Chapter 5
Dione showed up with three kids just after they finished clearing the table. All Bellanca could think was, At least it isn’t four . The words almost tumbled from her mouth before she swallowed them under a strained smile. She’d been fighting her blunter urges lately and figuring out that you could mostly speak your mind without hurting other people’s feelings. She wished she’d figured that out before.
“Dione.” Carver motioned the Atlantian woman and her children inside. “Welcome.”
“Thank you.” Fanning her flushed brown cheeks and already patently exhausted, the woman turned pleading eyes on her even though Carver was closer and had been the one to invite them in. “Be a Nereid and watch these three for me. I have all ten at home today plus Tereus, and it’s…”
“Overwhelming?” Bellanca reached for two little hands despite the fact that she thought kids were worse than enemies—they were as nerve-racking and unpredictable, but you couldn’t just kill them and be done. At least these ones weren’t spoiled, violent, or carrying hidden weapons, which was pretty much her previous experience with children, herself included. Dione seemed to have pretty good kids, except there were ten of them. And Tereus… Dione’s husband was just as useless as most of the men in Atlantis. Carver had been a pain in her backside since the day they met, but he sure was a cut above in this place.
She glanced at Carver who, of course, liked children and instinctively knew what to do with them. He was already back at the table with the smallest—and apparently ravenous, if the double-handed reach for the contents of the fruit bowl was any indication—one on his knee.
“Oh, blessed gods. Thank you.” Dione practically had tears in her eyes, and Bellanca squirmed like a squid in a fishing net. Shrimp One smiled up at her. Shrimp Two rubbed her nose. Carver’s little shrimp dug into the fruit. All three were girls.
“Of course. You’re welcome,” Bellanca said automatically. Neutral things like that came out more easily here. She didn’t know if she was faking it, watering herself down, or actually evolving into someone who wasn’t consistently rude. In any case, Atlantis was changing her, and she thought it was for the better. Even Carver seemed more relaxed here.
But what in the Underworld were they going to do with three kids all day? And son of a Cyclops. She forgot to hide the blades.
“Speaking of gods”—she moved slightly to the left to block Dione’s view of their stockpile of weapons—“are you still mad at Zeus about the whole Punishment thing?” They never alluded to their mission with anyone, but things were bound to heat up and, hopefully, finally progress after the incident with Pan. They might as well know what kind of resistance they were up against from the general population. There weren’t just gods to deal with here.
Carver shot her a warning look. Dione looked startled. Bellanca didn’t care. Dione already knew she was strange, and she still trusted Bellanca with her children. Bellanca could probably ask her anything as long as they kept opening the door and entertaining the shrimps on their days off. These were some of the youngest of the brood.
“N-no,” their downstairs neighbor eventually answered. “My family is Hoi Polloi. Tereus’s, too. We wouldn’t have magic anyway, with or without Punishment.”
Bellanca nodded. Hoi Polloi were the many. Magoi were the few, the elite. The powerful. If she restored magic to Atlantis, inequality could get even worse. She shuddered to think how it might be for women who were Hoi Polloi. But she’d make this island accept a queen. She could make Atlantians accept so much more.
“But Punishment did take away our Magoi healers,” Dione added with a frown, her gaze sweeping over her girls. “And the children…” She stopped there. What good would it do for little ears to hear that some injury or illness was out there just waiting to gobble them up?
Bellanca let go of Shrimps One and Two and nudged them toward Carver. “Well, go on and get something to eat. There’s fruit on the table.” She wiped her hands against her pants. Why were kids always so sticky? It was as if they excreted something from their fingers that made it harder for adults to let go.
She turned, watching them each pick out a piece of fruit and cautiously start to eat. If Shrimp Three’s scrunched-up face was any indication, she didn’t like the fig she’d opted for in the end and left it half-eaten on the table. She slipped off Carver’s lap and wandered toward the blades.
Bellanca ushered Dione out before she noticed the direction one of her youngest daughters was taking. “Come back, you know, sometime. I’m sure we’ll manage till then.”
