15. Kiera
Chapter 15
Kiera
Present Day…
N o.
It's not real. She's not real. Not here and not now. I bite down on my lower lip hard enough to taste blood as I watch the woman unfold herself from her perch on top of a ragged-looking stone. Her clothes or what's left of them are nothing but dull gray and brown rags. The edges are ripped in many places as are the sleeves, but she carries herself as if she's wearing a crown as she steps closer to the edge of the cell until the only thing separating us are the brimstone bars.
A queen with her ribs showing through the holes of her clothes. The bulbous protrusions of her knuckles stick out from the thin frame of her fingers. She’s not half-starved; she is completely emaciated.
Something cracks inside my chest, like someone has reached into my flesh and snapped the pieces of my ribcage to either side. Pain lances through me, choking the words I want to say from my lips as her face becomes visible. Distantly, I realize that the light is back. It went out briefly when Ruen dropped the torch, but now the illusion of his fire hovers in vast quantities, small but strong little flames dancing feet above our heads and illuminating what I know to be true.
This woman—this sea witch-looking creature—is related to me. I can't say the word I know I should. Relation is so much easier than ... no, I can't even think of the word.
Ruen's shock is palpable as is the way he looks between the two of us. I can't seem to tear my gaze away from the gray eyes that match my own.
Caedmon grips one of the brimstone bars, the dark skin of his knuckles turning white as he hisses a pained breath through his teeth as he bends and coughs once more, fresh blood splattering the stones at his feet. I feel as if I've been set adrift in the ocean with nothing to tether me to this world. Her face, dirty and thin from malnutrition though it is, is remarkably beautiful.
Big eyes, dark coal-colored lashes, a straight nose, and full mouth. There are some minor changes, I note, latching on to the fact that my nose isn't quite that small and my chin not so dainty as if those differences can make up for all of the similarities.
"We thought you were dead, Caedmon," Ruen says, stepping up to my side as he faces the God of Prophecy.
Caedmon coughs again and then straightens. "Yes, well, I nearly did die," he admits. "But Tryphone was convinced to keep me alive in exchange for information on the future pathways that may become available to him."
My eyes flash away from the woman to him. "What information have you given him?" I demand, cold ice bleeding into my veins as I clench my hands into fists. "How did you not see him coming for you? I saw what he did to you. The blood..."
Caedmon's dark eyes meet mine. "There is no running from certain futures, child," he murmurs. "I had to remain and allow him to capture me if you were to succeed in your mission."
Ruen practically leaps forward, gripping one of the bars of the brimstone prison and he gazes beyond at Caedmon. "So, there's still a chance for her to kill him?" he demands. "How? Where? Have you seen it?"
"He cannot reveal too much," the woman's quiet voice penetrates the room, "or that would betray his power and possibly change the future he wishes to see come to fruition."
All at once, our gazes are dragged back to her. She's thinner than I am, her clothes practically sagging against her reed-like frame. Then again, no doubt she's been kept down here for a long time. With the brimstone and the lack of care, it's likely only due to her Divine Blood—or, what had Caedmon called them before? Atlantean?—whatever the case, no doubt it's only Divinity that's kept her alive long past the time she should have perished.
Though I know she's right—I've learned enough of Caedmon to know the truth—I cannot help the sneer that enters my voice when I respond to her. "Why should we trust what you have to say?" I snap. "Who are you to tell us what he can or cannot do?"
Who are you to me? I want to scream.
The woman, "Ari" as Caedmon had called her, is silent for a moment and then she, too, reaches out to grip the bars of her cell. Her bony fingers clench around them as if there's a deep desire in her to yank them from the ground and ceiling and escape her prison. For the moment, though, I am grateful for the barriers separating us. I fear what I might do if they were gone.
"You know who I am," she says, her voice soft but no less potent.
Shaking my head, I take a wary step back. "No," I lie. "I don't. You're no one to me."
Ruen's head whips towards me, and I don't need to look at him to know that he's staring at me as if I've lost my mind.
