30. Kiera
Chapter 30
Kiera
T he soft tinkling sounds of water dripping in a series of plop plop plops slowly rocks me back into the waking world. I repress a groan as my eyes flutter open, taking a moment to admire the carved-out stone of the ceiling above me.
Unlike the bedchamber I’ve been sleeping in for the last several nights, this one is arched as if the room itself is one large grotto that’s been carved from the mountain of brimstone that is Ortus Island. There’s no doubt either that I’m still on Ortus.
“You overdid it,” the soft voice from my last memory says, alerting me to the fact that I’m not alone.
I turn my head and feel my heart try to jump right out of my chest. Makeda stands before a rather large cypress that takes up a large portion of the room in a shimmering gown made of gold thread. Delicate ribbons of the same color tie the dress up around her throat, leaving her shoulders and arms bare. The light tone highlights the deep russet skin that appears smooth and unblemished as all Gods’ flesh are.
Makeda strokes a small branch of the tree before curling her fingers around a watering canister at her feet and lifting it to the tree’s roots which appear to disappear into the ground beneath it. Ground. Dirt. Not stone. I sit up in bed.
“Where am I?”
The Goddess of Knowledge finishes watering the roots before setting the pot back in place. “You are in a safe place,” she informs me, offering no elaboration.
Glancing down, I note that I’m no longer dressed in my tunic and trousers as I had been when I was following Nubo and Zalika. Instead, I’ve been dressed in a thin white nightshift. I gather the blankets in my hands, tightening my fists in frustration. There’s no point in seeing if my daggers are still in place. If she undressed me, then surely she’d taken them.
Makeda moves away from the cypress to another plant—this one hanging from a chained pot bolted into the stone. She takes the watering can and tips it into the top of the plant holder. Water leaks out of small holes at the bottom, dripping down the stone wall to the side and plopping into the ground. Had that been the sound that woke me?
“I’m sure you’re quite confused as to why I’ve brought you here,” Makeda says. Her words capture my attention and I drag my gaze back to her, away from the rivulets of water running over the stone.
“You could say that,” I hedge, examining both her and the rest of the room as I quietly shift to the edge of the mattress.
It’s a bedroom, that much is clear from the bed underneath me, but more than that, this chamber appears to be designed to replicate a dark garden. There are holes carved into the arched stone ceiling with dull gray light illuminating the space. It reveals the various flora that decorates the area. Plain trees like the cypress take up different areas, but so too do different versions of floral bushes. Pink and white and red blooms peer out from behind the trees and solid wood furniture that take up the space.
Despite the stone walls and ceiling that give it a cave-like image, this place feels warmer than any other in Ortus that I’ve seen. Rich green ivy crawls up one side of the room and water runs down the other. There are perches of candles in tall bronze holders that illuminate what the skylights above don’t. It’s beautiful.
“I didn’t want to take you away like this,” Makeda murmurs, her voice carrying across the great room.
My bare feet touch soft earth and the warmth of it vibrates up through my legs into my bones. When was the last time I actually felt like I touched something living? All of Ortus is cold stone and icy danger. This place, though, this room is everything I’ve missed.
“Take me away?” I repeat Makeda’s words, not hiding the question in my tone.
Makeda’s shoulders rise and fall with a sigh. She sets the watering pot on a table also laden with various plants, flowers in pots, and sticks of weeds growing out of the floor, curling around the legs of the stand. Turning towards me, Makeda drifts over the floor on silent feet until she’s standing at the end of the bed. Our eyes meet and lock.
Can you hear me now, Neptis?
Her question, spoken in her voice, doesn’t come from her lips which remain pressed together and unmoving, but inside my head.
My eyes widen.
Yes, she says, before I can reply. I can speak to you this way but worry not. I cannot see into your mind and thoughts. It’s a gift that many Gods have and our children would have as well— her eyes break the contact and look to the floor— had we not allowed Tryphone to steal them.
“You talked to me in the arena,” I say.
Makeda’s head rises again and she smiles. “Yes,” she says, aloud this time. “Along with your other Avia .”
“My what?”
Makeda’s full lips part with a quiet laugh. Reaching up, she covers her mouth as her shoulders shake with amusement. I wait as I watch her, both curious and confused as to why I don’t feel endangered here—alone with one of the God Council. I know I should.
When the Goddess calms, her hand drops back to her side. “There is much left to tell you, Neptis ,” she says before holding out her arm and gesturing for me to stand. “Come.”
