14. Ariadne
Chapter 14
Ariadne
10 years ago…
T he line between right and wrong is so thin that it’s impossible to know if you stand on one side or the other. What I know in my heart, though, is that right and wrong mean nothing to mothers.
Mothers live by a different code of honor—one in which death, murder, and violence are nothing but stones to climb. Whatever it takes. Whoever I must face. They are nothing but obstacles in my path.
Dark tendrils of shadow seep from my fingertips, curling along the length of my side and then sliding upwards to lick against where my cheek is bared to the icy air. I turn my cheek and press a soft kiss to the power and it shivers in pleasure before disappearing back into my flesh.
All it took to realize the change that had been wrought within me was a silver-haired, gray-eyed infant. With clouded exhaustion and blood seeping between my thighs, the feel of that small, infinitely fragile form against my chest made all of the agony, all of the months of fear of discovery, all of the years under my father’s thumb and the secrets of my lover and what we had created worth it.
Even now, as snow climbs up my legs, rising nearly to my knees as I trudge into the darkest part of the Hinterlands, it’s worth it. The smallest chance of finding her—of being with her—is worth all of the bodies I have left in my wake.
Whether he realizes it or not, Tryphone will know when he sees the last of his minions that I dispatched and the message on their bloodied, broken forms. His rage will be great and yet, I can’t find the energy to care. All of the power in the world and he still cannot control me, and I will die before I let him attempt the same to my daughter.
A decade of searching. Ten years of hunting and dodging those that would chain me. Now, I've finally made it. I've finally found them. Henric and ... her. There's a piece of me that resents Henric for his ability to hide from those who would hunt him. After what he's lost because of me, though, there's a glimmer of pride too. He has kept our child safe, hidden, away from the fate that would befall her if her existence were to be made known. I can only pray that he knows that I have not stayed away because I don't love him, because I don't love our child.
A single tear tracks down the side of my face, but it's gone almost as soon as it reaches my jaw due to the viciously cold wind that slaps me in the face. I stomp forward nonetheless. My hands curl into fists.
Caedmon's face appears in my mind's eye as I march up the next hill, the dark of night shrouding all of this piece of the Hinterlands in nothing but white flurries and slits of trees.
Betrayer.
Deceiver.
Monster.
More tears threaten to fall, but I refuse to let them. Not for him. Never for him.
Another step and another and another. A man's scream in the distance echoes back to me. Frowning, I lift my head and sniff the air. The scent of pine and smoke lingers on the wind. My heart thunders inside my breast and I reach out, throwing an invisible field of power around me and catching many spider minds. I send them along, flying on their strings of silk and silver to find what I cannot yet see.
My thighs ache from the physical labor, and my lungs are as raw as my throat as I suck in another breath of frosted air. I race forward, waiting all the while for what my spiders see. Images cascade into my mind, drawing me to an immediate halt as horror pours through me. In the next instant, I'm running—sprinting—towards the rise of the next hill. Not caring about the noise I'm now making, I hurry and nearly careen over the edge of a cliffside that overlooks a small valley with a plume of smoke rising high into the star-dotted sky.
I might have lost my footing were it not for an arm coming around my midsection and lifting me away from the drop that would most assuredly send me falling right down into the center of the bloody fight set before the burning cabin. "Stay quiet, Ari."
Utter. Fucking. Silence. Despite his warning, I throw myself forward and out of his grasp. The second my feet hit firm ground again though, I'm on the move. Twisting, I throw the first punch, catching Caedmon in the side of his face and letting my knuckles slice up to his eye socket. I connect with an audible thump and his responding curse echoes into the cold night air.
Rage pours into me. My old friend—at one time, my only friend—stumbles back, his booted feet making a hard crunch of sound in the snow. I crouch into a fighting stance and ready myself for the next attack. He’s not getting away from me. Not this time.
"Ari, please!" He holds one hand up and the other over his eye.
My body slams into his, a tangle of limbs and wrath. The snow is packed so tightly that it’s become a block of ice. Cold seeps past the layers of clothing and into my bones, but I don’t feel it. Warmth floods my veins as rage keeps me moving.