"I am Ariadne," the woman states. "I am Goddess of Darkness and Shadow. I am daughter to the God King Tryphone and God Queen Danai." With each word she speaks, a sense of foreboding wraps around my body. It's as if true power has found its way from her voice into my bones. I am rooted to the spot upon which I stand. Eyes wide. Lips parted. Chest heaving with the strength of my breaths. Her eyes, like gemstones of cut diamonds and moonstone, meet mine. "And I am your mother, Kiera."
I don’t know how long I stand there, unspeaking, unseeing of anything but her. My body feels as if it's been encased in stone, as if I am one of the structures compelled to reside within the garden of statues above our heads. Monstrous and beautiful and haunting, I feel as if I have stepped outside my own body and hover in the corners and shadows of this discovered prison.
"No."
Ariadne frowns and presses closer to the bars of her cell. "You know it to be true, Kiera," she says. "I am your mother."
"No." I shake my head as the word escapes my mouth again. "No, my mother is dead."
Ariadne flinches as if I've struck her. She inhales deeply and releases a long breath before speaking again. "Though I have wished for death on many occasions trapped down here between these walls," she says. "I am, in fact, quite alive."
I glance at the bars that stab through the ceiling of the cell and then to where they jut upward from below, clamping unevenly and awkwardly in the manner of a sea creature's great gaping mouth with rows upon rows of blackened teeth. Now that I'm faced with her, with the truth of the fact that my God-parent is alive, all hope of her existence has been extinguished.
It doesn't matter that she's imprisoned. That she's obviously being held here against her will—otherwise she wouldn't be so poorly mistreated, so sunken and decaying in life the way a corpse should be. The fact remains that she is alive, she has a heartbeat and has for a very long time.
Reacting in a way that makes no sense to even my own mind, I jolt forward and grab ahold of the bars. "If you're really my mother then tell me something," I hiss.
She blinks and turns her head to the side, though she keeps her gaze locked on me. "What is it that you wish to know?"
"Where the fuck have you been?"
Her hands retract from the bars, but I squeeze them tighter. Back and forth, my desires crumble beneath the flame of my anger and then flare to life as embers are embedded into other yearnings I've kept buried for so long.
"Kiera," Ruen's voice is followed by his hand touching my shoulder lightly.
I shake him off, glaring at the woman on the other side. "Answer me."
Caedmon speaks. "Kiera, your mother wanted to find?—"
"Shut up," I snap, cutting him off. "I didn't ask you. I asked her . If she can't answer for her Gods damned self then she has no right to call herself my mother."
"You're angry with me," Ariadne says.
It's a statement that brings a ragged laugh to my throat, one full of vitriol rather than amusement. "Yes." I nod. “I am angry.”
My spider queen comes to mind and I realize … the spider that came to my room before must have been sent by her. “You’re a spider speaker, aren’t you?”
The look on her face, the furrow of her brow, and the pursing of her lips say it all.
The laugh that bubbles up out of my chest is an ugly sound. “You led me down here, didn’t you? You wanted me to find you? What do you expect me to do now? Free you?”
“No,” Caedmon jumps in. “We cannot be freed, Kiera. Tryphone will know. She simply wanted to meet you and you’ve traveled down the path of this future course too far now to turn back. Her seeing you won’t change anything now.”
I ignore him and focus on her. “What do you want from me?” I demand. “What the fuck have you done for me? Where were you when my father died? Where were you when I was sold to the Underworld? Where were you when I was..."
Breathe. Fuck. I can't fucking breathe.
My head pounds, a loud clamoring inside my skull that reverberates throughout the rest of my bones. I shake where I stand. Even the fingers I have latched on to the bars, gripping so tightly that the jut of my knuckles turns my flesh even whiter than before are trembling with the amount of emotion rising within me.
"I wanted to be there," Ariadne insists.
One of her hands touches mine, her fingers sliding lightly over my digits. I rip them away and stumble back, nearly tripping over my own two feet. I would have were it not for Ruen who catches me and keeps me upright.
"No, don't fucking touch me," I spit at her.
Ruen grips my shoulders and leans down. "Look at her, Kiera," he murmurs. "It's obvious she doesn't want to be here. Don't you think she would have come for you if she could have?"