Left with little in the way of choices, I get off the bed and trail Makeda as she leads me further into her chambers—and that’s what I’m guessing this place is. It must be a private chamber for one of the Gods. It doesn’t feel like a prison, and no doubt the Gods that have had to remain on this island for their ceremonies wish to be reminded of their reward for this war—freedom, life, and their reign over all of Anatol.
Around a bend of more cypress trees, there is a small alcove with an opening for a large window. The glass is thick and strong—it must be to hold back the amount of water against its surface—and though it might make a half-decent escape, it’s clear that’s an unattainable goal because ocean waves crash into the outside of its frame. Algae covers the lower half of the window from the floor to above two feet off the ground and then there’s nothing but water. As the water ripples and flows, brief moments of the sky are revealed in the final foot from the ceiling, but overall, it’s merely a window into the great ocean beneath the surface of the waves.
“Please, sit.” Makeda gestures to the table set in front of the window. A plate of rounded cakes rests there along with several smaller plates and a steaming tea kettle. I’d seen kettles like this—the ones where a fireplace is unnecessary to use them—in many a God's home back when I was a working assassin. Set over a second plate, this one made of a special metal, the kettle is held over a fat, shallow candle meant to burn for long periods.
The Goddess of Knowledge takes a seat and folds hands in her lap, waiting. Carefully, I ease into the chair across from her. Another small smile graces her lips and even though she’s beautiful without a single hint of emotion on her face, when she smiles, she’s radiant.
I turn my eyes to the ocean’s window. I don’t want to think of this woman—or any of the Gods—as beautiful. It is a cruel trick of the universe for beings of such allure to be wicked and deceitful.
“It is not nor has it ever been my intention to cause you harm, Kiera,” Makeda says. “In fact, it is both mine and your other Avia’s hope that you will succeed in your mission.”
Makeda takes two mugs that had been waiting to the side and fills them with the steaming liquid from the kettle. Her movements are precise and comfortable as if she’s done this many times before rather than allowed others to serve and pour her drinks for her.
“My mission?” I narrow my gaze on her. “What mission is that?”
Makeda finishes pouring the first drink and sets the kettle back onto the candle’s fire. I watch as she takes a small cracker from one of the side plates surrounding the bigger one. I reach for one as well. I may not trust her, but if she’s willing to drink and eat this food, then surely it’s safe, and it’s been days since I had anything that didn’t taste like burned gruel or stale grain.
“To kill the God King, of course.”
My fingers loosen and the flat cake falls to the wooden tabletop, the edges breaking and creating a fan of puffy white crumbs around it. I sit there, stunned as Makeda drops two sugar cubes into the drink in front of her and stirs it with a silver spoon.
Caught like a rat in a maze, I contemplate my options. Get up and run? Act as if I have no clue what she’s talking about? Or … admit the truth?
Before I can make a decision, Makeda sets the spoon down against a plate, the clink of the sound echoing around us and making the tension in my nerves constrict.
“It’s alright,” she murmurs, her movements lax with ease as she gazes at me. “Caedmon has kept me informed of his plans for a long time, child. I know all.”
“What exactly do you consider ‘all?'” I ask.
Makeda lifts the cup of hot liquid and blows air over the surface, sending the tendrils of steam fluttering over the lip. “I know who you are, Kiera Nezerac,” she murmurs. “You are Kiera, daughter of Henric and Ariadne. You are twenty years old and at age ten, you were sold to the Underworld where you were trained as an assassin.”
My shoulders sag and I sit back in my seat. “I…” I blink rapidly. “I don’t know what to say.”
The Goddess sips her drink and grimaces before setting it down and reaching for another sugar cube. “You don’t need to say anything,” she tells me. “All you need to do is what you can. I and your other Avia will help when we can.”
Shaking my head, I sit forward once more, placing both elbows on the edge of the table. “You keep saying that word— Avia —what does it mean? Who are you to me? How do you know my father? My mother?”
Makeda stirs the sugar cube into her drink with the spoon contemplatively, her eyes moving from my face to the forgotten cake on the table and then to the ocean window. Long after the sugar has dissolved, she continues to stir.
“Fifty years ago, I was much like your mother,” she begins. “I met someone and I knew loving him would bring me nothing but pain.” I follow her gaze, wondering if she’s seeing something on the other side of the window I’m not. A small fish with shimmering scales scuttles past the glass, nearly bumping into it with the force of its speed as it swims.