Dione murmured her thanks and left without establishing more precise timing. Her eldest, Aikaterini, would help her out, as usual, but Dione still had plenty of other little ones to deal with at home on top of that lazy heap of seaweed, Tereus. There was no way in the Underworld she was coming back anytime soon.
Bellanca shut the door and picked up a shawl to wind around her head and hair. She could tamp down the magic in her eyes without really thinking about it, but they were in for a whole day with company, and she didn’t want to have to worry about controlling every spark in her hair. After knotting her braid into a bun and tucking the dark-brown head covering firmly into place, she turned back to Shrimps One, Two, and Three. They had names, and she even knew them, but numbers would do just fine.
Hands on her hips, she cocked a brow. “Who wants to play with knives?”
***
Dione had shown up too early on their day off for them to get away unnoticed and explore the island for potential clues about the Shard of Olympus. It would’ve been a random search anyway, since they had no idea where to look. As Carver had pointed out, going north toward Mount Olympus would be a good start, but it was a several-day journey on foot and would involve potential encounters with deadly magical creatures the farther north they got. They only had a day, they were both still recovering from the fight in the cave, and now they had the shrimps to entertain. As frustrating as it was, the only logical choice was to stay home. And it was fortunate they were there when, right on the heels of Dione leaving, Carver received a message from the castle telling him to report to the throne room the very next day.
They exchanged a look over the kids’ heads, surprise mixed with excitement. They didn’t know why yet, but they’d finally caught the break they needed—the chance to get close enough to Cleito to talk.
“This is good,” Bellanca murmured, some of the weight from the useless leads in the conspirator’s cave sliding off her back. Cleito was their best bet at gaining significant information now. Bellanca had known seers. She’d had a sister with the gift of sight, and if Cleito was anything like Appoline, she’d want her power to be used for good. Eryx could beat his oracle bloody every day and she’d still keep her mouth shut, but she’d see Carver and she’d want to talk. “You just have to get close enough without him hearing what you say.”
Carver’s jaw tightened, the optimism she’d glimpsed in his face dimming a notch. “Easier said than done.”
“You’ll find a way.”
If anything, his countenance darkened even more. Before she could ask him why, he turned to the girls and rubbed his hands together. To her, his smile looked forced. “Who’s ready to play some games?”
The oldest kid—Shrimp One—piped up first. “Bel said we could play with knives.” She headed straight for the weapons pile, and Shrimp Two followed. Shrimp Three was already there, looking half-tempted to grab a blade.
“And so it begins…” Carver said under his breath.
Bellanca laughed. “Well, did you think they’d forget ?”
“Think, no. Hope, yes,” he grumbled. “Look at what you’ve started.” He swept out a hand. The girls had stopped hesitating and were already picking through the knives.
She shrugged, something happy simmering inside her as she moved toward their charges for the day. Should she have hidden the blades? Maybe, but she wasn’t going to regret it now. This wasn’t the first time the girls had been there, and it wouldn’t be the last, but finally , they were doing something Bellanca liked. Instead of that awkward dread she always felt, anticipation took its place.
She grinned at Carver. “Hopefully, I’ll have started a lifelong love of pointy objects—and the ability to defend themselves.”
Carver lifted both brows in a poor attempt at censure because she could see his own spark of excitement underneath. Happiness glowing from him was so rare it was unmissable. Her heart swooped, and she turned away, gathering things to set up an obstacle course and throwing range while the girls each picked out a knife. Atlantapol was too busy and populated to take this outside, so their living room would have to do. It was spacious, bright, and high enough from street level to muffle the screams.
Once Bellanca had a few things in place, she turned to the girls and attacked.
The shrieks were excellent—loud, constant, and filled with giggles. She wasn’t worried about Dione coming to investigate. These were happy sounds. If only her own childhood lessons had gone like this, then maybe she wouldn’t have hated everyone so much—her teachers, her parents, half her siblings. All those others had turned her, Appie, and Lystra into a team against everyone else, though, and she’d never regret that.