Landing squarely atop Caedmon’s lean frame, I rear back and punch him again. His handsome face crashes back against the ground. His left eye is already swollen, but I don’t let that deter me. What friendship and kinship we might have had is shredded to pieces and it drifts down like the snow that covers our bodies, falling gently from the sky.
Over and over again, I slam my fist into him as my anger fills my lungs and threatens to scream out. I don’t stop, not even when his legs lock around my body and twist, turning the both of us. Caedmon was never much of a fighter in the first place, so the movement sends both of us rolling down a dusty white-covered embankment. The crunch of ice and snow beneath us as well as the curses that slip free are the only sounds in the nearby vicinity. We’re far enough away from the cabin now, that the distant echo of male grunts and the crack of burning wood is hardly there anymore. Sticks and stones stab at my sides and my temple collides with a rather sharp branch. It rips across my forehead, cutting open a harsh wound. Blood spills into my eyes. The second my body comes to a stop, I stumble to my feet, turning to face my opponent once more.
" Bastard! " I hiss.
Splayed out, blood coating his face and a bruise already swelling in one eye socket, Caedmon coughs and huffs out cloudy puffs of air as he gathers himself. I don't give him the chance as I take a step forward and kick the one arm holding him aloft out from under him before delivering a second kick to his abdomen. "You traitorous"— kick— "piece of"— kick —"shit!"
He captures my foot on the next swing and twists. My back collides with a snow mound, the flurries raining down over my face as I sputter and try to sit up. "Listen to me, damn it!" Caedmon barks. "I didn't take the child to hurt you, Ari!"
"Bullshit!" I snap back.
He climbs over me and grabs my arms, pinning them on either side of my face.
I pull the darkness to me, shadows upon shadows coming at my call, wrapping around us in long phantom tendrils. They encircle his throat and wrists, pulling against him, choking the life from him. "You were my friend! " I scream. The harsh shout is swallowed by the wind, ripping away the last vestiges of civility, of sanity, and taking it to the wind. "I trusted you!" My throat chokes on the last three words, my voice cracking under the strain.
The image of him wavers and grows blurry. It's like I'm suddenly looking up at him from the bottom of a deep lake.
Fuck me, I'm crying. Again.
Crying as I choke my best friend to death.
A flash of gold appears in my periphery and then wraps long ribbons around my form. I grit my teeth, fighting against them as I hold on to Caedmon’s throat, squeezing tighter and tighter until I threaten to break my own fingers as well as his neck.
The ribbons go from caressing and sweet, trying to tenderly urge me to release my prey, to hard and tenacious as they wrap around my limbs, my arms, my wrists, my own throat. They separate and slip into the non-space between my hands and Caedmon’s neck.
When he’s released—against my will—he chokes for breath, gasping and clawing at his ravaged throat. I reach for him again and the ribbons become chains, pulling me back further and dragging me through the upper layer of snow until I’m a good several feet away from the man that I once considered my closest ally.
Hatred burns through me.
One of the ribbons slithers up to my cheek much like my own power had and presses against me. Jerking, I snap my teeth at the evidence of physical power. It evaporates, disappearing in an instant, and I sag against the crushed snow, gasping for breath of my own.
“While I understand your rage, Ariadne,” a softly feminine, yet all too familiar voice murmurs, “I would prefer if you didn’t kill our friend. It would be difficult to explain his disappearance.”
I close my eyes and let my head drop back against the icy ground.
“Makeda.” The Goddess’ name escapes my torn throat with a rasp.
“Yes, child.”
I want to laugh at the endearment, but truth be told, to Makeda, ‘Goddess of Knowledge,’ I am a child. She’s nearly as old as my father, and would be nearly as powerful too were it not for certain effects of her gifts. A fact, I’m sure, that both annoys and amuses Tryphone.
Opening my eyes, I try to sit up and find the small area swirling with the golden threads of power and more snow. Caedmon is hunched over, hacking and coughing as he struggles through his crushed windpipe. It will heal—much to my disappointment.
