Thalia
Mykonos purred incessantly as Thalia stroked along the creature's back, itching up her spine. It was funny—in all her years she had never once thought to name the creature, herpsychíwas one and the same with herself. Yet, when Katrin had muttered the word—the reminder of their true home—Thalia couldn’t help but feel a sense of kinship. Mykonos. A need to feel, to see what the princess saw in this small animal. Hope. Belonging. Fierceness. Truth.
Freedom.
A thing that had lingered for many years, but somehow just out of reach. Something she had reduced to a dream aboardThe Echinda. And now she had it. All the freedom inthe world—except she was tasked with escorting Ander’s brother across the seas and to Skiatha. Little did that obnoxious, foul man know, but Thalia had other plans. If Mykonos had to shift and claw the young prince, so be it. She didn’t mind. Seeing him at wits’ end would be a sight, especially after watching the brooding prince stand scowling in the corner of her room the last few weeks.It is my duty…My loyalty to my brother demands it.
Thalia would have preferred to never see the brute again and, gods, did Mykonos agree. Yet now she would be confined to such a small ship with him for weeks, not to mention having to train with him—or at least teach him how to train her fellow soldiers. There was no way someone as cocky as him had the delicate nature to train another without pummeling them into the ground.
Still, she couldn’t help but feel grateful for Dimitris agreeing to go after her sister. The folded piece of parchment still lay on his desk.Come and get her if you dare,was all the letter said, accompanied with a cut of raven black hair and a ruby pendant that belonged to Dafne. The twin to Thalia’s amethyst she so often kept around her neck. It was a surprise the men that had her didn’t keep the gemstone as a sort of prize—their greed was unmatched—but this was clearly intended as a message. A lock of hair and a necklace now, what would come next if she did not show? A finger? An ear? Her head?
Now she just had to devise a plan to slip away from the ship and venture to the club. It would be dangerous, Thalia understood that, especially when she would need to leave Mykonos behind on theAphrodite.If they caught herpsychíonce more—Thalia didn’t want to bring back those memories, the way the men of the Legion had chained the creature before they were sold with the same stoneused on Ander. The gold substance prohibited Mykonos from shifting, from having the connection that flowed so easily between seer and animal. It had been as if Mykonos was dead. The tether had disappeared and it was worse than even the pain she felt now. Wailing, Mykonos jumped into her arms, butting her head against Thalia’s chest.
“I don’t like the idea of you going alone,”Mykonos said.
“Neither do I, but it is not the prince’s problem to solve, nor do I trust him, and I will not risk bringing you,”Thalia replied.
“I don’t trust him either, but you need someone there to watch over you. What happens if your plan does not work?”
“My plan will work.”
Mykonos swatted with her paw.“You act as if I cannot feel your apprehension.”
“And you act as if I will take anything you say into consideration.”
A small hiss left Mykonos’s mouth as she let out her claws.“Take him, or I will be forced to shift and follow you there myself. You forget, sometimes, that I am not beholden to your orders.”
“Mykonos, I am not ordering you, I am asking. Begging even. I will not be far and you will be able to feel my presence still. I just cannot lose you again.”
“You know, I rather like that name.”
Thalia laughed.“Do not change the subject!”
“You know us cats…easily distracted,”she purred, flipping her paw into the air and pretending to stare at it.
“I’ll think about it, alright? Bringing him…”She gazed down at herpsychíand Mykonos nuzzled against her.“I love you too, little one.”
Slapping of waves turned to a low swoosh of the water against the hull. They had left port. They were one step closer to finding Dafne and bringing her home.
Usually, Thalia took her dinner alone in her quarters—it was the only time she had true peace and quiet—but Cal had requested her to join them and she couldn’t say no to that old fool. He reminded her of the father she’d never had, or at least the father she could not remember. The Order of Delphine had taken her and Dafne when they were only five years old, when the inkling of power began to form.
It was her sister who first showed the signs of becoming an oracle. Thalia could still remember the night as if it played on a constant loop in her head—and maybe it did. Violent screams woke her in the middle of the night, the full moon through the windows of their shared room casting an eerie glow about. Dafne clung to her sheets, her back arching up and her eyes wide—their usual brown hue was no longer there, instead they had gone a milky shade of white. When the screaming subsided, she began to chant words that no five-year-old in the farmlands of Anatole should know and when it stopped, her eyes washed over a shade of ruby so deep it looked as if every blood vessel in her eyes had popped. Their mother and father ran into the room toward the end and dropped to their knees, praying to the gods for protection,but it would never come. The next night, the same thing happened to Thalia. They were sent to Delphine the following day. Those three days were all Thalia could remember from her childhood. They were all she wanted to remember, at least.
After years of servitude to the oracles with only a harsh mentor, followed by a year of being held captive, Thalia met Cal. The bubbly and squat older man immediately took her under his wing and she couldn’t help but feel a preternatural kinship.
Cal was the one who taught her how to string a bow, how to never miss a target, though he claimed there was some power lingering deep within her that seemed to make her immediately adept at the task. Thalia explained that she was the kind of woman thathadto excel at everything she did—it was the only way she learned to survive.There is more to life than just surviving.Gods, was that true. The words he spoke to her the first day they met had become her mantra, the reason she woke each morning with a purpose, a renewed outlook on what it truly meant to live.
It was that respect, that kindness, that loyalty which led her to Dimitris’s chambers for a second time today. Because she wouldn’t dare slight Cal, even when she desperately wanted to be alone. Although, she did revel in the uncomfortable twist to Dimitris’s mouth when herpsychípranced in behind her and took up immediate residence on what looked to be his chair—stretching out and kneading her paws into the gray linen fabric.
“She better not tear a hole in that, seer,” he muttered, reaching for a plate on the low lying alabaster table beside the chairs.
“I assure you, if she did, it would improve the utterly mundane object,” Thalia deadpanned, popping a grape into her mouth.
“I made that myself,” Dimitris growled back, continuing to shovel food onto his plate and staring both her and herpsychídown with a feral glare.
“Well, clearly you needed a better teacher,” she said, words sharp as a blade. Cal spit his wine across the room at her words. “And, gods,fengaráki,if you keep piling your plate that high I might mistake you for an underfed street dog.”
Dimitris slammed his plate down on the stone table, rattling the three wine glasses that sat nearly full near the edge. “I did not invite you here only to be insulted. To be frank, I did not invite you at all.”