“I loved him anyway.” The words are a confession. “Together, he and I created a beautiful life. I tried to keep him a secret, but one caveat to my own power is that Knowledge is both my gift and my curse. I knew when someone found out my secret. Like Caedmon, I too have a Knowing—albeit a bit different to his. Mine tells me when knowledge pertaining to me has been discovered, a spell I cast on myself when I was much younger that transferred well into this world.
“Any secret I keep, when discovered, becomes a Knowing, and mine had been revealed without my authorization. I knew that if I didn’t reveal his existence before Tryphone was told then I would be imprisoned or put to death myself. Arthur and I made a decision together. He would take responsibility for the existence of our son. He would admit to having lied to me and claiming that Henric had died, and then raising him outside of the Academies without my knowledge.”
The more she talks, the faster she stirs, but at the last part, she ceases moving altogether. Her hand drops away from the cup and it sits there, untouched, for several long moments.
“Arthur was killed when Henric was three years old,” Makeda says. Her gaze is still locked on the ocean window, but this time, I know she’s seeing something utterly different. A past that I have no part in. “He was too young to truly know the man that helped bring him to life, but every day that he grew in the Academy, I watched as he resembled him more and more.”
“Henric was your son.”
She nods. “He was everything that I had left of Arthur and he was who Arthur sacrificed his life for.” Her eyes gloss over with a wet sheen of tears. “I anticipated that he would resent me, that he would hate me for his father’s death, but when I came to him at his graduation from the Academy and told him who I was, all he did was thank me.” A single tear falls, cascading down the rounded curve of her cheek. She doesn’t attempt to wipe it away, instead, simply letting it take its course.
“He thanked me for bringing him into this world because he said he had found someone as well.” Makeda laughs hollowly. “A teacher at the Academy, in fact. A Goddess.”
A teacher at the Academy. The image of Caedmon’s office comes to mind. The great window behind his desk with the woman of silver hair and black shadows. That had been her office, I realize, back when she’d taught there.
Eyes that are a swirling mixture of soil and sunlight clouded with the pain of loss meet mine. When I respond, it’s in a careful whisper. “I’m only twenty,” I say, throat tight. “If he graduated, he would’ve been my age. Mortal Gods have been required to take the contraceptive herb for thirty years.”
Makeda nods. “Yes, that’s true and it works,” she agrees with a brief pause before saying, “when it comes to other Mortal Gods and mortals.”
I close my eyes. Ariadne wasn’t a Mortal or Mortal God.
“They were together for ten years in secret before you were conceived,” Makeda admits. “I suspect Ariadne actually fought him for the first few years. He was sent to work in various households, my son. He was a strong warrior with a fearsome power.”
“Wait.” I shake my head even as my fingers dig into the crevices of the table’s wooden surface. “But my dad didn’t have any power when he raised me. He was completely human.”
The softness of Makeda’s face changes in an instant at my words. The glimmer of tears evaporates from her eyes and she reaches for her cup, fingers gripping it tight. “He was chosen for harvest,” Makeda replies, her voice a low, dangerous sound. A warning.
“Tryphone knew I’d resist, so he didn’t tell me,” she continues. “Back then. He didn’t require us to drain powers from our children so often and never those that we had sired or birthed ourselves.”
I glare at her. “But you still did it to others,” I guess. “Lesser Gods’ children.”
Her lips press together in a thin line, but she jerks her chin in acknowledgment.
My upper lip curls away from my teeth. “I bet it wasn’t until your own son was in danger that you realized how wrong it was,” I snap, wholly unconcerned by the fact that she is a Goddess, herself, and could very well kill me if she so chose.
Makeda’s other hand comes up and she pushes back a wave of hair. Without one of her crowns or headbands to hold the mass of it back, it rests over her forehead and presses against her cheeks like a cloud curling around her.
“You would be right,” she admits with a grimace. “I didn’t think of Mortal Gods as anything but inconveniences until I met Arthur and we had Henric. It was ridiculous to me that my kind would breed with those of this world, those without magic.”
“Or Divinity as Tryphone renamed it, right?” I guess. “Since you all decided to play at being Gods in this new world.”
“Yes.” The admission brings with it a rush of molten hot rage, and I stand abruptly, knocking over my chair in the process.
Uncaring that I’m weaponless and in nothing more than a nightdress, I lean over the table and glare at the woman across from me. “What did you do when they called my father to be slaughtered for your power-hungry King?” I sneer the question at her.