A dark figure dressed in a dark gold robe appears from the shadows, carefully moving across the messy embankment with ease. There’s no sound of boots crunching or even footsteps left in her wake. I don’t move as she draws nearer, not stopping until she’s between Caedmon and me, closer to me.
Bending, Makeda reaches up and carefully removes her robe’s hood. A cloud of curly dark hair fans out behind her head, pulled back, away from her forehead by a gold crown of sorts. Her eyes, kind as they have always been, are darker than I remember, clouded by pain and sorrow and something else I recognize because I’ve seen it in my own gaze for the last ten years. Guilt.
“Come on,” she whispers, holding a hand out for me to take. “We should talk.”
“Not with him,” I snap, even as I lift my arm and take the peace offering of her assistance.
“Yes, with him,” she states. “There is much you need to know.”
“You don’t know what he?—”
“Did?” Makeda hauls me to my feet as she finishes my statement with an arched brow. “Do you think I would be here if I didn’t know what Caedmon was here for? What he’s done?”
If that’s true, then she knows more than what he’s done. She knows about her—Kiera. Inhaling deeply, I find myself unsurprised by this information. After all, Henric is her son, and therefore, our child is of her blood as well. It makes sense that Caedmon would seek her assistance.
Before I can respond, though, the man in question lets out another loud hacking cough, blood droplets landing from his mouth onto the white snow. The way his body bows as he releases the noise looks painful. Good, I think. I hope it hurts.
“Ariadne, I understand your wrath,” Makeda starts as I pull my hand away from hers and let my own legs hold me up.
A scoffing noise erupts from my throat as I turn away from her. Kind as she is, even she hasn’t been able to stop Tryphone from doing what he will. “My wrath?” I bite out through gritted teeth. “He stole my child from me.”
Whirling back to her, I clench my bloodied hands into fists at my sides. More of the tendrils of power slip free from the confines of my flesh to curl around my sides, protectively, anxiously. It’s as if the shadows that live within me sense an impending battle.
Somewhere in these woods, my daughter needs me. The images from my spiders flash through my mind once more. “I don’t have time for this.” I take a step back and turn, trying to ascertain how far we’ve come from where I’d originally been.
The snow flurries come down harder and the dark jutting trees that stick up from the ground like knives in a butcher’s block encircle me, seeming thicker than before. As if they, too, want to hold me in this place.
“If you go to her, she will die.”
I freeze. The words are spoken in a near whisper, so quiet and hoarse that there’s no doubt where they come from.
Slowly, with infinitely small movements, I turn back to the man crawling up from the ground. Caedmon is as I’ve never seen him before. Disheveled. His clothes torn. Blood on his lip and his face half swollen and bruised. I let ice fill my veins as I stare back at the dark eyes I’ve known since childhood.
Only those words could have stopped me. Only the threat of my daughter’s life would give me a single pause and oh, how I hate him for it. His power, unlike many others, is one of great importance. It is one of the primary reasons my father keeps him so close.
Unlike many others of our race—Caedmon’s gift and curse is a knowing. The future has many paths and only he can see down them all. Perhaps if I were not so overtaken by my protectiveness and rage for my child, I might have guessed that this was his reason.
Though it doesn’t erase his betrayal, some modest part of me—small though it may be—understands that this must be why he took her.
“What do you mean she’ll die?” I demand.
Caedmon shoves one booted foot into the hard-packed snow and nearly falls for his efforts. I don’t move forward to help him and to my slight surprise, neither does Makeda. Together, the other woman and I watch as Caedmon struggles to his feet and then sways for a moment.
His eyes are so puffy that the minuscule slits of them seem almost impossible to see out of. Somehow, though, he manages to stumble across the clearing until he’s a few feet from me. He stops and lifts an arm as the scent of blood and sweat filters towards me on the wind.
“See for yourself, Ari,” he mumbles, his voice still barely perceptible. No doubt, it will take days for him to heal from his ordeal.
