3. THIS IS NO PLACE FOR WITCHES
Chapter three
THIS IS NO PLACE FOR WITCHES
Orion
T ension. It was so prominent in the courtyard that I could taste it in my adénes with every breath. Potent wafts of adrenaline and aggression tickled my senses and flooded my own body with a thirst for violence.
Theo and Iris grimaced as they inhaled to better taste the air with the scent glands in the roof of their mouths, but I was better at controlling the impulse. Imítheos did not have adénes glands, they could not taste pheromones and emotions the way that we did, and they found our use of those senses barbaric. Animalistic.
I watched the Metropolis guards carefully, all of them Imítheos mágoi who were made nervous by so many of my kind descending upon their city. I could even taste their magic brimming readily inside them as they watched the warriors flying above.
Gods forbid Riordan do anything gently. He knew the Imítheos would hate being reminded of his affinity for my kind, of our unflinching loyalty to him, and the immense power he wielded because of it. Power they feared.
But he didn’t care. He would take his throne the way he did everything: with a stubborn, single-mindedness. There were times that it had been entertaining to see him finally putting Imítheos in their place, and I was forever inspired by his egalitarianism. But I cared so much more about his welfare than I did about my people. So while he steamrolled ahead, I wanted only to protect him from all the consequences of what he sought to tear down.
I just wished he wouldn’t make it so godsdamned hard. Nothing could be easy or straightforward with him.
I glared down at the witch who had turned her back on me to face Riordan, but I towered over her enough to still see her profile while she watched him. And I would know her feelings even if I could not taste them coating her skin and perfuming the air around her. It was obvious every time she looked at him, and her pupils dilated.
It made me want to shove her into the cold fountain and hold her under the water until her wicked thoughts about my skiá were the furthest thing from her mind.
The injustice of his choice was beyond painful for me. How could he not know that he deserved so much more than this creature ? Of course, I’d always known it would be difficult to see him finally mated to someone, but this was worse than I could have ever imagined. I would have even preferred that he chose a self-important Imítheos female rather than a witch . I didn’t understand how he could even be close to someone whose vile kind had spent millennia butchering our people for components in their dark magics. It was a witch who killed Riordan’s brother, and then cursed Riordan to remain in his animal form during the last twenty years. And it was that killing of King Adonis which had forced my skiá to step into this role that I knew he abhorred as our new ruler.
So I did not understand, and I was terrified that he was merely being his stubborn and rebellious self by choosing a mate of whom he knew his mother would not approve.
Many griffins stared at her, Imítheos and Ktínos alike, with open curiosity and suspicion. Everyone had heard by now about the summer dryad who had come to court and proclaimed the king was returning with an intended mate. And despite the Steward Queen’s best attempts to keep the news quiet, everyone had heard this intended mate of the king was a fire witch.
Ares walked up on the other side of her and bristled at the gawkers, his lips curling to expose his fangs at them. Even the Imítheos mágoi knew better than to tempt the wrath of the árgoesi Warhammer, a fitting nickname that Ares earned thanks to his brutal and relentless violence on the battlefield. Everyone quickly jerked their eyes away from the witch which of course was why Riordan had chosen the brute as her personal guardian.
I yanked my attention away from the witch when Riordan walked forward. He moved with a commanding confidence as he prepared to confront his mother and the four other oligarchs of the city-states. The finely dressed crowd of Imítheos courtiers all pressed closer together as if he were a wild animal stalking toward them.
Theo, Iris, and Helena stayed close at Riordan’s back, flanking him in a display of solidarity, although he did not typically require their protection. My skiá was nearly unmatched in his magic even before he had inherited the mantle as our king, and now he was truly without equal. But he was still weak from being drained of his power and hints of the foul blood magic still tainted his veins.
“Riordan,” the Steward Queen greeted him once he reached the dais upon which she and the other nobles stood looking down on him. The uncertainty in her voice betrayed a mixture of relief that her son was finally home and concern for what his return would mean for them.
“Mother,” he responded, thankfully not in Gaelic as he had been insisting upon since we were reunited.
My king stopped at the edge of the dais, allowing his mother to be the one to decide how she would like to receive him. And after a brief deliberation, she made her choice and stepped away from the other nobles. A few faces tensed in disapproval, but Andromeda embraced her son with all the cold reservation that could be expected of an Imítheos noble.
