Bane of the Wild Hunt (Heart of the Tithriall #2)

6. THE MEANING OF THÁRROSI

Chapter six

THE MEANING OF THáRROSI

Amira

W e had walked off the balcony that wrapped around the bazaar cavern and were walking down another hallway from which there were stairwells going up and down. Rhea finally chose one going up, seemingly at random since there was no distinction between them I could see, and we went up several flights. By the time we reached the top, I was trying to hide how winded I was from my griffin companions.

“These are the royal suites,” Rhea informed me as we passed by a griffin who curtsied before her eyes widened at me. “Only the king’s apartments are above.”

I nodded, averting my eyes from the gawking griffin to the open face of the cliff on our left. There was a low railing between the pillars, but otherwise nothing stood between me and the open sky. I could see the lake and the valley below and the Kingdom of the Vale beyond that. There were even openings through which one could walk onto stone outcroppings, and I presumed griffins would fly off them or perhaps land on them. The very idea of it, from this height, made me feel faint and queasy.

“This way,” said Rhea, and I happily turned away to follow her down the hallway with doors on the right spaced far apart. “This is me,” Rhea said as she gestured to the third door we passed. “And this will be you.”

She paused before an open entrance, and I could hear a flutter of activity within before we even stepped inside. There were female griffins making the giant bed on the left and another stood over a steaming, free-standing tub of water in front of the floor-length window. Riordan had told me that his people had a very catlike aversion to water and cleansed themselves by shifting. So the tub was probably a very recent addition to the bedroom.

“You must not enter her private chamber!” Rhea said to Ares, but neither Ktínos heeded her as they both strode into the room to look around.

“She is under our protection,” Ares reminded Rhea, and I did not miss the way her nostrils flared as the two warriors began to search the room. They seemed to think there could be an assassin hiding behind the fluttering drapes at the balcony or behind the potted trees and ferns.

“You cannot invade her privacy—” Rhea attempted to continue her objection.

“It is alright,” I intervened, not because I did not agree with her, I did want some privacy, but because I was tired of the bickering. I was also confident that Ares was not going to stand over me while I was bathing.

Rhea was so shocked that she was unable to hide her horror and suspicion before composing her expression. Then she drew herself up as if she were preparing herself for something uncomfortable.

“As you wish,” she said tersely, before she jerked her head at one of the female griffins. The same one that we had encountered in the courtyard at the top of the stairs. The Imítheos servants all exited the room in an abrupt rush behind their princess, leaving me alone with the two Ktínos warriors. Helena merely rolled her eyes as she closed the door behind them.

“Pretty sure she now thinks I’m… being inappropriate or something,” I muttered in uncertainty.

“Do not worry about what the Imítheos think of you,” Ares reassured me as he moved quickly through my room. “Neither of us will ever secure their full acceptance.”

“You might be right,” I admitted as he continued to peel back curtains and peer under furniture and behind statues and pillars. “To be clear, I don’t actually want you in here while I am bathing.”

“Of course not,” Ares agreed, shifting his wing so he could quickly glance at me over his shoulder as if I had grown another head. “But I am going to secure your room and then stand guard outside it. Helena will remain inside at the window with her back turned to you,” he added, gesturing to the woman who had just finished searching the massive walk-in closet.

“Right,” I sighed, feeling some relief until he began snatching up vials left on the bed. My brows rose as he uncorked them one by one to take a cautious sniff before he inhaled a little more fully. Evidently satisfied that my soaps and oils had not been poisoned, he seized the towel, a robe, and a new dress to shake them roughly. All the pockets and seams were carefully investigated before he sniffed the cloth as well.

“Ktínos might not be able to use magic, but we can sense the remnants of it,” he explained when he saw me staring at him in confusion.

“Right,” I muttered again, my brows still arched high as he dumped the clothing, which had been previously so neatly folded, back onto the bed in a heap.

Once Ares was sure no one was waiting to ambush me, and my things were safe, he moved over to the full tub. And he began to push the stone basin around like it weighed nothing. All the way across the room, away from the window and up against the wall where there was no chance of someone sneaking up on me.