Makeda bows her head. “Nothing.” Her shoulders curve in towards the fragile-looking center of her body. “I could do nothing, by the time I’d been told it was long over.”
“Then how did he survive?” I demand. Somehow, the answer seems already there. Still, I want to hear it.
“He survived the drain of his powers,” she says. “Not many do and when a lesser God of death was ordered to dispose of him, Ariadne saved him. She’d found out—too late as I did—but with enough time to free him from captivity and secret him away to the Hinterlands.
“By then, she’d already started to suspect what Tryphone was doing with her students. She’d always butted heads with her father. She was, perhaps, one of the only ones who’d regarded his decision to turn our kind into Gods in this new world as deplorable. Many others voiced their displeasure and they … disappeared.”
“They were killed, you mean,” I state. “Silenced by Tryphone.”
I straighten as she agrees and reach back to lift my chair to right it. When I take my seat, she glances up at me. Ignoring her, I reach for the kettle and pour a cup of the liquid.
“Keep going,” I say. “There’s no point in stopping now. If you brought me here, it was to tell me everything, wasn’t it?”
“Tryphone had his suspicions that his daughter was secretly leaving her post in the Academy. He had her followed on many occasions. I didn’t even know that Henric still lived. I admit that I … stopped caring about a lot of things when I heard he’d died the first time.”
A muscle in my jaw jumps at the reminder that even if my dad hadn’t died then, he had later … much later. Maybe if he’d had his powers he would have survived the attack; maybe things would have been different.
“What happened?” I press, lifting the cup to my lips and drinking back what tastes like a tea of sorts. Without any sugar, it’s bitter and tart, but the flavor at least is much better compared to the soup I’ve been forced to drink over the last few days. I drain my cup with hardly a grimace.
“Ariadne disappeared for a while,” Makeda admits. “I suspect it was around the time she realized she was pregnant with you. She had been sneaking out to see him often. They were in love and Caedmon, as her best friend, helped to hide her secret. I would have known all about Henric and you, I might even have known you in those early years had I not been so wrapped up in myself and my grief.”
I set the cup back on the table and pick up the discarded cake, nearly swallowing it whole. The shaky queasiness from earlier is fading fast and the delicate rays of early morning light coming in from the upper foot of the window warn me that there’s not much time left.
“Jump forward,” I say, coughing a bit as the cake lodges in my throat for a brief spell. “You haven’t explained what Avia means or why you want to help me? How can you help me kill Tryphone?”
Makeda tilts her head, the mass of curly hair swinging with the movement. “Avia means grandmother in our ancient language,” she admits. “I am your grandmother, Kiera, and so is our Queen. We want to help you because we can’t bear to see our children hurt and slaughtered anymore. We cannot take part in this oppression anymore.”
Shit. Shit. Double fucking shit.
Here I thought the Darkhavens had a fucked-up family history. Makeda’s words, however, have me standing once more, this time far more cautiously. Her head lifts as her gaze follows me. She swallows.
“You may look like your mother,” she whispers, “but you have your father’s temperament.”
Doubtful. The man I knew as my father was far stronger than me, but she doesn’t need to know that. If anything, it’s a good thing she thinks that.
“The Hunt begins today.” She closes her eyes as pain washes over her features, brows knitted together, lips squeezing tight as she tucks her chin towards her chest. I stare at her for a moment more. I wait a beat before finishing. “I’m not talking about the Venatus Ceremony.”
Her head pops up, eyes wide with surprise. “You know—” Makeda cuts herself off and then chuckles dryly. “No, of course you do. You’ve already found Caedmon’s cell and talked to him.”
I don’t respond. Goddess of Knowledge or not, I don’t know how far her power extends, if it’s weakened, or if she’s merely hiding what she knows of me and the Darkhavens.
“Fine then, Neptis ,” Makeda says. “What Hunt are you referring to?”
Ignoring the word that she continues to call me simply because I don’t have time for another lengthy discussion or explanation, I place my palms flat on the table and lean forward. “If you truly want to help me,” I tell her, hoping I’m not making a terrible mistake, “then I need you to do something for me.”
She releases her cup. “Anything.”
Though I should feel relief to have the Goddess of Knowledge—and by my own blood’s association, the God Queen—on my side, relief is the furthest thing I feel as I tell her my plan.
Nothing else matters now save for our survival, and I will use whatever means at my disposal.