of his own thoughts. Tethys hadn’t judged him, of course. She knew war could break a man, especially one with mortal fragility. How many nights did she find herself in the clutches of her own nightmares, only to be consumed by the same sense of panic that’d brought the giant of a man to his knees?
“My lady.” A gruff voice startled the spiraling goddess. She rose to her feet, nearly knocking her china teacup from its saucer on the side table.
“Oh-h. It’s you. You’re late,” she said to the lieutenant who now stood before her stiff as marble.
“I would’ve thought you’d enjoyed a morning alone,but my apologies, I was indisposed this morning. I had to debrief the staff on our whereabouts yesterday,” he said, tucking his hands behind his back.
“Ah yes, our journey to the temple well before dawn. I’m sure there were questions,” she said, returning to her seat. Araes’s posture made her wary. His walls weren’t just back up, they werefortified.The warm amber in his eyes was imperturbable and the thin line his lips now formed, unreadable.
“They did. However, I made sure to assure them you simply requested a visit for prayer,” he said, his voice clipped.
“Thank you.” Tethys watched the lieutenant with scrutiny as he took the seat beside the garden door.
“Please, return to your breakfast. I don’t wish to interrupt your peaceful morning,” he said, peering out the windows.
Tethys’s words were lost to her. This cold, unfeeling fortress he’d placed himself in didn’t come as a shock. No, she’d expected this response from the man who sought such high honor and heroism. What surprised her was the frustration bubbling in her chest. His indifference sliced through her heart in a way that utterly terrified her.