“I am glad you are home,” she told him, and I was sure she meant it genuinely. Her hands lingered on his biceps as they parted, and she looked up to search his face in curiosity. I could see her noting the same things that I had when I first looked upon him. Life alone in the mortal world had obviously been taxing for him, and she would surely be asking herself the same things I had wondered. Like whether his time in Uile Breithà had moderated his temperamental impulses or if the isolation made him even more unruly than before?
I wanted to know Riordan’s internal reaction to seeing his mother again, since their relationship had always been convoluted, but I refrained from joining my mind to his. Not merely to give him privacy, but for my own sanity since the witch occupied so much of his thoughts that it was revolting. Her scent, her soft skin under his hands, and the satisfaction he felt when she would seek him out with her eyes plagued him. Her smile mesmerized him, and he was utterly captivated by the knowledge that her nude body was so close to him. That there was nothing separating them but the fabric of my cloak and the illusion of his magically conjured leather armour.
The awakening of his desire was as potent and visceral as I had ever imagined it would be, and it was maddening, heart wrenching, to feel it all directed at this witch .
“It is good to be home,” Riordan assured Andromeda, and I didn’t need to be joined with him to know that he was sincere. “Where is Rhea and my father?” he asked.
“Rhea will be here soon, but your father is in Erétria,” Andromeda answered more gravely. “Some of their crops were pillaged and livestock has gone missing, but there is no need to worry now. We will speak with the Queen’s… with the King’s Council about it later,” she corrected with an incline of her head.
“Were you expecting resistance here, Your Majesty?” interrupted another voice, and my lip curled instantly as Castor Doukas stepped off the dais to face Riordan next.
The animosity between the Oligarch of árgos and my king was widely known. They had never seen eye to eye, but tensions hadn’t become truly hostile until Riordan refused to choose one of Castor’s daughters for his mate. And then Riordan had cemented the oligarch’s insult by rejecting his son as a skiá in favour of me: a Ktínos brute. We were sure it was Castor who orchestrated an attempt on my life, but without proof, there wasn’t anything that Riordan could do about it at the time.
But he was the king now, and not especially known for patience or restraint, so I hoped Castor knew well enough to tread lightly. Although I doubted it.
“I have learned not to discount anything. I hope you have been well, aristoi ,” Riordan responded to Castor, whose brows rose as if in surprise at the civility.
So, you are capable of being polite, I could not help but taunt my king, projecting my thoughts effortlessly to Riordan. He rarely shielded himself from me and never rebuffed my connection to him despite the fact that I had always maintained walls around myself. I told him it was to prevent him from being tainted by the primal urges that his kind believed plagued the Ktínos. And while that was also partly true, mostly I was shielding him from knowing my deepest and most private truths.
One such truth which the witch had already deduced within hours of knowing me.
His amusement reverberated through me in response, and the familiar intimacy was so greatly missed that it made me want to shiver in delight. I barely heard Castor’s thinly veiled accusations that things in the Vale would have been easier with their true king present.
“Then I look forward to your constructive reports on how I can support the city-states now that I’ve returned,” Riordan replied. And even my brows shot up in surprise that he would let Castor’s baiting comments lie.
“What are they saying?” whispered the witch, but I was happy to ignore her.
“Castor is chiding him for the warriors that followed him home,” Ares told her. I shot a frown at him, but my disapproval only made the bastard grin wider.
“But he didn’t ask them to come. They chose to show their support for Riordan,” objected the witch.
“You are right,” Ares assured her, drawing nearer than I preferred him to be to Riordan’s intended mate so he could speak more quietly to her. “And if they were glad to receive him, and unthreatened by our kind, they might have seen this as a good omen for our new king.”
“Right,” she muttered, nodding as if she had any clue of the politics at play.
I have explained the situation, and she is much more astute than you give her credit for, Riordan scolded me. Reminding me that I’d left the connection between us open enough for him to read me whilst he was greeting the other oligarchs and some commanders.
She is a witch. What could she know of adversity?
Riordan bristled in my mind, the sensation of his anger like a hot prickle at the back of my neck and scalp.
“Riordan!” shrieked a female before he could reply, startling everyone in the courtyard. The nobles all gasped and nervous soldiers reached for their weapons, but it was only Princess Rhea who had emerged from the Metropolis at the top of the stairs.