I take great pleasure in that fact as I reach out and grab ahold of his palm. I crush his fingers in my fist, squeezing until his bones threaten to shatter. To my utter disgust, Caedmon doesn’t even flinch. A moment passes and then a second, on the third a handful of images slam into my mind. An old power. Ancient and wasteful considering the pain it will cause him in the near future; I stifle any old concern for my once friend and the payment he will have to make on behalf of sharing his visions with another.
Long pathways open to my mind, and I have to close my eyes from the real world to sift through the timelines that have yet to happen. A face much like my own appears—at first in infancy, the same as that of the child I held to my breast nearly ten years ago. My hand clenches harder on Caedmon’s as fresh tears burn against the backs of my eyes.
Her looks change, going from the soft roundness of babyhood to the similar plumpness of a toddler, then that of a child through different childhood stages into adolescence and beyond.
Find the strongest two lines. Caedmon’s whisper penetrates my mind, clearer now because he’s sharing it through our connection versus his actual voice.
Annoyed at having to listen to him, I still follow his direction and see two similar paths, brighter than any of the others. To the right and to the left, the silver illuminations appear like snakes drifting down a river. Mentally, I brush against one, knowing from experience what will happen.
I’m sucked into the future it holds and find myself standing in a small cabin. Crack! I jump and whirl to see a reflection of myself sitting on a rug near a fire hearth. Her long silver hair drawn back into a low braid, the child of my heart glances up from a worn book in her hand and smiles at me.
“Mom, you’re back!” Tears fill my eyes as she tosses the book to the side and jumps up, rushing over. Her body is warm against mine as she wraps thin arms around my middle. My chest cracks wide open and I can’t stop myself from sinking into the future that I want more than anything in the world. Wrapping myself around her, I snuggle my face into her hair and inhale the smell of firewood and ink and dust.
When I speak, it’s through a ragged throat. “W-where’s your father, baby?”
She pulls back and frowns at me. “You didn’t find him?” Her brow pinches and worry steals across her features. As close as I am now, I see that she isn’t quite all of me. The shape of her nose favors her father far more as well as the coal-lined lashes of her eyes. The body against mine is thin, but not fragile. Her bones are thicker than mine. Dearly Divine, she’s beautiful.
I cup her cheek, feeling the smoothness of her skin and both hating and loving how real it feels. “Find him?” I repeat absently as I try to absorb everything about this would-be future.
Kiera takes a step back, my hand falling from her face as her features shift and change. The cabin around us falls away, a swirling mist overtaking its place. The face that appears next is that of a much older child—no, not a child at all. A woman.
Deadened gray eyes meet mine from a scarred face. Her hair is shorn nearly to her scalp. Her lips are cracked and dry and her very expression is the definition of hollow. Fear whips into my heart and I reach for her once more, only this Kiera is different from the other. She moves away from my reach.
The mist clears and with horror, I recognize where we are.
Ortus.
“No…”
“Come to me, Kiera.”
My head jerks up as I recognize that hated voice. Tryphone stands atop a dais with one arm outstretched. “No!” I scream as I hurl myself towards the once-child in front of me.
The second my body hits hers, though, the fate surrounding us dissolves once more. Wrapping my arms more securely around the frame of my daughter, I squeeze until I can’t feel my limbs. Still, she changes.
Her skin turning a dusty white-gray, her hair growing longer, but no longer with the thick vibrancy of a healthy woman. Purple and black-rimmed eyes twist towards me. My mouth parts on a wordless scream. Tears spill over onto my cheeks, dripping down and falling… falling… falling.
Still, I don’t release her.
Empty. My daughter’s face is nothing but a skull with skin stretched over bone. Her lips bloodless. Her eyes unseeing.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Cradling her against me, my knees hit hard stone as I rock back and forth.
This is what will happen if you stay with her, Ari. Caedmon’s voice is gentle. This is why you cannot go to her.
“No!” I scream again as the body against my chest begins to disintegrate. Bones and flesh turning to dust. Gasping for breath, screaming, I claw at the ground. “Bring her back!”
The path falls away and this time there is only one silvery snake-like choice. I reach for it without thinking, knowing at least she must be alive again in this future. I’m ripped from the first rope of fate into the second and find myself standing in a wet, dark room.