“You are taking this seriously,” I noted.

“As ordered,” he answered and flicked his hands hard after water sloshed out of the tub all over his forearms. “Riordan wards his chambers against unwanted entrance, so I am sure he will do the same here later. But until his authority is established, we will be taking no risks.”

“You make it sound like his authority could actually be challenged. I thought he was indisputably king.”

“Anything can be challenged. And the Imítheos will not approve of the changes the king will want to make. Nor the way he will surely make them. We will not take anything for granted, and we will not be lax with your security until he is confident,” Ares insisted.

“Got it,” I grunted and gave him a mock salute that made him cock his head in confusion. I realized that was probably not something they did here in the Vale.

“I will be right outside. I will be able to hear you,” Ares assured me and Helena before opening the door and stepping into the hallway.

I looked at Helena, brows still high with incredulity, but she had already moved to the balcony to stand there. As if someone might actually attempt to fly in or scale the sheer cliffs outside.

I tried not to let the hypervigilance make me nervous, but it was impossible not to feel anxious in response.

I gladly turned my attention to the bath water that was steaming so alluringly. I could not remember the last time that I’d had the chance to enjoy a hot bath, but it would have been before my mother was killed. Before I fled the city for the tranquility and solitude of my mountain haven near Silver Springs.

“Well, it seems we’ll be spending a lot of time together from now on,” I pointed out to Helena as I walked over to the clothes and vials that had been laid out on the bed.

“I am Helena, thárrosi ,” said the female griffin as she pivoted briefly to offer me a bow so deep that she almost folded right in half.

I was quite tall for a human woman, but Helena stood over six feet. Her bare arms were more slender than the men but still bulged with muscle when she crossed them and leaned against the pillar. Now that I was closer, I saw her dark hair had several french braids feeding back along the sides of her head into the larger one.

“You can call me Amira. But can you tell me what does there-oes-see mean?” I asked, doing my very best to pronounce the name Ares seemed to have given me.

“Certainly, it is a title of deepest esteem for females,” Helena answered.

“Because Riordan means to choose me?” I guessed, but I knew that it was more complicated than that when Helena’s mouth pinched thoughtfully.

“We certainly respect you as our king’s desired mate, since he is an Imítheos, but the very concept of a mate is one that belongs only to the Imítheos. The title of thárrosi is reserved for Ktínos females who are deeply esteemed. Females who act with integrity, who willingly face great adversity and are willing to fight for truth and freedom. You defended our king, helped return him to us, and now mean to stand at his side to face down our oppressors.”

“Oh…” I breathed, stunned beyond words, the vials and silk clothing forgotten in my hands while I tried to absorb her words. Tried to comprehend the fact that the Ktínos evidently felt I had worth that was unrelated to my romantic connection to Riordan. And I was not sure why, since it had not occurred to me that this distinction was important to me, but the knowledge was moving.

“You are surprised,” Helena noted with interest.

“Of course, I am. I never expected to have significance in the Vale beyond… being Riordan’s mate.”

“You are far too humble,” Helena advised me before she turned away again. “The Ktínos will not forget what you have already done for us. Nor what you mean to do.”

No pressure.

I collected the rest of the vials and clothing from off the bed and walked over to the bathtub, my mind still reeling from what she had revealed.

“So, how long have you served in the army?”

Helena was quiet for a moment, and I glanced back in concern that she might not appreciate me prying into her personal life. But her mouth was merely pinched in that thoughtful way again that let me know she was just taking time to consider her answer.

“I suppose it has now been almost four hundred years. That is my best recollection, since time moves differently here in the Vale than it did in Aeolia.”

“Right, Riordan said it is slower here,” I recalled as I set my bath supplies down next to the tub and then began to shimmy out of the illusioned dress. As far as everyone in the Vale knew, Riordan had been gone twenty years, but it had been two hundred years for him in my world.

“It has been a hundred years since Adonis forged the Kingdom of the Vale, and I served for three hundred years in the Aeolian army before we came,” Helena confirmed.

