Her back arched as he plunged himself into her from below.
“That’s it, Goddess,” he growled. Her body tightened its hold around him, craving every delicious movement as he lifted and lowered her again and again. She didn’t care that the bath had cooled, didn’t care that water now streamed from the copper sides. All that mattered was Araes’s glittering eyes as he drove her to release.
He raised her hips again, withdrawing his cock to the tip. “Let me hear my name on your lips.”
She sank onto him once more, eyes fluttering closed as pleasure washed over them both.
“Fuck, Tethys,” Araes groaned, finding release right alongside her. Her breaths were ragged and reeling as she succumbed to her climax, letting it rush through her body in waves of existential, all-encompassing bliss.
Chapter 52
Araes followed the cliffside for the rest of the journey south. The eastern sea was a crystalline sight along the horizon. It set ablaze in ruby and citrine waves with the next two sunrises. What freedoms they’d both felt along the infinite expanse of the sea soon dwindled with the approaching reality of reaching the Centaurian Cliffs.
When finally, Gaia slowed to a stop on the eve of their fifth day since leaving Venia, a silent terror took property in the pit of Tethys’s stomach.
“It looks like those pillars mark the path to the eastern beaches. It’s too steep a trek for Gaia, so we’ll have to walk from here,” Araes said, dismounting and loosening his scabbard now secured across the back edge of Gaia’s saddle.
Tethys followed suit, lacing her cloak tightly around her shoulders.
“Let’s make haste. This place feels ancient. Gods only know what lurks in the old mining tunnels,” she said, shivering at the potential threat of meeting one of theseancestral beasts.
In her lectures, Euda warned of the titanic creatures that guarded the oldest of landmarks—Scylla of the Narrows and Charybdis of the Raging Sea. Lurking in the depths of their childhood home, hundreds of miles from the continent, was fabled to be the Minotaur—enchained by her father when they constructed their palace. Even her mother, terrified of its powerful, monstrous horns, prohibited all the children from descending into the dungeons. With adolescent rebellion, however, they’d often wander a step or two before shrieking with delight and returning to the ground levels. While the Minotaur never appeared, belief in its existence lurked in her adolescent dreams. She shivered at the thought of such a beast hiding in the cliffside caves.
Although it wasn’t known entirely where these beasts descended from, the ancients hypothesized they were birthed from the chaos and that held the continent prisoner before the primordials’ arrival. Maybe now, she supposed, Vorthal created these creatures to serve as conduits for fear.
“I don’t think I want to find out…” Araes muttered as they descended the rocky trail. Waves crashed along the coastline with a fine layer of foamy salt, swallowing the shallow expanse of beach with each crash. Pebbles scattered with every cautious step Tethys took and rolled down the treacherous incline, disrupting the thickly settled sand.
Araes sidestepped over a knee-high salt deposit that shivered against the rippling oceanic winds. Each blow from the eastern sea quaked the earth beneath them, like a warning to turn back.
“Watch your footing here, Goddess, the step is a bit slick.” Araes reached a hand out and she took it, warily crossing a glistening stone protruding from the path. Tethys smirked as she dug her heel in to gain traction. Had she been wearing those ridiculous heeled slippers themanor staff insisted on dressing her in, she’d surely find herself flattened on the beach below.
The leather work boots Penelope let her borrow, however, had a rugged sole that gripped the ground beneath her. It’s near impossible to escape the jailer in shoes that risked breaking an ankle. She added those damned slippers to the mental list of tactics the Venian court employed to suppress her.
“Just a few more steps,” she whispered, more to herself, and continued the descent. When finally they reached the sandy beach floor, her heart was a deafening thrum in her ears, nearly drowning out the roaring rush of seawater scattering pebbles along the waterline. The beach was eerie in the evening light. Casted shadows traced the dark waves, making their depths seem malevolently infinite.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Tethys asked, scanning the jutting cliffs above.
“From what I’ve heard, there should be some sort of carved boulder marking the mine’s entrance,” Araes replied, securing his baldric tighter.
The wind ripped strands of Tethys’s golden hair free and sent them twisting and twirling along her face. No wonder all the Piscium fishermen had chapped cheeks and calloused brows. Being constantly subjected to these vicious oceanic blisters would harden her skin, too.
“Do you mean something like that...?” she asked, pointing to a protrusion a few paces down the shoreline. The black rock, fallen from the cliffside above, sunk into white sand, making a sharp contradiction to the open environment.
“Perhaps, but let’s be sure,” Araes replied, starting for the boulder. Tethys matched his anxious pace, their footsteps eaten by the waves with every footfall.
The boulder was a nearly perfect sphere, save for the rugged chips and dips of erosion from millennia of exposure in the harsh blustering winds. At its center was a carving chiseled with immense precision. A circle composed of arrows, each pointed outward along the diameter.
“This definitely isn’t a naturally made mark,” she breathed, risking an index finger over its arrow-tips.
“Maybe the symbols of the miner’s guild? I’ve never seen this before.” Araes knelt beside the boulder to examine the etching. Tethys shuddered, suddenly cold in the tropical evening air. This symbol was foreign from all the ledgers and texts she’d read of the Aquilaean mining complex.
“Maybe it was here before,” she said, feeling the stone hum with an ancient heartbeat as if the boulder itself came alive.
Just behind the rock, the cliff side parted into shadows. Only, standing directly in front of the carving was the cavern’s entrance visible. To the wandering mortal, it simply was a ridge in the continent’s precipice. A natural feature carved in stone.
“Araes, look,” Tethys pointed toward the darkness. With narrowed eyes, he searched the shadow.
“I’m not sure about this, Tethys,” he said.