My body aches as I twist on cold hard stone and sit up. A figure appears a few feet away, separated from me by a row of stone bars. Brimstone. It would frighten me were I not so focused on the person standing there, watching me.
Kiera.
I straighten, my bones protesting as I realize my hands are bound. I glance down and see that they aren’t just shackled, but bolts of brimstone have been inserted through my wrists. The pain fades, though, as Kiera raises a torch in her hand, illuminating the space.
Though I don’t recognize the prison, the brimstone walls and stone tell me it’s likely Ortus—once again.
Can we not avoid this terrible place? I wonder absently.
If Caedmon hears, he doesn’t answer.
I allow myself to look at her again, noting that her hair is long and twisted away from her face. Her features are thinner, but they are still strong. There’s no horrid scarring, no sunken eyes. Instead, there’s a fire burning in those stony depths. Power seeps from her in waves. It drifts over me, sensing of both myself and … him.
Oh, Henric. My eyes begin to burn once more. Our daughter is so strong.
A blessing and a curse.
“Who are you?” she asks.
I blink and realize that my tears have caught her attention. Her features are tight as if she’s trying to be intentionally impassive. Reclining against the wall at my back, I ignore the aches and pains of the future my body will endure as I take her in.
“You know who I am.”
Her brow furrows.
I have so many questions. So many wonders. I part my lips to ask them, but the room disappears once more into mist.
I’d curse Caedmon if I knew it would do any good, but it won’t. There’s only so much he can share even with this connection of his.
A race of images pass through my mind. An older Kiera than the one outside my prison, laughing with her head thrown back, her arms around a man with white-blond hair. A younger Kiera, dirty and grimy, tied to a chair with blood running down her arms and legs. Tear tracks through the dust coating her cheeks. Kiera opening her eyes as sunlight spills into a lavish room, her face soft with rest.
More tears flood me. I once thought that there were only so many a person can produce, but it appears not. They never cease. They come and they come as I watch a whole lifetime for my daughter, one that does not include me.
She will live , Caedmon finally says.
She will suffer, I reply.
He is silent for a moment, but then, yes, she will suffer in both lifetimes, but at least in this one… she will live and she will eventually find happiness.
I close my eyes and find reality once more. My hand releases his and I open my eyes to see his face pinched tight. The pain of sharing his gift has already begun.
“I can’t forgive you.”
“You wouldn’t have listened had I tried to tell you then,” he says.
“I know.”
Silence stretches between us and I offer nothing more. He’s right. I wouldn’t have listened, and yet … I still cannot forgive the choice he took from me.
Wind howls into the night and my spiders mentally reach out, their emotions full of confusion, of comfort.
“We must go soon,” Makeda says, breaking the silence.
Frowning, I turn to her. “What about you?” I ask. “Henric…” Even if I cannot see my child, there’s no reason she can’t go to hers.
There’s no outward betrayal of Makeda’s emotion, but a single golden tendril appears from beneath her cloak and wraps around her neck, lying against her shoulder like a beloved pet.
“It’s too late,” she murmurs. “If…” She pauses, glancing at Caedmon as if she needs his words rather than her own.
Caedmon understands in an instant. “She cannot interfere with Henric’s fate if the child is to live.”
Chilly numbness flows into my limbs. Caedmon’s knowing rests in the back of my mind.
If I go now to Henric’s side—our daughter will die. If Makeda goes, the same will happen.
So, here we are—two mothers losing their children both in death and in life.
My head dips. “I’m sorry.” That's all I can say. A thank you that I cannot truly express.
When Makeda speaks, her tempo is even, but her voice is full of biting woe. “I have watched him with her these last ten years,” she admits. “She is his joy and his strength as he is mine. My soul aches this night and it will never again be whole. Still, I cannot take from my child the heart through which he lives on. He would make the same choice as you, Ariadne. He would choose her.”
I look up and meet her gaze of liquid-gold touched soil. “I do,” I whisper harshly. “I choose her.”
Even if it means I cannot ever know her.