Missing her sisters didn’t hit her quite as hard as usual as she sent the shrimps through the obstacle course they’d set up. Carver played his role well, instructor and attacker alike. The girls learned fast, gaining reflexes with repetition and hitting targets more often than not. The day flew by, punctuated by snacks everyone wolfed down to get back to the fun. Instead of fading, the initial happiness stayed, growing along with the girls’ skills, and she and Carver didn’t argue once. One thing they both knew how to do—and mostly agreed on—was how to train soldiers. One, Two, and Three became their personal army for the day, and setting their stagnant mission aside for once did Bellanca more good than she could’ve imagined.
Better yet, the kids didn’t question anything. They knew Carver was a soldier in the king’s guard and the fact that Bellanca knew how to wield—and dodge—a blade just seemed a natural extension of that. They made it seem that way and hoped the girls would understand they could demand the same thing one day. The strategy might not have worked with Dione’s older kids, especially the girls. Atlantis had already stuck its barnacles onto them too solidly, but the little ones took everything in stride.
Shrimp Two drew back her knife and landed a near-perfect throw in the pillow target they’d propped on a chair. Her knife hit the inner edge of the Cyclops’s eye they’d painted on it with fig juice from the fruit reject pile. Carver whooped and turned to Bellanca, his storm-gray eyes bright with unguarded joy. The huge grin on his face transformed his entire body into something she couldn’t tear her eyes from. Her breath caught in her lungs.
Carver’s grin slowly faded into a look so piercing it penetrated all the way to the magic swirling in her bones. His eyes flicked over her. Heat tingled up her spine and swept over her skin. He’d given her a thousand looks before but never this one. This one made her heart thud with something close to fear.
She turned away, her pulse racing. She felt his eyes on her back and shivered despite the warmth in the room.
Footsteps she knew like her own moved closer. Bellanca poised to walk away, but then they stopped, and she turned to find Carver crouched by the girls, his steady focus on them now. “It’ll be time for you to go home soon, so remember, girls, this is our secret.” His voice dropped low, pitching just right to mix humor with solemnity and make them all listen well. “Your mother and father wouldn’t approve, and if you want to come back here again and learn more, you’ll have to keep quiet about our adventures against the pillow Cyclopes and the herd of wooden centaurs.”
The girls all nodded, rapt in their attention and half in love with Carver, of course. The youngest here today was about six years old and the oldest around ten. Carver had described them as cute earlier, but Bellanca didn’t really know what cute meant or what purpose it served. She preferred fierce and skilled , and the girls were turning out to be those. Like Dione, they had medium-brown skin and wavy black hair. While skin tones could vary from sun-bronzed to black, almost all the islanders had dark hair. Carver fit in fine, raven-haired and naturally sun-kissed like a true Atlantian. She stuck out like a sore thumb with her fair skin and red curls.
Firebringer. She smirked.
There wouldn’t be anything pale about her when she lit up and burned the status quo to the ground.
“Again!” she barked with a sharp clap, the army general in her still alive and well. “You.” Bellanca motioned for Shrimp One to start the course again. The oldest girl immediately sprang forward, diving under Carver’s blade as he swung at half speed. She rolled, popped up, turned, and parried his strike with a short sword of her own. They exchanged several blows, Carver not putting any strength into it but placing his strikes and thrusts to show her how to protect herself and keep her opponent’s blade from getting too close. He eventually faked losing and fell to the floor with an obnoxious groan.
Bellanca surged in, a knife in her hand. Shrimp One ducked fast, whirled, and struck back. For the first time all day, Bellanca had to truly leap out of the way to keep from getting sliced across the middle. Surprise widened her eyes, then she grinned. Natural aggression sizzled under her skin, and she had to hold back the flames trying to burst forth from within. She hurled a pillow Cyclops at the girl. Shrimp One stabbed it right in the painted eye. Bellanca threw a second pillow, then a third. The pillow Cyclopes all met violent deaths, feathers floating to the floor.