“And Riordan said you trained him too.”

“Indeed,” said Helena, shifting to give me more of her back when I stepped into the hot water. “Riordan was at a great disadvantage when he was first thrown to my mercy. Imítheos children do not train for battle right from their infancy as most Ktínos young do. But he was stubborn and determined to exceed all my expectations, and he did. Although it was not without suffering.”

“What do you mean?” I asked in concern.

“I have been training griffin juniors for the army for hundreds of years. It is a brutal process to turn youth into warriors that will not falter before death. The prince was older than most when he was given to us to train, and he was outmatched by the griffins his age who had already been training for decades. And to say that they took the opportunity… Let us just say that the king was not as well liked by my people in those days as he is now.”

My heart ached at the thought of what those days must have been like for my griffin. He would have faced the same distrust and aversion that I was subjected to now. Except that the ones who hated him had been allowed to act upon their feelings in the context of training for war.

“Orion hated him most of all. He is the one who broke Riordan’s nose,” Helena added mildly, shocking me with this unexpected tidbit.

“ Really ?”

“It was not until the incursion of the Fuath when Riordan risked his life to save Orion from torture by the enemy that their bond of friendship was put to seed.”

Interesting. Riordan had told me Orion was even more stubborn than he was, but that he would eventually come to care for me. I wondered if he was basing that off of his own experience with his skiá . If so, he was going to be sorely disappointed, because I had no intention of risking my life just to get on Orion’s good side.

“You keep saying Riordan was given to you,” I noted with curiosity.

“He was. It was his father’s idea. His mother was the queen at the time, and she agreed, but I do not believe she expected to receive him back quite as she did. The young prince was idealistic, naive, and vocal about the harsh treatment of the Ktínos. I think she meant to show him our true brutality, and if we killed him, then it would have been due to his own foolishness for believing better of us. But instead of a humbled boy, I delivered her a warrior unparalleled by any that had come before him.”

I could not help smiling at the tone of pride that was so obvious in her voice. And I could not help wondering if Helena had been some kind of mother figure to my mate. Whether she felt that way about him too.

“I didn’t see his father below,” I recalled.

“He oversees the Agricultural Guild and was needed in Erétria where they are experiencing some… problems,” Helena explained haltingly. I could tell that this might be sensitive information, and I was quite liking her openness. I didn’t want to ask her about something that she wasn’t supposed to talk about, so I changed the topic.

“And what about Adonis? Riordan thought he would be a good king,” I said, curious to know her thoughts.

“He was a good king for the short time he had to rule, and perhaps in time he could have been a great king.”

“Were you there when he forged the Vale?”

“I was there,” Helena confirmed, tilting her head back against the pillar behind her. “Witnessing that was unlike any wielding I had ever seen performed. It was almost like watching a god weaving with the very fabric of the world as he moved our kingdom into another realm.”

And yet, Adonis had been killed by a blood witch…

I shivered, glad that we were beyond Jade’s reach now, and decided to focus on lathering my hair and skin.

Helena was completely quiet, giving me an illusion of privacy as I bathed and then slipped into the robe that had been left for me before I considered the dress. It was thin, softer than anything I had ever touched, and definitely meant for sleeping and not for wandering about in public. Unless griffins had a habit of wandering around in clothes that were slightly transparent. I also suspected the dress was meant to accommodate wings which I clearly lacked because there were so many extra loops and strings.

“Uh, Helena?” I called, glancing back at the griffin as she turned her head in my direction. Her brows rose when I presented the gown to her like an offering in my palms.

“I have never worn a dress in my life,” she snorted.

“Great,” I muttered and sighed.

“I expect Ares would have some ideas. Although I do suspect his expertise may be limited to the removal rather than the donning of dresses,” admitted Helena.

“Oh!” I gasped, my cheeks flushing at her insinuation.

“Shall I retrieve him—”

“You know, I might just do my best,” I interrupted.

“You will be uncomfortable tonight if the knots are tied incorrectly,” Helena warned me.

