Chapter Twenty-Two
Amalthea
Thea was getting rather tired of the corpses.
Being honest, she’d been tired of them for a few years. They didn’t smell, thankfully. Decomposing flesh would turn her stomach, and she was looking forward to a good warm meal when she arrived at Ioni.
The wind blew through the wintry valley, snow swirling and landing between the bodies. One of them had just one eye, half out of the socket. The other was absent. It felt uncomfortably pointed, given her own state.
“Oh, Eka,” she murmured under her breath.
It was common knowledge that oracles didn’t revere the three-faced goddess.
Like most things that were common knowledge, it was simplified to the point of being plain wrong.
She didn’t revere Eka; she fashioned her as something like a cryptic aunt who you had to ignore half of what she said to make sense of anything.
That didn’t mean Thea didn’t fear the goddess.
She lifted her boot around the severed head that was a bit too close for comfort. Of course, it wasn’t real.
It could be, she reminded herself. That was the trouble with visions.
She palmed the side of her head, trying to look between the present and the future.
They flashed back and forth around her, the stars shifting so slightly.
Phrygia danced around, Lagina and Caria moving to different phases.
It was an old trick her mother had taught her, to study the moons and make sense of when her vision was.
Since she’d spent the better part of the last decade residing inside a mountain, most of the time it was utterly useless. But now . . .
There’s time. Still time.
“Everything all right, Lady Amalthea?” asked Dyna, her escort.
She cast the vampiress a bright smile. “Kind of you to ask. All is well. I’m only marveling at the sights.”
Dyna nodded, the small silver cuffs woven through her coiled hair catching the moons’ rays. Then her eyes snagged on Thea’s cloak, a protective gleam present.
“Perhaps you’re cold? Please, take my cloak. We’ve still a long way to go.”
Thea shook her head, though she drew her cloak closer. The north was so much colder, the wind cutting to the bone. Thankfully, the pyromancer enchantment on her fur held well. “I’m plenty warm. The card’s magic will easily last the rest of the way.”
With the visions gone, the path was less troublesome. The snow was packed down, only a few flurries still dancing in the air. The northern kingdom wasn’t as antisocial as Raphael’s, nor as much of a nexus as the south. It was its own place, welcome to a select group.
“Lord Iademos said—”
Not this again. “The general is a worrywart. Just because he has a delicate constitution doesn’t mean the rest of the king’s advisers do.”
Dyna blanched, her dark brown skin going slightly ashen at the disrespect in Thea’s tone.
Really? It was hardly the most shocking thing she had said during their past few weeks of travel. But say what one would, Demos’s troops worshiped the ground he stomped on.
She’d have to try harder. By all the gods of joy and mirth, she’d make Dyna laugh if it was the last thing she did on this trip.
Thea pushed the vision of corpses away. She could do it consciously, of course.
Cast her sight forward to seek answers about specific people or places.
Could help the vampire king find his fate, the necromancer that rose every two centuries, with careful focus and her self-taught spells to guide her.
But all magic ached to be used, and when she neglected to burn the energy off, Eka seemed keen to remind her of the futures she couldn’t escape.
Thea hoped the goddess was wrong.
But more than that, Thea prayed that she wasn’t.