The young woman broke away from her handmaid and hiked her vibrant blue dress up above her ankles before she tackled the stairs at a wild speed. Her wings flared to help her glide down more quickly until her toes were barely touching the steps. The nobles gaped at her as they parted, and Andromeda tried to intercept her, but Rhea barrelled by all of them and sailed right into Riordan’s open arms. She collided against her older brother with enough force to knock the breath out of both of them.
Riordan stumbled back with a laugh, but he held her up against him with his arms under her wings.
“Rhea!” I heard their mother hiss in a soft reprimand, glancing around them in embarrassment for the public display of emotion.
Neither of her children heard or cared for her scolding, and Rhea launched into a monologue that was muffled in Riordan’s shoulder.
My king laughed again as he squeezed her tighter.
“I cannot hear you, little dove.”
“I am glad you are back!” she clarified unnecessarily as he allowed her to slide down to her own feet, but she glared at him in hurt and disappointment.
“I am so sorry,” Riordan assured her sincerely.
“Your Majesty, surely this is not—” Castor tried to intervene on behalf of all the other Imítheos who abhorred such public displays of affection.
Theo moved wordlessly but firmly between Riordan and the oligarch, enforcing the king’s space and privacy with his sister. And it made me smile when Castor looked livid that a Ktínos would presume to interfere with him, but there was no one to rectify the perceived slight.
Things were going to change drastically, and although such change would be painful, I was intrigued with the direction Riordan was going to take our people.
I was distracted from these thoughts when the scent of the witch next to me grew abruptly denser. Her natural fragrance was sweet and warm with a hint of clove, but it now tasted almost bitter on my adénes . I’d never noticed such a dramatic change in one’s scent before, so I glanced at her in confusion and saw her brows were pinched.
“His sister,” Ares reassured her before I could even deduce what was wrong with her.
She looked up at him in surprise that he’d noticed the shift in her mood, and then her neck and cheeks flushed. The embarrassment intensified her sweetness again, and it was suddenly unbearably potent.
“Stop flirting,” I chastised Ares in Aeolian so that she would not comprehend my words. He snorted at me.
“Provide your skiá with the emotional support that she requires, and I will not feel inclined to flirt with her.”
“She is not my skiá ,” I snarled back at him in disgust, but I hesitated when I noticed the witch had turned her head to look up at me. Her eyes narrowed as she observed my vicious reaction, and although she did not know my exact words, I was sure she understood.
Meeting her stare unexpectedly had such a strangely unnerving effect. Like hitting the edge of an air draft and plummeting in an unexpected freefall. I had not realized before that her eyes were a striking amber colour unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Like twin flames had been immortalized in orbs of bronze tree sap.
“She seems angry with him,” she noted, releasing me from her piercing gaze and directing her question to Ares who was pleased to have more of her attention.
“Rhea is always angry,” he assured her with a wicked grin that made her smile back at him, and I made sure the scent of my ire grew potent enough to warn him away.
Just because I didn’t want the witch myself did not mean I would not be protecting Riordan’s interests.
“You only think that because you always seem to be near me whenever I am angry. Do you suppose there may be some coincidence?” asked Rhea suddenly in Gaelic.
I jerked to attention, feeling foolish for not realizing that she and Riordan had approached and were awaiting our attention. My only source of solace was the fact that neither of the Imítheos were able to sense the implosion of competitive pheromones between me and Ares.
“My apologies, princess,” Ares gasped as he hastily bent into a bow before Riordan’s sister.
“Your army friends are always refreshing, Riordan,” Rhea informed her brother, her tone dry enough to make Ares wince as his tail lashed with his shame.
“They are indeed,” Riordan replied, looking amused with Ares before his gaze shifted to the witch at my side. His smile gentled, his eyes softened with affection, and I felt her relaxing too as she perceived his warmth.
Seeing it was like a kick to my gut.
“ So ,” said Rhea, her head tilted up as she too observed the change in her brother’s demeanour. “This is Amira. Your intended mate. She does not look the part of a vile monster as Castor promised. I am rather disappointed,” the princess claimed with one of her teasing smiles that seemed reserved only for her brother.
Rhea could be just as cold and unfeeling as any other Imítheos, but she had always been very close to Riordan. Probably because they had both grown up in the shadow of their eldest brother.
“I am sorry to disappoint,” responded the little witch, looking sheepish but hopeful as she rolled her shoulder to displace my grip. She stepped toward Rhea to accept the hand that the princess held out to her.