I bow away from Ruen's touch. He's right. His words and the pitiful look that Caedmon is sending my way make it clear that this woman, my mother, isn't a villain. Oh, but how I want her to be. If she's evil and wicked then that means all the pain I suffered, the torture and the agony, the loneliness and the loss—they weren't futile. If I'd had a mother—someone to find me after my father died, someone to care for me and raise me and love me—then she should have been there.
"I never wanted to be separated from you," Ariadne says, her voice choked with her own rising emotion. "Please know that, daughter-mine."
I heave in great lungfuls of air, but nothing changes. My chest constricts painfully tight. "She came to find you the night your father died," Caedmon says, his voice rising above the throbbing in my head and chest. "I stopped her."
My head pivots as if it's been pulled from my body and placed on a spike. "You ... stopped her."
He nods. "There is a part of my power that allows me to reveal what I see of the future to others. It causes me great pain, but I knew if I didn't show her what I knew would happen were she to remain at your side, she would never give you up."
"I didn't give you up, Kiera," Ariadne says, slapping the bars with the flat of her palm until they vibrate. "You were mine. My daughter. My child. I wanted you. Henric..." She chokes out my father's name. "We both wanted you."
"I took you away when you were born," Caedmon continues. "I delivered you to your father and told him to keep you hidden."
"Henric was good at hiding," Ariadne says. "It took me ten years to find you."
"You came the night my father died." My voice sounds hollow even to my own ears. I'm no longer fighting Ruen's hold. Instead, I sag back into him. I lift my gaze to meet my mother's. "Then why didn't you stop him from dying?" If she couldn't stay with me then why ... hadn't she at least let me have the one parent that wanted me?
A single tear escapes her eyes and rolls down her dirty cheek, clearing a path of skin so pale that it's almost translucent beneath the dirt dusting her flesh. I close my eyes already knowing the answer before Caedmon speaks it.
"Certain things had to happen for you to reach this part of your life, Kiera."
Certain things ... like the blood contract with Ophelia. The small dark room where I'd been burned, bruised, and beaten in a manner of training. The decade of service to the Underworld. The blood on my hands that I'll never be able to wash off. The people I've killed. The lives I've watched extinguish. The pain I've lived with.
When I reopen my eyes, I ignore Caedmon and focus on Ariadne.
"So, you left." A simple action that caused so much destruction in its wake. Perhaps if she hadn't then there would have been no pain, no disaster, no death, and no blood contract. I would not have ended up here, soaked in blood down to the marrow of my bones, with nightmares clawing at the backs of my eyes every time I lie down to sleep. If only she had stayed, I would have been different.
As if she can hear the thoughts tumbling through my head, burning in my mind, she takes a step towards me once more. Her arm stretches through the bars of her cell, the sharp edges of them cutting into her forearm as she reaches out. I jerk from the gentle gesture, my back slamming into Ruen's front. It’s so foreign to me that she would take my anger and then … try to touch me.
“I’m so sorry," she croaks. More tears fall from her lashes, cascading down her cheeks.
I feel numb. As if all the rage I'd held for her before has been stolen away.
No apologies can turn back the clock now and erase the damage that has already been dealt.
“I never wanted to leave you,” she repeats the words. "I wanted you. I love you. My baby. Daughter-mine."
Ruen is the only thing holding me up now. One strong arm weaves around my middle and the other reaches for my hand. My fingers are cold against his warm ones.
“You still did,” I remind her dully. “Your wants mean nothing to me, only your choices. Had you stayed, none of what happened to me would have come to pass. My father’s death. The blood contract. The people I've killed. Everything."
One choice was all it took for her to completely ruin my life. At the time of my father's death, I would have been so grateful for her presence. Even if she couldn't save him, she could have saved me.
“It was to protect you, Kiera.” Her brow scrunches as if pain is overwhelming her.
Does it hurt? I wonder. I hope it fucking does. I hope that she feels at least a fraction of the agony I have suffered for the last ten years. If even it was only that much, I know that it would still feel like thousands of burning blades piercing her skin.
More than the knowledge that Caedmon had known and orchestrated my fate from the very moment of my birth, the most painful thing of all is the fact that had she fought fate for me, I might have been a different person.
And it's in this moment, as I stare back at a face that reflects mine so fucking much, that I realize—true pain doesn't come from monsters. It comes from those who claim to love you.