“Centaur hooves! Dodge!” she swung a chair at One, narrowly missing the child’s head. She grimaced, a little jolt of fear striking her chest, but One didn’t even slow down and sprang to the side, already spinning around and ready for more. Carver popped up and swung another chair, more careful than she’d been. Shrimp One avoided those pretend hooves just as easily, lunged, and planted her short sword in another Cyclops pillow. Feathers puffed out as she drew a dagger and threw it at the pieces of beach wood they’d dragged upstairs after lunch and roped together in the approximate shape of a centaur. Her dagger hit its hind flank and stuck.
Shrimp One stared in shock, breathing hard, before screaming, “I did it!” She jumped up and down.
Bellanca lifted her brows. “It can still kill you with a dagger in its behind.” Still, she nodded her approval. No one had stuck a blade in the driftwood all day. This was the first, and the infinitely satisfying thud still echoed in her ears. The wall behind their makeshift centaur was a mess. But then, she’d always thought battle scars told interesting stories. She’d look at that wall and remember teaching three little Atlantian girls that maybe it wasn’t only their fathers or brothers or husbands who could protect them. They could protect themselves.
She looked around their lodgings. Four pillows absolutely destroyed, feathers everywhere, a pockmarked wall, an empty fruit bowl, and three happy kids. She grinned.
“Nicely done.” Carver clapped One on the shoulder without too much force. “I’m impressed.”
Smiling like she wanted to catch bugs in her teeth, One turned to Bellanca. Bellanca shrugged. “You’re improving.” Not having received much praise in her life, she wasn’t sure how to give it. Besides, one day of play training wasn’t going to change a thing unless the girls internalized the why of it as much as the how . “You just need to know, in here”—she thumped a fist against her chest—“if you’re ready to protect yourselves for real. And when it counts.” She looked at each of them in turn. “It’s great when someone has your back. A gift, really”—her heart contracted almost painfully as she glanced at Carver—“but your best champion is you . And when you already know how to defend yourself, you can help defend someone else.”
“Against who?” the youngest one asked.
Bellanca started collecting the blades. “Against whoever tries to tell you you’re less .” Anger at the current state of Atlantis boiled up, her own magic stoking the fire. “Against whoever might try to throw you over the wall of Atlantapol and tell you it’s for the greater good .”
The girls all stared at her. One looked thoughtful. Two’s mouth gaped. Three looked scared, but Bellanca couldn’t regret a thing. By their age, she’d already been to war and back with her two oldest siblings so many times she’d lost count. Stabbed, half strangled, cut, burned, locked up, nearly drowned—she hated swimming now. And that was nothing compared to what her parents had put her through simply by forgetting she existed most of the time. Ironically, she’d wish they’d forget her again whenever they suddenly remembered she was there. Their attention was always worse than their neglect.
Carver darted her a cautioning glance. “This was just for a bit of fun.” He started cleaning up and got the shrimps to help while Bellanca stashed away the blades. As he dumped shredded pillows and loose feathers into the basket they used for trash, he asked, “Who wants dinner?” The sun was setting, and Dione still hadn’t come back.
The shrimps were more than ready to eat again. Bellanca was, too. They’d worked up an appetite. There was no way she was cooking—and Carver couldn’t cook without shocking the sandals off the girls—so they waited until after the day’s sacrifice was done up at the temple square and then went to a taverna to eat. They traipsed back upstairs after dinner, not one of them knocking on the door below theirs.
Well after dark, they heard Dione in the stairway. Bellanca felt unexpected panic rise in her chest at the thought of sending the girls back to the life they’d always known—the one that taught them to erase themselves for men and fear each day because it could be their last and was never truly their own.
She gathered them without thinking and spoke low and fast. “You know what happens at the high wall over the harbor every evening. I hope to the gods the day never comes, but if someone ever tries to take you, you fight . Even if you go down, go down with noise.”
She half expected Carver to minimize her warning or soothe nervous feathers again, but when he walked by on his way to open the door for Dione, he lifted his hand and squeezed the back of her neck under the tight knot of her shawl-covered hair. Her eyes widened. His touch was startling, heavy and warm. But the brief, very unusual contact wasn’t a warning. It was understanding and encouragement, and it zinged all the way to her toes.