“I am pleased to meet you. I was beginning to fear that my brother would never choose a mate,” Rhea admitted.
Andromeda abruptly pushed her daughter aside from behind. She did not typically betray such emotion, but she was clearly frustrated with Rhea’s lack of decorum earlier. Then she began to examine her son’s desired mate with so much frigidity in her eyes that I almost felt discomfited. Riordan’s mother missed nothing as she absorbed the witch from her long, messy braid to the tips of her toes clad in illusioned slippers. And Andromeda was clearly as unimpressed as I was with the soft little creature.
Our people were feline: angular, sleek, and powerful. Some Imítheos were more portly than the Ktínos from living a life of luxury, but even the use of magic took a physical toll which required them to be fit. The witch was tall and slender, but her face was heart shaped, her brows arching daintily over large eyes, and her lips were plump. There was a touch of self-conscious colour in her rounded cheeks that gave her the aura of uncertainty. Of weakness. She did not appear to be suited either for battle or for the channelling of magic, so among griffins, she was useless .
Those softly arched brows pinched in discomfort with being stared at and clearly judged so harshly. The second that her gaze shifted up to Riordan, seeking his support, he was moving to her side.
Riordan , I objected, but he ignored me. He shoved me from his mind with a force that I’d never experienced from him before as he clasped the witch’s hand so he was facing his mother at her side. United.
Andromeda lowered her gaze to their handhold and frowned before lifting her eyes to the witch’s face again.
“We will… discuss this later. You have had a long journey and will require—”
“There is no need to discuss anything later. I want you to meet Amira now,” Riordan interrupted, still speaking in Gaelic for the witch to understand. “She helped me break my curse, and she has defended and aided me twice now while I was disabled by blood magic,” Riordan claimed.
“ She defended you ?” blurted Rhea, and then winced in apology at her outburst when her mother shot her a glare.
“These are noble actions to be sure,” said Castor in Aeolian from behind Rhea. “But surely we can honour her with what riches she deems appropriate and then send her safely on her way? The Vale is no place for witches.”
For once, I actually agreed with the oligarch.
I could tell the witch was frustrated by not being able to understand all that was being said about her since not everyone deigned to speak Gaelic. She turned her face into Riordan’s shoulder as if to hide from their scrutiny, and I wanted to roll my eyes at her. Showing weakness by allowing him to be her shield would only make our people respect her even less.
But Riordan didn’t seem to care about any of that as all pretense of his civility seemed to disappear instantly in response to her hurt. She merely turned her face to him, and a dangerous look came into his eye. The scent of his anger, the threat of his violence, made the Ktínos fidget readily which caused the Imítheos to become nervous.
This was the male that I was much more familiar with. The General of Kórinthos who commanded our obedience with the sheer force of his will.
“I want to make it very clear to everyone right now that Amira is my intended mate. And anyone who makes her feel otherwise will answer to me,” Riordan warned, his voice deep and rippling with command.
“But Your Majesty—” began Castor in earnest.
“My choice for my mate is not up for discussion,” Riordan reiterated, gritting the words through his teeth as his tail lashed in a promise of that volatile temper of his. “It never was, and that has not changed now.”
“We must be allowed to express concerns for our king . It is our job to advise you, is it not?” reasoned Castor.
Allow them some perception of control, I urged him, blasting the words at Riordan around the mental block he had erected between us.
Riordan did not look at me, but I felt him grudgingly considering my recommendation.
“You will have one opportunity to address concerns on this private matter, and then we will speak of it no more,” he decided, but the concession seemed to pacify.
“As our mother graciously pointed out, you have had a long journey,” Rhea tried to intercede.
“There were fey intruders upon my arrival. I wish to orient myself right away with the current state of our defensive affairs,” Riordan told them, his voice still harsh. All his smiles were gone.
“You should rest, brother,” Rhea insisted gently in an attempt to soothe him with her tone. She would sense the vile magic still plaguing him even better than I could.
“I will rest when I am confident that we are protected,” Riordan advised her. “And I’d be grateful if you would attend to Amira’s privacy and comfort while I am gone.”
Rhea looked like she wanted to protest again, but her brother was the king now. So she merely offered him a strained smile and curtsied in acceptance of this task.
“I will see to it that she is cared for,” she assured him.