I ignored her very valid point while I tried to work out the best way to put the damned thing on. After some thought, I decided to slip into the skirt and start working out the rest after that. There were a few straightforward strings to tighten on my thighs, lacing provocatively all the way up my hip. But the rest of it was a mess of loose strips that I had no idea how to tie.

Helena gave a resigned sigh, like this was beneath her, and I supposed it was for someone who usually trained griffin warriors. She should not be babysitting a fire witch who couldn’t even dress herself.

Helena approached my back to try and sort through the multiple loops and straps. She held them up to me, and I tried to help her while clenching the top of my robe around my breasts with my free hand.

“What a useless, impractical costume. I sleep naked,” Helena declared after a few moments.

“Trust me, if I were not in a strange place, I would probably do that too!”

“Keep your robe closed. I suspect Ares will sort this out right away,” Helena advised me as she headed toward the door, and I blew out a reluctant sigh. I turned away from them while they had a brief discussion in the hall, and then I heard the door close. I could hear two pairs of wings rustling and two pairs of boots thudding against the floor as they moved back toward me.

“ Thárrosi ,” Ares spoke quietly, as if to warn me of his approach, and I smiled briefly over my shoulder without meeting his eyes.

“Sorry.”

“Do not apologize. I am sorry to say that Imítheos dresses are hardly the same as Ktínos. But I shall look.”

I didn’t object, but I could feel them both examine me, and it made my skin itch with self-consciousness.

“Alright, I think perhaps these two loops come over the shoulders from the front. Can you shimmy it around?” Ares asked me.

“Ah, it is backward!” Helena exclaimed as I tried to turn my skirt around with one hand. I was sure to pass the open laces to the front so I didn’t flash them my bare ass. Once I had adjusted myself, Ares stepped closer.

“I am going to touch you,” he warned, and I nodded, feeling appreciative of his sensitivity.

The griffin reached around me and slipped his fingers into two of the loops to pull the dress up my chest and over my robe.

“That is for her neck,” Helena observed, and Ares gave a grunt of agreement with her before shifting a couple straps across my shoulders. I shook my head in disbelief at the ridiculousness of the situation. Trying to dress with wings evidently complicated clothes terribly.

“Hair,” said Ares, and I felt one of them sweep their hand across the back of my neck and under my wet locks in order to pull it out of the way. Someone’s fingers made quick work of a couple ties, and the dress began to take some coherent form aside from the robe that was still bunched up underneath it.

“That looks right,” said Helena, although she did not sound very certain. “Can you remove the robe?”

What the hell. We have come this far.

I wormed one arm and then the other out of the sleeves of the robe and then tugged the silky article free from the front of my dress.

“I will bring her different clothes,” Helena muttered. “You should tell Riordan that—”

“Let us not tell our king that I was inside the room at this particular moment,” Ares suggested. “Agreed?”

“Why not? It might be entertaining,” Helena said with a devious tone in her voice.

“And I thought you liked me well enough not to wish that kind of danger upon me, mitéra ,” Ares chastised her. The warrior sounded hurt, but I was pretty confident they were just teasing one another.

“Of course—”

Helena cut herself off when the door opened and drew the sword at her side with lethal speed. Ares gripped my shoulders, ready to move me, but they both relaxed instantly when we saw that it was only Riordan stepping into my room.

Until he drew up short, eyes landing on me in my sad excuse for a dress with Ares standing right behind me.

Orion stalked into the room around Riordan to glance around quickly before his attention was also drawn to me. And there were suddenly far too many men in my room when both of their eyes began to sweep over me in my near-transparent gown. Before both of their gazes landed on my left shoulder where Ares was touching me.

Riordan made a sound, a rough growl in the back of his throat, and Orion instantly grabbed his arm.

“Step back,” Orion commanded Ares who did readily with his hands raised away from me.

“I was only helping her,” Ares tried to explain himself, but Orion merely jerked his chin toward the balcony in a firm dismissal. It was an opportunity that both Ares and Helena gladly took to escape the room.

Leaving me alone with Riordan and Orion.